BDS
derailed?
According
to the press last week was a good one for the Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions
movement (BDS) with headlines such as, "Netanyahu condemns UK students over pro-boycott vote" and "Fury as NUS leaders vote to boycottIsrael". But if you look behind
the headlines, the last two weeks have not turned out as well as the BDS
movement would have expected and the options open to them are severely limited
in terms of implementing the motion.
The
BDS movement's joy with the students pro-boycott vote was short lived because
within 24 hours of the national executive of the National Union of Students(NUS) voting to affiliate to the BDS movement, Universities UK, the umbrella
body for Britain's Universities, reaffirmed its opposition to an academicboycott of Israel. What is the point of a student union now asking their
University's Vice-Chancellor to support a boycott of Israel when they know what
the answer will be? On top of this setback two weeks ago Britain's University
lecturers trade union, the UCU Congress debated and voted for a BDS resolution only to hear the motion declared "void and of null effect." The BDS movement will no doubt claim both the
UCU and NUS votes as successes and ignore Universities UK .
Since
2003, the UCU has been trying to implement what they now call a "general
pro-boycott policy directed at Israeli products and institutions, including
academic institutions. " Every time they have tried to do this they have
been unable to do so because it would
pose “a serious risk of infringing discrimination legislation".
The
boycotters intention this time was that all UCU members would be sent "a
dedicated e-mail, reminding them of (the
UCU's) policy on Israel, and with a link to the PACBI (Palestinian BDS) guidelines and any misrepresentations of UCU's
policy (would) be corrected
publicly.” If the UCU had gone ahead and sent out such an email they would have
been in breach of the legal advice they received in 2007 in which Counsel advised
that:
“It would be beyond the Union's powers
and unlawful for the Union, directly or indirectly to call for or to implement
a boycott by the Union and its members of any kind of Israeli universities and
other academic institutions; and that the use of Union funds directly or
indirectly to further such a boycott would also be unlawful."
That
the motion was declared "void and of null effect" begs the question
does the UCU actually have a policy supporting BDS? I would suggest not as they
are effectively neutered since the UCU
cannot directly or indirectly campaign for BDS. In addition union officials
such as the General Secretary cannot speak in favour of BDS when they represent
the union at International bodies or rallies because to do so would leave the union
in breach of their legal advice and infringe Britain's equality and discrimination
legislation.
The NUS"Solidarity with Palestine" motion was passed by the NUS’s
national executive committee by 19 votes to 14, a move which committed the
union to affiliate to the BDS movement. The Union of Jewish Students (UJS) said
that the decision “undermines interfaith
relations and suffocates progressive voices for peace on both sides”. NUS
deputy vice-president, Joe Vinson tweeted after the vote that
“antisemitism is like a virus, it mutates and infects everything it touches.
It's mutated into BDS and NUS is infected”.
NUS
now finds itself in a similar position to the UCU and cannot actively campaign
for BDS because of constitutional restraints. The motion confirms this point as
it asks NUS "to develop legal advice for unions adopting BDS to defend
their democratic decisions from attacks." This time, the options open to
the boycotters to implement BDS in Britain are limited and we have to be thankful for Britain's
discrimination laws for not allowing them their head.
The
fact that the UCU or the NUS are willing to support BDS and ignore our Universities
legal duty to eliminate harassment and foster good relations between persons of
different nationalities, ethnicities and religions shows what sort a society we
now live in. Is it any wonder that our University campuses tend to be a
breeding ground for contemporary anti-Semitism as the anti-Israel rhetoric used
by pro-Palestinian supporters often invokes and perpetuates anti-Semitic
tropes? NUS should be listening not only to the concerns
of UJS about the effect on Jewish students but also their own members such as
the University of Southampton Students Union who expressed real concern over
escalated tension and division between student groups at the University as the
result of the build up to the anti-Israel conference that was due to be held there last April.
Ronnie Fraser
Director
Academic Friends of Israel
