Of all the pressure tactics used against Israel, academic boycott may well be the most bizarre. Why target the poor professors and researchers, many of whom are Israel's biggest advocates for the Palestinians? Does anyone actually believe that academics are consulted when the government sets its policies?
But just in time for the final preparations for Durban II, a branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) declared a new academic boycott against Israel. A committee in CUPE's Ontario branch passed a motion to boycott Israeli academia in general but rejected calls for boycotting individual academics as well.
on the union to develop an education campaign on what its proponents
label Israel's "apartheid" practices, such as building a wall around
Palestinian territory and invading the Gaza Strip in December; asks the
union to back an international campaign of sanctions and boycotts
against the country and asks the national union to start researching
Canadian connections to Israel's occupation of the Palestinian
territories.
It remains unclear how invading the Gaza Strip is an example of apartheid, but that only helps drain the term of its meaning even further. It also remains unclear why an academic boycott doesn't fall into the dreaded "collective punishment" category that these types of activists often accuse Israel of doing to the Palestinians.
