The boycott…

Well, it actually passed. NATFHE actually decided to boycott Israel. I don’t really know even how to react to this for frankly I didn’t believe it’ll happen. I fail to understand the logic behind the decision, which appears ignorant to me and the fact that it was done in between discussion on wages makes it even insulting. I try to imagine how it was actually done: “Now, when we finished discussing the decrease in our pension funds, let talk about boycotting Israel and then will come back to the question of our travel expenses since the gas prices have risen…” Do they really believe that this is what will change the situation? That this is what will encourage the sides to find a solution? It seems like a populist and arrogant decision by which someone probably gained some political capital. Here is this decision is counterproductive by the very least. It creates a situation where people are pushed to the ages. You are not allowed to have a sophisticated opinion (support the existence of a separation wall/fence and argue for full withdrawal from the territories for example). You have to take a stand either you are with “us” or with “them”. How useful can it be? Moreover the decision shows the deflation of words we are having around this conflict (genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, etc. are so easy to use these days and yet bear so little of the original meaning), but that’s an entire different issue for another post.

I tried following what is being in media about this and then in blogs. Of course Haarretz covered this both in HE and EN. Also Ynet had an EN publication about this. If you googled boycott in the last two day you could get the whole bunch of articles about the decision. Same goes for Technorati (only there I searched for “academic boycott Israel” – almost 30 posts in EN in the last two days). The reactions in blogs are rather predictable – there are those who only condemn the boycott or only support it (hmm… I think my own post fits this pattern too). There were more blogs who condemned it and just a few that supported it and even fewer that went into any kind of discussion on the topic (either pro or con). As always, the comments are the best part :)