Tomorrow is the vote for boycott.
Well, tomorrow, the British National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE – how do you pronounce that?) is going to vote on the boycott issue. There was an article in Haaretz on this subject, focusing on the efforts to stop the initiative.
Interestingly enough, there is a significant difference between the English and the Hebrew versions of the article. The EN one is much more ‘parve’ I would say, and in this way diminishes the complexity of this situation. For example, the HE version ends with a quote of Prof. Arik Monman from the City University of London, who is actually an activists against the boycott. He says a few things, such as: “For many members of the union the boycott is simply another aspect of leftists activity”. Then he adds that the boycott will actually be a very minor issue at the summit, since the major topic is going to be (surprise, surprise) diminution in the real values of the salaries of the association’s members.
I think quote like this puts the entire idea in a bit different proportion and yet again emphasized my initial idea that people who are actually acting for such action do not really appreciate its importance and complexity. In a way it reminds me all the early anthropologic studies when (frequently British :) researchers even didn’t leave their comfortable armchairs writing about the aborigines and the native societies from a pretty arrogant perspective (or when they did go, it still was a patronic attitude towards their subjects – because the developed world knows much better what is good for you) … History tends to repeat itself, and it is interesting to find yourself in a position of an aborigine…
Interestingly enough, there is a significant difference between the English and the Hebrew versions of the article. The EN one is much more ‘parve’ I would say, and in this way diminishes the complexity of this situation. For example, the HE version ends with a quote of Prof. Arik Monman from the City University of London, who is actually an activists against the boycott. He says a few things, such as: “For many members of the union the boycott is simply another aspect of leftists activity”. Then he adds that the boycott will actually be a very minor issue at the summit, since the major topic is going to be (surprise, surprise) diminution in the real values of the salaries of the association’s members.
I think quote like this puts the entire idea in a bit different proportion and yet again emphasized my initial idea that people who are actually acting for such action do not really appreciate its importance and complexity. In a way it reminds me all the early anthropologic studies when (frequently British :) researchers even didn’t leave their comfortable armchairs writing about the aborigines and the native societies from a pretty arrogant perspective (or when they did go, it still was a patronic attitude towards their subjects – because the developed world knows much better what is good for you) … History tends to repeat itself, and it is interesting to find yourself in a position of an aborigine…
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