1. I do not want our policy to be made on the basis of an email campaign mostly from the USA and many of them offensive and harassing officers and NATFHE staff.

[Sorry we don't have point #2==A.I.]

3. Most of us are very angry about the occupation of Palestine and want to find ways by which we can assist in building civil society in the occupied territories.

4. I want us to develop a sustainable policy of support for the rights of Palestinians. For example campaigning to stop the sale of arms to the Israeli Government until the occupation is over.

That doesn't sound like an impassioned plea against the resolutions, does it? That doesn't sound like a friend of Israel and the Jews, as Mackney portrays himself, who is simply concerned about the occupation. An arms boycott of Israel of would rapidly result in a genocidal war. That is what Mackney advocated in his supposed plea against the resolutions.

A boycott against individuals that affects their professional advancement is much more than interference in "Academic Freedom." It is the grossest sort of distatorial interference in freedom of thought and expression, worthy of totalitarian regimes and Fascist witch hunts. The boycott proposed by NATFHE is no different from the blacklists of the McCarthy era, and it is odiously reminiscent of the Test Act enacted in Britain in the reign of Charles II.

It is absurd for a union that meddles clumsily in international affairs to proclaim disingenuously that their resolutions are not the business of outsiders. If Mr. Mackney and his union had confined themselves to resolutions about workers benefits and wages, then of course their procedings would be only their affiar. However if NATFHE or UCU decide to pass resolutions supporting genocidal terror groups and boycotting people who disagree with their Fascist views, it is the business of every concerned citizen, and they can expect to hear from everyone who doesn't like terrorists.

Of course, university lecturers don't all go around thinking about Israel and the Palestinians all day, or about the wonders of the Hamas movement that NATFHE supports. Thse resolutions were themselves the product of a directed campaign of agitation, a successful attempt to tamper with the legitimate purposes of trade unions, that is being run by the International Solidarity Movement and similar groups. They describe this process of subversion quite openly. This did not seem to bother Paul Mackney or the Guardian at all.

Geoffrey Alderman has written a credible defense of the effort to stop the NATFHE boycott resolutions in this week's Guardian.
He wrote:

Academic freedom means nothing if it does not mean that academics have the right to hold and to publicly express the most unpopular of views, without the slightest fear of institutional reprisal. All academics everywhere have the right to engage in and with academic discourse without first having to undergo some political test or rite of passage.

He continues:

It is for these reasons that I have publicly defended Dr Ilan Pappé, the revisionist historian at Haifa University. I defend his right to hold and to disseminate his deeply flawed and essentially stupid views on the re-establishment of the Jewish state. Of course, I expect Pappé to defend my right to take issue with his views (and I have no reason to suppose that he would not do so).

In this he is sadly deceived. Pappé is one of a list of Israeli academics who have signed a declaration in support of the academic boycott.

Alderman is certainly correct that the opposition to the NATFHE boycott was legitimate. However, it is not always wise to do what you have the right to do. The fact must be faced that the opposition failed, and the boycott resolutions were passed, and we can expect that Mackney and others will continue to push similar efforts in the UCU. Those who want to stop the next boycott, and the one after that, will have to examine carefully what they are doing wrong, rather than simply insisting on their right to keep doing it.

Ami Isseroff