A Self-Indulgent Boycott

So, the Universities and Colleges Union has voted to support a boycott of Israeli universities. With the rather Dave Spartish manner that these fine minds have, it’s nothing so straightforward as a plain call for boycott. Instead, the UCU will circulate a motion to all its branches to discuss calls from Palestinian trade unions for a "comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions". The boycott motion is going to branches for "their information and discussion", which is no doubt something to forward to.

It’s hardly worth discussing why this union wants to boycott Israel for its actions in the occupied territories, but not China for its actions in Tibet, Russia for its actions in Chechnya, India for its actions in Kashmir, Turkey for its actions in Cyprus, or any of the thousand and one other boycotts that would be at least as justifiable as the one they want.

The fact is that Israel, and its policy towards the occupied territories, has become an icon for much of the Left. Quite plainly Israel is not the wickedest country on earth, to be singled out and despised for its deeds; but yet it is an icon of loathing, to be singled out for what it represents.

The membership of the UCU is largely composed of middle-aged radicals, made diverse by a handful of middle-aged ex-radicals. That may be an unfair generalisation, but in any case, it’s much less of a one than describing Israel as an apartheid state. Its campaign priorities are the usual mix of public sector self-interest and tedious leftist sloganeering - no to privatisation, no to ratting on potential terrorists, yes to boycotting Israel.

Like most of the rest of the current Establishment, the academic establishment is the product of the Sixties and Seventies. Back when they were young, Western imperialism was still the great bogeyman of radical politics. Africa was going through a traumatic decolonization, and most of the colonial powers were fighting either to leave with dignity, or to cling onto their colonies as long as possible.

Empire represented all that was bad about the old Britain, with its stuffy Victorian attitudes and its appeal to all those fashionable Marxist clichés of exploitation and ruling classes. It was bound up with the old establishment, and was an emblem of everything that the new wave of politics and culture wanted swept away. Little could be easier or more enjoyable for the new generations than kicking imperialism as it went down.

Those who came of age back then still have an obsession with fighting imperialism. Anything that resembles a proper, old-fashioned Empire - rich, white people having power over poor, brown ones - sends into a frenzy those who have failed to evolve since the 1960s.

The misfortune of Israel is to have created the perfect icon of white imperialism. Their deeds are no worse, and often much better than many other countries involved in territorial disputes. But the ossified old Left couldn’t care less about Chinese imperialism, the squabbles of India and Pakistan, or any other imperial or quasi-imperial conflict. All they care about is bringing down white imperialism, once and for all.

The conflict in the occupied territories pushes all those old buttons. You have a power armed with the latest, most sophisticated weapons available, versus passionate, stone-throwing natives who have no weapons but their bodies and their cunning. It is the rich versus the poor; greedy European settlers versus the honest peasants who’d farmed the land for generations. It plays beautifully to the imperial stereotypes of these rather old, unimaginative people, who remain stuck with the bogeymen of their youth.

It takes little effort to see this conflict through the prism of white imperialism. Swap redcoats for IDF infantry, gunboats for helicopter gunships, and rebelling natives for rebelling natives, and one great bogeyman morphs into the other without effort. For those whose intellect is this shallow, who react rather than think, it makes perfect sense to fight Israel as the new imperial power, the heir of the Raj and the new adventurers.

It’s no coincidence that the two great boycott campaigns of the last half-century have been against the two states that push these buttons. Neither South Africa nor Israel was targeted for being the most monstrous regime around, but for sparking guilt and shame amongst the Empire-hating generations.

Apartheid South Africa was cruel, brutal and racist, but it was a competent government, and by no means the most tyrannical even on its own continent. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is cruel, brutal, racist and so incompetent that its people are either fleeing or starving in their millions. But as it bears no resemblance to a white imperial power, it faces far less condemnation.

Israel is cavalier in its treatment of the Palestinians, and it is yet to completely kick the old vision of a Greater Israel. It is often heavy-handed and ruthless. But it is a tiny nation on the fringes of the Middle East, still surrounded by nations who want to see it weakened or destroyed. It faces guerrilla warfare, either from Hezbollah, or from Hamas or the other Palestinian Islamists, sponsored by those states that want to grind it down. It wants, reluctantly, to get out of the occupied territories, but not to be forced out, and in doing so it wants to ensure that its borders and resources are secure. Much as any other state would.

It takes a considerable degree of blinkeredness to twist Israeli policy into the charge sheet of a Public Enemy Number One. Even if we limit ourselves to academia, in the week British academics voted to boycott Israel, Iranian academics began being arrested for daring to talk to Western universities. If the UCU wanted to boycott nasty regimes there’s no shortage of choice. Making the choice Israel says much about their real motivations.

This boycott, as with the South African one, has little to do with fighting injustice and everything to do with the gratification of the smug lefties who dominate the UCU. It is self-indulgent to the point of obscenity to do this, to punish a nation for one’s own pleasure, regardless of the effect it has on those who may be suffering. Nations that feel unjustly attacked usually retreat into a bunk mentality. But hey, who cares whether it will do any good for the Palestinians, so long as it’s good for a few Western egos?

Quite aside from the stupidity of this self-righteous, self-indulgent boycott, whose only purpose is to make some decrepit old fools feel brave and daring again, it is a great shame that British academia should have leant its name to such an enterprise. It is only natural that the old elite should be some way behind the times. But it is inexcusable for it to be a full century behind the times.

To be driven by a desire to attack the British Empire is, in 2007, when the great issues concern the Islamic world and the new economic superpowers of the East, as stupid and absurd as it would for someone living in coffee-house Georgian London to be obsessed with fighting the divine right of kings. No one whose mindset is stuck in a previous century can have much to say about today’s world. Intellectually as well as physically, they're on their way to the grave.