Last week, proponents of an academic boycott against Israel at UCT, contrived (in defiance of university regulations) to send a statement entitled ‘South African Jews support the Academic Boycott of Israeli Universities Enabling the Occupation’ to all members of the UCT Senate. This was obviously aimed at creating the impression that South African Jewry is seriously divided on this question, thereby ostensibly validating the insistence by the BDS lobby that the boycott was not against Jews but about standing up for human rights. It emerged afterwards that those distributing the statement on the day were wearing SAUJS t-shirts so as to hoodwink people into thinking that the representative Jewish student organisation on campus supported their position. It was also discovered that the statement had (in defiance of university regulations) been sent to the UCT Senate under a fictitious Jewish-sounding name. While disgusted, we were not surprised. Such brazen deceitfulness has characterized the UCT boycott campaign from the very outset.
Much of the Board’s work this week has necessarily been – in partnership with the SAZF and SAUJS - to expose these underhanded tactics while counteracting whatever false impressions have been created regarding where the Jewish community stands on the boycott question. This has been done, inter alia, through liaising with the UCT leadership, issuing press statements providing the real facts of the situation and responding in media forums where the offending statement had appeared. Fortunately, the requisite facts and figures are readily to hand. We were able to point out that whereas a mere 65 South Africans of Jewish origin had endorsed the boycott, a counter petition opposing it currently being run by the SA Zionist Federation had to date garnered just under 65 000 signatures. Reference was further made to previous rigorous academic surveys conducted by UCT’s own Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies, in which close to 90% of respondents expressed strong or moderate support for Israel while only 1% expressed negative feelings. The signatories thus clearly constituted a tiny fringe group, despite their deviously trying to exaggerate their significance.
The fact that proponents of the UCT boycott feel the need to resort to such underhand and unethical tactics in order to push their radical anti-Israel agenda smacks more of desperation on their part than anything else. Were they confident in the merits of their case, they would presumably play by the rules.
In addition to being self-evidently discriminatory, contrary to the values of academic freedom and motivated by overt political bias rather than genuine human rights concerns, an academic boycott against Israel would be very much against the interests of UCT itself, as well as those of South Africa as a whole. The SAJBD will continue to strenuously oppose this pernicious initiative, and urge UCT to decisively reject it when it comes up for consideration once more later this year.
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