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The case of Orange, the French mobile phone company that is considering abandoning the Israeli market, was on the front pages of all major newspapers. But there is a silent boycott of the Jewish State which is more insidious, latent and even more dangerous because it undermines Israel’s cultural superiority and cuts Israel’s link with the rest of the world. In 2002, the year of the beginning of the academic campaign against Israel, Paul Zinger, the head of the Scientific Association of Israel, revealed that more than seven thousand scientific research projects are sent from Israel abroad every year. Dozens...

The heads of the bipartisan Congressional Israel Allies Caucus have strongly condemned an American organization of professors for their newly endorsed boycott of Israeli academic institutions, saying the move smacks of double standards. The American Studies Association members voted last week in favor of an academic boycott of Israeli colleges and universities, in protest of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin slammed the organization as a “radical leftist group”, but expressed concern that the embargo could be adopted by other academic institutions. …

The academic boycott of Israel organized by the BDS movement claimed a big success when the Guardian ran an article yesterday, Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel. That report set off a furious response, since the academic boycott of Israel is anathema to almost all academics. In the U.S., only the disreputable actions of the Association of Asian American Studies, led by U. Mass-Boston Professor and Associate Provost Rajini Srikanth, have given any legitimacy to the boycott. The boycott, which singles out only Israel, attracts open and de facto anti-Semites and those in the leftist-Islamist coalition who seek Israel’s...

A motion to boycott Israeli academics, approved two weeks ago by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, Britain's largest academic trade union, was cancelled on Sunday afternoon. Several factors in the boycott's cancellation were cited, foremost among them international pressure from academic organizations. Another influence was the threat of legal proceedings by union members who claimed the boycott would hurt their ability to do research. The union's official statement had declared that "[The] Conference notes [the] continuing Israeli apartheid policies, including [the] construction of the exclusion wall, and discriminatory educational practices." A similar boycott against the...

UCL Expresses Disgust at Israel Academic Boycott (graphic) Academic freedom in the UK allows censorship of Israel while ignoring real threats to democracy such as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and North Korea. By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency Jerusalem----May 30...... UCL President and Provost Malcolm Grant today expressed his concern at the vote by delegates at the National Association of Higher and Further Education (NATFHE) conference for a boycott of Israel universities and academics unless they publicly dissociate themselves from the policies of the state of Israel. It echoes a resolution that was adopted last year by the Association of...

An Israeli group is is planning to brief the British teachers' association on a new Hebrew University program, approved last week, to grant undergraduate degrees to Shin Bet security services personnel. The Israeli initiative favors imposing sanctions on Israeli organizations that cooperate with the occupation. [snip] The members of the Israeli initiative to approach NATFHE, both Jews and Arabs, say they understand they will not garner great support in Israel but that they want to give moral support and information to organizations abroad regarding sanctions against supporters of the occupation. ...

BRUSSELS (EJP)---The Brussels regional parliament has blocked the implementation of a cooperation agreement between Belgian and Israeli universities on neurosurgery research because of political considerations, EJP has learned. A scientific and industrial cooperation agreement, signed in 1998 between the governments of the Brussels regional government and Israel, was suspended in March 2002, in the midst of the second intifada, by a Socialist-Christian-Democrat-Green majority of the parliament on the ground that it should be freeze “until a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine will allow a fructuous cooperation.” Since then, several demands, mainly within the liberal opposition, have been introduced in...

LONDON The Association of University Teachers (AUT) has received a flood of protests, accompanied by an increasing number of resignations, following its decision to adopt boycotts against Israeli universities last Friday. The backlash, which may take the form of mass resignations from the union, has seen an outpouring of protests by Jewish and non-Jewish academics across Britain. John Vail, lecturer in political economy at Newcastle University, wrote in an e-mail to fellow academics: "The boycott is blatantly discriminatory and reeks of double standards." He added: "Although I have no current research links with Israeli academics, this has made me want...

A reader has sent me the following deeply disturbing account of the current atmosphere on a British law course: 'I must say it's been an eye-opener for me regarding the level of antizionism/antisemitism I have encountered from the people on the course, many of whom have training contracts and will go into practice as the next generation of lawyers. Upon realising the hostility I decided not to tell anyone that I was Jewish. 'One day, at the end of a workshop, someone raised the issue that an Israeli soldier was in the headlines for shooting a Palestinian boy. Three other...