"The battle was won, but the war is still being lost..."

That is how Melanie Phillips begins her latest diary entry, discussing the defeat of the AUT boycott of two Israeli universities. Her point is that the anti-boycott forces were successful in the name of academic freedom, but that the tone of even their arguments was decidedly anti-Semitic. [thanks to MA for the link]

The boycott was monstrous for an even more important reason -- that the viewpoint on which it was based was untrue, consisting of lies, libels and historical ignorance of the first order, racially prejudiced to a venomous degree and part of the campaign of hatred, delegitimisation and incitement against the Jews of Israel which is lending succour to those who wish to destroy them. The problem -- no, the obscenity -- is that many if not most of those academics voting against the boycott probably agree with these lies about Israel. They share the view that Israel is oppressing the Palestinians. They subscribe to the moral inversion which views genocidal aspirations more sympathetically than Israel's self-defence. They go along with the lie that this self-defence is actually unprovoked aggression. They parrot the fiction that the 'occupation' and the settlements are illegal. In short, these academics are the problem no less than the bocotters. They have helped foster the climate of hatred, bigotry and lies towards Israel that is now the default position on British campuses. They have created the swamp from which the pestilence of the boycott has sprung.