Sue Blackwell doesn't strike back

There are two posts by Sue Blackwell on a comments thread at Haaretz, trying to defend the AUT boycott decision against criticism. In the first of these posts, Blackwell appears to suggest that there's nothing unusual about a boycott applied to Israeli universities; it was occasioned by 'a call for academic boycott from 60 Palestinian organisations, including our sister union', and other similar requests would be taken 'equally seriously'. But this evades the substantive issues at stake - as if the call alone is self-sufficient in prompting a boycott, and it doesn't matter whether there are worse offenders than Israel on human rights issues, or how the boycott sits beside principles of academic freedom.

In the second post, Blackwell says that the occasion on which the decision was taken was 'not a trial, not a tribunal, but a debate at a meeting of trade unionists', and she argues that the AUT had no obligation to hear the views of 'the management' of any Israeli university. She also writes:

I would be happy to have Israeli Trade Unionists addressing AUT Council, IF we could find a union which stood up and said it opposed the occupation.

There you go: a debate about whether or not to boycott but within parameters she has already decided upon; trade unionists but only of a certain persuasion - or, otherwise put, within limits already set by a boycotter mentality.

For alternative reading, see Jon Pike on the AUT watchwords Unity, Diversity and Strength:

[T]he AUT should never be comprehensively hostile to a particular section of its membership: it shouldn't single out people and groups and make demands upon them that it doesn't make on others who are similarly placed. That should be straightforward enough, shouldn't it? But scores of Jewish members, and others, have left the union, because it can now plausibly be described as anti-Semitic.

And see this statement by Jeffrey Ketland of the University of Edinburgh, written for The Philosophers Magazine:

This boycott is one-sided, hypocritical and counter-productive. It infringes principles of academic freedom and co-operation. It may infringe UK race relations law.