Peter Ryley of the University of Hull has sent this letter to NATFHE. I post it with his permission:
I feel I have to write as a member of the AUT, although in the past I have also been a NATFHE member and branch secretary.I am appalled by the boycott of Israeli Universities and academics. Unlike many of those who voted, I have volunteered to work with Palestinians, teaching English for a short time in a Palestinian University on the West Bank. I have experienced the occupation, I have been in refugee camps, and I have talked to all shades of opinion amongst Palestinians. I have been prepared to take personal risks, though before the extreme conditions being experienced today, to support Palestinians under occupation. I oppose the policies being pursued by the current Israeli government but I am horrified by sections of the left trying to shoehorn the conflict into their own ideological framework, one which is suspiciously close to that of the far right.
This motion is the result of a profound ignorance. The Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery, illustrates this well:
They (Israeli and Palestinian policies) were shaped by their historical narratives, by their disparate views of the conflict over the last 120 years. The Israeli national historical version and the Palestinian national historical version are entirely contradictory, both in general and in every single detail... Resolution of such a long historical conflict is possible only if each side is capable of understanding the other's spiritual-national world and willing to approach him as an equal. Therefore, the primary role of a new Israeli peace camp is to get rid of the false myths and the one-sided view of the conflict. This does not mean that the Israeli narrative should automatically be rejected and the Palestinian narrative unquestionably accepted. But it does require open-minded listening and understanding of the other position in the historical conflict, in order to bridge the two national narratives.Where is some of the best historical research taking place that challenges those myths? In ISRAELI Universities by ISRAELI historians. A boycott is the opposite of such an open-minded process; it seeks to suppress all but the Palestinian world view, as interpreted through the distorting prism of far left ideology. I will support any action that promotes academic freedom, but vehemently oppose those that attempt to suppress it. In this case, intellectual liberty is more than one of the cornerstones of the search for a settlement of the conflict but an essential part of the building of a process of truth and reconciliation between two national communities and a lasting peace.Last year I was researching the papers of the great and neglected Scottish thinker, Patrick Geddes. Using the archive at the same time was an Israeli academic. I am interested in Geddes's political ideas, but she was a geographer writing on his work on city planning. She sparkled with enthusiasm talking about the paper she was about to give in London. I would like someone to tell me how on earth stopping her introduce people to Geddes's libertarian and egalitarian ideas on the evolution of cities could in any way influence a decision to withdraw from the West Bank.
I am encouraged by the AUT statement on this motion but if it [the motion] becomes adopted by the newly merged Union, I will have to reconsider my membership.
Yours sincerely
Peter Ryley