The UCU wants to dump the EUMC definition of anti-Semitism, which says (among other things) that the use of double standards to criticize Israel, and the use of mendacious, dehumanizing, or stereotypical charges against Jews as a collective, including but not limited to stereotypes such as the myth of Jewish power in controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions, could be anti-Semitic, as could the drawing of comparisons between contemporary Israeli policy and that of the Nazis.
Now there are three, and only three, possibilities with respect to anti-Semitism for allegations such as are mentioned in the EU definition. The first possibility is that all such allegations against Jews are invariably anti-Semitic. The second possibility is that all such allegations may be anti-Semitic – i.e. sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren't. The third possibility is that such allegations are never anti-Semitic. The EUMC account of anti-Semitism goes for the second possibility: such charges may be anti-Semitic (or they may not, depending on context). That's what the UCU Executive wants to deny.
So what is it that the UCU Executive believes about such allegations? We can be sure that it doesn't accept the first possibility, that such allegations are bound to be anti-Semitic. If it believed that, it would be calling for the EU definition of anti-Semitism to be strengthened, not abandoned, and it would (assuming that it objects to anti-Semitism) be disciplining any pro-boycott activists who made allegations of that kind. Nor does the Union accept the second possibility: this is exactly what it's seeking to reject in Motion 70 at the forthcoming Congress. So we're left with the third possibility, that such allegations are never anti-Semitic, that they just can't be. This is what the UCU executive appears to believe. And in fact we've got good reason to think that that is indeed what they believe, since a year or two back it declared that criticism of Israel can't be anti-Semitic.
Here we have the academic union wanting to declare that presenting Jews as malignant forces of sinister power, controlling the media and the economy and the government, can't be anti-Semitic. That the assertion that the population of Gaza (around one and a half million and rising) is in the same position as the population of the Warsaw Ghetto (around half a million falling to virtually zero after three years, as part of a deliberate genocide) just can't involve any prejudice against Jews. That singling out Jews, and the Jewish state, for condemnation and punishment alone among the nations, just can't be anti-Semitic. That's what the EU definition denies, and that's what the UCU believes, since they have rejected the only alternatives.
The above argument is an exercise in elementary logic. Academics are supposed to know about such things. That the academics who comprise the UCU executive are nonetheless determined to endorse such terrible beliefs is why I think it's time for Jews to leave the Union. (Eve Garrard)