Is it OK to stage an academic boycott on broadly human rights grounds but targeted against one country only and its universities and academics? According to Matt Hill at the New Statesman, it is. But then again he also thinks it isn't in the particular case to hand, namely Israel. He delivers an object lesson in how to swallow your own reasoning with the reasoning that follows it.
The occasion for Hill's piece is Stephen Hawking's much-publicized decision not to attend a conference in Israel, and he begins by making it clear that his opposition to this decision isn't based on 'the usual argument trotted out' by those opposed to boycotting Israel. For him that's what we boycott-opponents do with arguments: we trot them out; as we also, apparently, throw words around. But in any event, Hill writes:
Partisans of Israel often charge BDS with inconsistency, claiming it's hypocritical to single out Israel and not other countries who abuse human rights. But this won't wash. When it comes to moral acts, the question isn't whether we are consistent but whether we have a chance of achieving some good. When activists led a boycott of South Africa during the apartheid years, they didn't wait until their movement could boast a consistent platform on every conceivable issue.
Hill is right about this for the cases to which it applies; but he's wrong about it for the particular case to which he applies it. You don't have to refrain from doing some good just because you can't do all the possible good there is to do. It would be a strange and useless counsel to someone not to donate to one or two worthwhile charities unless they could donate to all of them. And it isn't a sensible norm of international politics for a country to desist from a feasible humanitarian intervention that might save many lives in circumstances where it could only afford to undertake one such intervention though more than one was needed. But boycotting the academics of other countries on putatively human rights grounds isn't like either of these cases. (See this earlier post of mine.)
Not visiting other places to attend a conference and not inviting academics from those places are both generalizable negative activities that do not impose costs on those who undertake them; to an academic boycott of Israel could easily be added boycotts of Iran, China, Syria, Zimbabwe, Sudan, etc, without this stretching the means of the intending boycotters. Fewer places to visit; fewer visitors to entertain, accommodate and, crucially, talk and listen to. So Hill's argument against what opponents of the academic boycott 'trot out' is busted - busted in its own right.
Yet, he doesn't leave it there; because he goes on to recognize that one of words we boycott opponents 'throw around' actually has some merit:
Israel's supporters claim that the BDS movement has little to do with the occupation, peace, and government policy, and is instead intended to bring into question the Jewish state's right to exist.
It's true that Israel's supporters throw the word 'delegitimisation' around to portray fair-minded criticism of Israel as invidious and sinister. But when it comes to BDS, the fact is that they have a point. The BDS movement doesn't have a single leadership with stated goals, but most of the biggest groups within it make little secret of their preferred outcome to the conflict. Instead of a two-state solution, they support a single, Palestinian-majority state that would mean the end of Israel's existence.
Hallelujah the Hill, to coin a phrase. The focus on Israel as a target of boycott is not, then, merely a matter of trying to do some good where you can. There's something about that country that makes certain types of people itchy for denunciation and for punitive action against its academics.