Israel slams 'repulsive' British academic boycott

Education Minister Yuli Tamir said Monday that the decision by members of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) at their annual conference in Blackpool, northern England, would only serve to undermine academic independence.

"The decision to boycott the academic institutions is deplorable and repulsive," said Tamir in a statement.

"Whoever applies this boycott will harm academia's independence and turn it into a tool in the hands of political forces," she added.

The NATFHE vote was also criticised by the British government as a counterproductive move.

"We believe that such academic boycotts are counterproductive and retrograde," said junior foreign minister Lord David Triesman in a statement issued by the British embassy in Tel Aviv.

"Far more can be obtained through dialogue and academic cooperation."

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which campaigns against global anti-Semitism, called on the British government to halt grants to any academic institution which takes part in the boycott.

"The fact that the Israeli victims of this boycott will, in the main, be Jewish, is, ipso facto, an instrument of anti-Semitism," the centre's director for international relations, Shimon Samuels, said in a statement addressed to London's Education Minister Alan Johnson.

"Furthermore, this campaign violates British Middle East policy by reinforcing those elements who reject any hope for a peaceful settlement."

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