The British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) today denounced the effort by unnamed members of the University and College Union (UCU) to prevent free debate of Israel's actions in the union. The legal challenge to the UCU, said BRICUP, demonstrates the desperation and the hypocrisy of those of those who wish to defend Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine. The attack on UCU is aimed at defending the Israeli universities and colleges that are complicit in that occupation. This challenge to motion 25, which was passed overwhelmingly at UCU Congress in 2007, shows that it is not academic freedom that is the concern of four UCU members who conceal their identity but desperation to prevent any and all criticism being levelled at Israeli policy. It is not the first time that law firm Mishcon de Reya has sent threatening letters to a trade union to attempt to deflect them from democratically debated and agreed actions. Following conference decisions by the Association of University Teachers in 2005, the union received no fewer than four legal challenges.
Motion 25 falls far short of the motion that, in BRICUP opinion, would be appropriate to the circumstances. It does not call for a boycott by UCU members of those Israeli universities and colleges which fail to dissociate themselves from the occupation. That is the policy that BRICUP believes might succeed in causing the Israeli academic community to question its Government's actions.
"Motion 25 only asked members to reflect on the moral and political implications of continuing links with Israeli educational institutions and to discuss the occupation with any of their individual academic and scholarly collaborators in Israel." said Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead of BRICUP. "We maintain that critical reflection is the duty of all academics. We are amazed that anyone should seek to make free thought illegitimate.
The motion also called for an investigation of the operation of one particular college (Ariel) which is illegally situated on occupied land, and is designed to further entrench the illegal occupation of the territory. Professor Jonathan Rosenhead said, "It is a looking glass world where those seeking to end an illegal act should find themselves in the dock"
Professor Haim Bresheeth, an Israeli born academic working at the University of East London commented, "Opposition to this motion can be interpreted as little else than a determination to support an illegal occupation, and to prevent any debate or discussion of Israeli policy in the occupied territories, or of Israel's human rights record in those territories."
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