In Britain, A Scholarly Roll of Shame

343 UK scholars have declared support for an academic boycott of Israel, taking out a full page ad in that rag of iniquity The Guardian today.

Here's the roll of shame:

No need to rush to Specsavers or search for a magnifying glass: read more on this here

Declares Joy Wolfe, the redoubtable chairperson of StandWithUs UK:

' StandWithUs UK strongly condemns the call from British academics to boycott Israel. This move does nothing to help the Palestiians and potentially damages the long standing mutually beneficial links that are so important to both the UK and Israel. We welcome the strong statement from British Ambassador David Quarrey condemning the boycott call and reaffirming the UK's anti boycott commitment. Ambassador Quarrey reiterated the importance of the significant and fruitful relationship shared by Israel and the United Kingdom.

 "The British Government firmly opposes calls to boycott Israel. We are deeply committed to promoting the UK’s academic and scientific ties with Israel, as part the flourishing partnership between the two countries," he said in a statement.

 "The reality is one of rapidly strengthening trade and tech links between Britain and Israel. As David Cameron has said, the UK Government will never allow those who want to boycott Israel to shut down 60 years worth of vibrant exchange and partnership that does so much to make both our countries stronger," he added.

 Israeli academics should look closely at the names of those signing the boycott letter and ensure they do not further the double standards of the boycotters wishing to continue personal links'.

The well-known left-leaning Zionist academic David Hirsh of Goldsmith's College, London University, who runs the Engage website, had this to say when a Guardian journalist contacted him for comment:

"The campaign to single out Israelis for exclusion from the global academic community is highly menacing.

It seeks to punish Israeli scholars for the crimes, both real and imagined, of their government in a way that is quite inconsistent with our usual attitude to fellow scholars and with our own relationships to our own governments.

We have learnt that the drive to punish Israelis brings in its wake antisemitic exclusions and antisemitic ways of thinking here on UK campuses. We have seen Jews who don't support the boycott denounced as Nazis and racists.

The boycott campaign sets up a presumption that Jewish academics are in some sense collaborators, a presumption which pressurises Jewish colleagues to keep quiet, to put on displays of political cleanliness or to stand in the dock for Israel.

The boycott campaign rejects the politics of peace, a politics in which Israeli academics have always been central. Instead it embraces the politics of silencing, the politics of war by other means, the politics of waving one national flag against the other. We ought to build links between UK universities and Palestinian and Israeli ones, not try to smash them; we ought to communicate more, not less; we ought to be for peace not for war.

We ought to support Israelis and Palestinians who stand up against racism and antisemitism, not throw them to the wolves of Hamas and the Israeli settler right.

My fear for what will happen on campus is heightened by the fact that the current Labour leader supports this kind of exclusionary politics. This will heighten the sense that many Jewish academics have, that the culture on our campuses is still deteriorating."

 Maybe it's worth revisiting Edgar Davidson's spoof on academic Israel-haters here

One ardent British Zionist comments on social media,

"An openly pro-Israel British Jewish student would surely not want any contact with these teachers."

 It's hard to disagree.