As a follow up to yesterdays posting, I want to clarify that I brought Tanya Reinhardt article because it cogently rebuts those who claim that the people behind the boycott are at best one-sided and at worst anti-semitic. However, personally I oppose most boycotts unless they are very wisely targeted. For the most part, they usually end up hurting the innocent more than the guilty. And as Baruch Kimmerling explains, the boycott of academic insitutions is particularly problematic.
“My friend Elia Zureik suggested that the boycott should be only institutional but not personal. Very kindly and generously, he has offered to cooperate with me, (presuming I’m on his personal list of “good guys”) but to boycott my institution, the Hebrew University. Self-evidently it is his right to boycott every institution or person he want to, but he must realize that if his call to freeze funds to my institution is effective, the resulting constraints on research and conferences will also hurt “good guys” like me. Moreover, the very idea of making selections among members of the academy is a horrifying idea and I hereby pledge not to cooperate with any institution or person who will make such selections, even if I myself am ruled acceptable by them. Selections made on the basis of non-academic criteria endanger academic freedom.”
In general, the principal of direct action should be to lessen damage and increase positive behavior. The academic boycott does not meet either of these criterion. By contrast, I fully suport efforts such as those directed at getting Caterpillar corporation not to sell bulldozers to Israel. The purpose here is to get a corporation to take responsibility for the immoral use of its products. Put another way, if no one sold these bulldozers to Israel less damage could be inflicted on Palestinians by the Israeli army, while no Israelis would be harmed. If everyone boycotted Israel’s academic institutions, severe damage would result to whatever remains of Israeli democracy.
For similar reasons I support efforts to get the U.S. to cut back on its military and economic aid to Israel. Since money is fungible, Israel uses American aid to fund the settlement project. Without American aid, Israeli governments would have to make much tougher choices between providing legitimate government services or investing in the settlements infrastructure. Had US aid been cut back all along, the true cost of the settlement project would have been more obvious to the Israeli public.
In fact, in most cases I oppose aid to governments, which invariably is used to bolster authoritarian institutions or is siphoned off by corrupt politicians. Aid should be used for humanitarian projects and direct economic development.