HOSTILITY to Jewish students at British universities could escalate this week with moves by academics to boycott Israeli goods and set up links with Palestinian organisations. Luciana Berger, 23, a close friend of Euan Blair, the prime minister's son, described last week how she had been forced to resign from the executive committee of the National Union of Students (NUS) after being abused and spat at by left-wing undergraduates and Muslim activists because she is Jewish. This week anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian motions will be submitted for debate at the annual conference of the 48,000-strong Association of University Teachers (AUT). A similar motion was defeated by a vote of 2-1 two years ago. But other motions, including one deploring a "witch-hunt" against people who supported the boycott, were passed. There are fears that a "yes" vote at the conference in Eastbourne will increase tension on campuses. The move to sever links with Israeli universities and support Palestinian academics comes from branches of the union at Birmingham University and the Open University. Sue Blackwell, a lecturer in English at Birmingham and a leading member of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine, said it was not possible to have links with both Israel and the Palestinians. "We cannot appeal equally to the oppressor and the oppressed, the occupier and the occupied," she said. "Palestinian academics are repeatedly prevented from doing their work. Israeli forces have welded shut the gates to one Palestine university and dug a trench around another. Jewish students should not be intimidated in Britain, but it's not anti-semitic to criticise what the state of Israel is doing."
One of her allies is Mona Baker, professor of translation studies at Manchester University, who was the subject of an inquiry in 2002 after she dismissed two Israeli academics she had employed from the journals she published.
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