Wiesenthal Center: UK boycott redolent of Nazi campaign
Jewish human rights organization sends letter to British Education Department saying boycotting of Israeli universities ‘a propaganda instrument of the PNGO - a network of Palestinian NGOs that includes groups associated with the European Union blacklisted terrorist organization Hamas, and those which glorify suicide terrorism’
Addressing British Secretary of State for Education, Alan Johnson, and Universities UK President Drummond Bone, the Simon Wiesenthal Centers Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, called for their action against the British academic boycott of Israeli universities.
“The ongoing campaign, last year at the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and this year at the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) to incite to a British academic boycott of Israeli universities - is redolent of the Nazi 1930's 'Kaufen Nicht Bei Juden' boycott of Jewish professionals and enterprises,” Samuels said in a letter to the British officials.
'An instrument of anti-Semitism'
“Though led by the so-called ‘British Committee for Universities in Palestine’, the campaign is a propaganda instrument of the PNGO - a network of Palestinian NGOs that includes groups associated with the European Union blacklisted terrorist organization Hamas, and those which glorify suicide terrorism, as perpetrated last July in London."
The letter stressed that "this boycott will not only be a disservice to the British taxpayer whose monies you administer. It will contravene British obligations under Article 13 of the EU's Treaty of Amsterdam that forbids all discrimination,” adding that "the fact that the Israeli victims of this boycott will, in the main, be Jewish, is, ipso facto, an instrument of anti-Semitism. Furthermore, this campaign violates British Middle East policy by reinforcing those elements that reject any hope for a peaceful settlement."
The Center called on both the Education Department and Universities UK "to ensure that any university, college, or other academic institution, including their departments or faculty, which subscribes to such a boycott, will be barred from your funding or grant recipients list until this collaboration with the boycott is publicly revoked."
