Last week, I mentioned this article in The Guardian called "British Academic Boycott of Israel Gathers Pace" by Andy Beckett and Ewen MacAskill. (Note: heated discussion on this topic over at LGF.)
Now it's come to my attention that The Guardian also published a very different story on the same subject on the same day, also authored by Mr. Beckett. It's called " 'It's water on stone - in the end the stone wears out'," and it contains quite a bit more background on the "boycott," Dr. Yiftachel and some other things. So he signed it anyway. Shortly afterwards, a French translation of the petition began circulating, which was significantly more aggressive than the original, with Blakemore and the other initial signatories' names attached. "I found myself being sucked in," he says. Over the summer, although he still had links with Israeli academia Blakemore found himself facing a public campaign. He was, and is, president of the Physiological Society. Without naming him, a motion was proposed by a Jewish member for the society's annual general meeting stating that, by supporting the boycott, Blakemore was breaking an important international convention on academic freedom, statute five of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). Since the 30s, the Physiological Society and other ICSU members had agreed to behave "without any discrimination on the basis of... citizenship, religion, creed, political stance, ethnic origin, race, colour, language, age or sex". For many opponents of the academic boycott, this is a clinching argument.Colin Blakemore's experience since he signed the Roses' petition has been more bruising. "I was contacted by Steven just two days before it was submitted," he says. "I was a bit hesitant about signing, because I saw a lack of balance. I asked for a sentence condemning Palestinian terrorism. But there was not enough time - the letter was about to be sent out."
This article is quite skeptical about the so-called "pace" of the boycott. Why The Guardian chose to publish two such very different articles on the same topic by the same author on the same day is a mystery to me. But I certainly don't pretend to understand The Guardian's motivations.
