Lecturers' Union Boycotts 'Apartheid' Israel
******************************************************

Courtesy Of: The Independent
By Richard Garner,
Education Editor
30 May 2006

Britain's biggest lecturers' union has backed a call for a boycott of Israeli universities in protest at its governments "Apartheid" policies towards Palestine.

Delegates at the annual conference of the 69,000-strong NATFHE, the University and College Lecturers' Union, voted to urge all their members to consider boycotting all Israeli institutions and academics who did not publicly dissociate themselves from their government's policies.

...Tom Hickey, a philosophy lecturer from Brighton University proposing the motion, said there were "important and ringing similarities" between the policies of the Israeli government and the Apartheid regime in South Africa.

An exclusion wall had been built in Palestine to separate the communities, which led to unequal development for the two.

"We are asking our members to consider should we or should we not work with Israeli institutions or individuals who turn away from what is happening in Palestine," he said.

One Israeli school had been fired on in the past six years, but the number of Palestinian schools targeted was 185, he said.

In addition, 14,400 Palestinian homes had been partly destroyed and 2,200 totally destroyed.

"Silence," as Edmund Burke once so memorably observed, "is all that's needed for evil to be done," Mr Hickey added.


To read complete article:
http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article621776.ece