Fellow Labour MP John Mann, and chair of the Parliamentary Committee against Anti-Semitism, added: "This is a total distraction from what the Union should be doing, which is looking after the working conditions and rights of its members. It is in danger of placing itself in the tiny margins of British society - which is not in anyone's interests, least of all Palestinian trade unionists. What is needed is more dialogue, not less."
Palestinians wait at an IDF checkpoint.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski [file]
Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith called the UCU vote "a pathetic attempt by politically motivated people to destroy the balanced ethos on university campuses and use their privileged position to further their own ends. Every right-minded person should condemn it."
Liberal Democrat MP Chris Huhne added, "Curbing basic freedoms such as the freedom of inquiry and research would be wholly counterproductive in putting pressure on Israel to change its policies... This boycott is misconceived and should be dropped."
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) also called the boycott "immoral and antithetical to academic principles."
Edward Beck, president of SPME, said in a statement that "the British have separated themselves - not the Israelis - from the global academic community which firmly condemns academic boycotts for moral, ethical and intellectual reasons, frequently acknowledging that academics are active in trying to solve problems and not create additional ones."
The Board of Deputies of British Jews called the boycott motion an attack on academic exchange which undermines the values of equality and freedom that ought to be fundamental to all British academic institutions.
"It is clear," added Ronnie Fraser, director of the Academic Friends of Israel, "that the union has ignored the words of Dr. Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al-Quds University, who wrote that an international academic boycott of Israel, on pro-Palestinian grounds, is self-defeating - as it would only succeed in weakening that strategically important bridge through which the state of war between Israelis and Palestinians could be ended, and Palestinian rights could there for be restored."
In the United States, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League all condemned the vote as well.
