Academic Friends of Israel

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The Academic Friends of Israel (AFI) is a pressure group formed in 2002 to fight the academic boycott of Israel. According to its website, it works closely with the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Union for Jewish students. [1] It was incorporated as a limited company in November 2004. 

The activities of AFI have mostly focused on the UK academic trade union's attitude towards Israel and on the general boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

People

Principals

Advisory Board

Despite the existence of an Advisory Board, AFI seemingly operates essentially as a one-man operation. The website does not disclose the number of members. In its ruling, an employment tribunal stated that:

The Claimant does much of his campaigning through the ‘Academic Friends of Israel’ (‘AFI’), an impressively-presented organisation with a PO Box address, a mission statement and a letterhead showing its patron as the Chief Rabbi and its advisory board as comprising a list of dignitaries including the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Despite appearances, as the Claimant engagingly told us, AFI consists of him, his wife and a computer. Like any experienced political activist, he is alive to the PR benefits of disseminating his own views in such a way as to seem to be speaking for a significant number of others. [3]

Ronnie Fraser

Founder and President of AIA, Ronnie Fraser was born in the United Kingdom in 1947, the child of Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi Germany in 1939. [4] Since 2001 he has pursued a career as a teacher of mathematics in colleges of higher education, including Barnet College. He has written several papers on the attitudes and policies of the British trade unions, the Left, and the Trades Union Congress toward Israel. He joined the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) in 1998 and became a member of the University and College Union (UCU) in 2006.

In March 2013, Fraser lost a case against UCU in which he claimed that it was institutionally anti-Semitic because it has passed motions that called for discussions on the Palestinian call to boycott Israeli universities.

Manfred Gerstenfeld

Gerstenfeld (born in 1937) is former Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, where he founded and directed the Centre’s Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism program. [5] He is the author of many books including Revaluing Italy; Environment and Confusion; Israel's New Future Interviews; Judaism, Environmentalism and the Environment; and The Environment in the Jewish Tradition-A Sustainable World. His latest book, Europe's Crumbling Myth,s exposes the origins of post-Holocaust anti-Semitism.

In an interview with the website ‘IsraelSeen.com’, Gerstenfield stated that 'by far the worst of the huge hate-mongering against Israel comes out of large parts of the Muslim-controlled world. This hatred has no limits in its sickness.' [6] In the same interview he also claimed that the BDS movement as a sensor of what is rotten in the university world. [7]

Henry Grunwald

Grunwald is the former President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and previously chair of the Jewish Leadership Council. After the conclusion of his second term as President he was appointed the President of World Jewish Relief. [8]

John Levy

Levy spent nearly a year as a social worker in South London, before joining the Zionist Federation, in 1970. John is the Executive Director of The Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East, and the Friends of Israel Educational Foundation. [9]

Andrew R. Marks

A research scientist at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (New York), Marks is Chair of the Department of Cellular Physiology and Biophysics and Director of the Clyde and Helen Wu Center for Molecular Cardiology. [10] Marks founded the International Academic Friends of Israel in 2001, an organization that supports scientific conferences and sessions in the country, mostly by organizing events and subsidizing travel fees for foreign speakers.

Robin Stamler

Stamler contributed to the 2009 BBC Watch report 'Jeremy Bowen and the Gaza Conflict'.  BBC Watch is a sister project to CiF Watch (established in 2009 to monitor the Guardian newspaper’s ‘Comment is Free’ website). In the report, Stamler is described in the report as ‘a research scientist and doctor’. [11]

Prof. Leslie Wagner

Wagner is vice-chairman of the JCPA’s Institute for Global Jewish Affairs in Jerusalem. Among the posts he has held are chancellor of the University of Derby in the UK, and prior to that vice-chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University and the University of North London. [12] In 2010 he published an article for the Jewish Political Studies Review on ‘pro-Israeli academic watchers’ in which the activities of the AFI were analysed. [13]

Activities

Trade Unions

When the AFI was formed in 2002, in the UK there were two academic trade unions, the Association of University Teachers (AUT) and the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE). The two unions joined forces on 1 June 2006 and form the University and College Union (UCU).

The AUT discussed motions calling for an academic boycott of Israel in 2003 and 2005. The 2005 motion was effectively in force for one month before it was overturned by a specially convened AUT Council meeting. Fraser wrote in detail about the boycott attempts of the AUT in an article titled ‘The Academic Boycott of Israel: Why Britain?’ which was published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a think tank formed by Dore Gold, an adviser of former Israeli prime minister and accused war criminal Ariel Sharon. [14]

On the last day of its conference in 2006, NATFHE passed the symbolic motion 198C which invited their members to consider boycotting Israeli academic under certain circumstances. [15] The AFI was a signatory to an open letter to members of the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) explaining why the academic boycott was wrong. [16] This motion was in force for only two days before NAFTHE and the AUT merged into the UCU.

On 30 May 2007, UCU voted in favour of Motion 30, which called for UCU to circulate a boycott request by Palestinian trade unions to all branches for information and discussion and ‘encourage members to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions’. [17] AFI campaigned extensively against this motion. It supported the ‘Stop the Boycott’ campaign launched by the Broad of Deputies of British Jews. AFI also promoted the Scholars for Peace in The Middle East (SPME) call to academics to ‘declare themselves to be Israeli academics for purposes of any academic boycott and to decline to participate in any activity from which Israeli academics are excluded.’ [18]

On 28 September 2007, Britain’s University and College Union (UCU) announced that, based on legal advice, an academic boycott of Israel could not be implemented. The advice stated that ‘It would be beyond the union's powers and unlawful for the union, directly or indirectly, to call for, or to implement, a boycott by the union and its members of any kind of Israeli universities and other academic institutions; and that the use of union funds directly or indirectly to further such a boycott would also be unlawful.' [19]

The Wilkie's Affair

In 2003, Andrew Wilkie, professor of pathology at Oxford University, rejected an application for a research position in his laboratory by Amit Duvshani. Wilkie explained that he rejected the student because he had served in the Israeli army and because Wilkie 'had a huge problem with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because they [the Palestinians] wish to live in their own country.' [20]

On Friday 27th June 2003, Ronnie Fraser contacted the Sunday Telegraph about the story and in the evening of the same day the University issued a press statement condemning Wilkie's actions and announced an investigation into the matter. [21] On the 27th October the University decided to suspend Wilkie for two months without pay and required him to undertake equal opportunities training. [22] Ronnie Fraser described the penalty imposed by the University as 'an event unparalleled in Israel activism'.[23]

Submission to the All-Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism

In December 2005 AFI sent a submission to the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Anti-Semitism, an inquiry commissioned by the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Anti-Semitism chaired by John Mann, a Labour MP. John Mann also gave evidence in the 2013 case that Fraser bought against the UCU. [24] One of the conclusions of the submission was that 'attempts to silence debate by portraying supporters of Israel’s right to exist as racist, fascist or evil is intimidating and frightening.' [25]

  1. ↑ Academic Friends of Israel, http://www.academics-for-israel.org/index.php?page=about%20us, accessed 15 February 2014
  2. ↑ PDF of <http://www.academics-for-israel.org/index.php?page=about us> created 19 March 2010
  3. ↑ Claimant and Respondents Mr R Fraser University & College Union JUDGMENT OF THE EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAl, judiciary.gov.uk, 22 March 2013, p.20
  4. ↑ Claimant and Respondents Mr R Fraser University & College Union JUDGMENT OF THE EMPLOYMENT TRIBUNAl, judiciary.gov.uk, 22 March 2013, p.2
  5. ↑ http://jcpa.org/book/europes-crubling-myths/ accessed 21 February 2014
  6. ↑ Manfred Gerstenfeld, Demonizing Israel and the Jews , http://israelseen.com/2013/10/30/demonizing-israel-and the-jews-by-dr-manfred-gerstenfeld/, October 30 2013 accessed 21 February 2014
  7. ↑ Ibid.
  8. ↑ https://www.wjr.org.uk/news/496-wjr-announces-first-president accessed 21 February 2014
  9. ↑ Friends of Israel Educational Foundation, http://www.foi-asg.org/reference/profile-john-levy.pdf accessed 22 February 2014
  10. ↑ PNAS, http://www.pnas.org/content/103/24/8915.full accessed 21 February 2014
  11. ↑ BBC Watch, ‘Jeremy Bowen and the Gaza Conflict’, http://bbcwatch.org/jeremy-bowen-and-the-gaza-conflict/. accessed 22 February 2014
  12. ↑ Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, http://jcpa.org/researcher/prof-leslie-wagner/#sthash.MIekk4vS.dpuf http://jcpa.org/researcher/prof-leslie-wagner/, accessed 23 February 2014
  13. ↑ Leslie Wagner, ‘Watching the Pro-Israeli Academic Watchers’, Jewish Political Studies Review Vol.23 No.12
  14. ↑ Ronnie Fraser, ‘The Academic Boycott of Israel: A Review of the Five-Year UK Campaign to Defeat’, ://jcpa.org/article/the-academic-boycott-of-israel-a-review-of-the-five-year-uk-campaign-to-defeat-it/#sthash.MAtCtB2E.dpuf, March 2 2008, accessed 14 February 2014
  15. ↑ AUT, ‘UCU - University and College Union - NATFHE motion on proposed boycott of Israeli academics – an AUT statement’, 2006, accessed 15 February 2014
  16. ↑ Academic Friends of Israel, http://www.academics-for-israel.org/index.php?page=v5n10, accessed 15 February 2014
  17. ↑ UCU, CIRCULAR UCU/34, http://www.ucu.org.uk/circ/html/ucu34.html, 7 August 2007, accessed 15 Febary 2014
  18. ↑ Academic Friends of Israel, http://www.academics-for-israel.org/index.php?page=v6n1110 June 2007, accessed 15 February 2014
  19. ↑ UCU, ‘Israel boycott illegal and cannot be implemented, UCU tells members’, http://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=2829 , 28 September 2007, accessed 15 February 2014
  20. ↑ Luke Layfield, ‘Oxford 'appalled' as professor inflames boycott row’, http://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/jul/04/highereducation.internationaleducationnews, 4 July 2003, accessed 15 February 2014
  21. ↑ Academic Friends of Israel, http://www.academics-for-israel.org/index.php?page=dw4, accessed 15 February 2014
  22. ↑ Academic Friends of Israel, http://www.academics-for-israel.org/index.php?page=dw6, accessed 15 February 2014
  23. ↑ Academic Friends of Israel, http://www.academics-for-israel.org/index.php?page=Documents, accessed 16 February 2014
  24. ↑ The Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/03/28/ronnie-fraser-ucuc-antisemitic-israel-palestine-tribunal_n_2971925.html, 28 March 2013, accessed 16 February 2014
  25. ↑ Academic Friends of Israel, ‘Submission to Parliamentary anti-Semitism inquiry’, 2006
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