Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz August 2014
Vice-Chancellor's Office
University of Cambridge
Presidents Cambridge University Israel Society
c.c. Miss Hoogewerf-McComb (President CUSU)
Vice-Chancellor's Office
University of Cambridge
Dear Vice Chancellor
We write this open letter on behalf of the Cambridge University Israel
Society. After several years of dormancy, the society was revived with the
purpose of celebrating the rich cultural diversity that exists in Israel and
building bridges between Israeli and Palestinian students. It is devoted to
promoting a discussion that includes all opinions.
As we are sure you are by now aware, the Executive Council of the
National Union of Students (NUS) recently took the appalling decision to align
with the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement and urged its membership
to follow suit. We in turn urge you to do the opposite.
BDS is a movement which offers no cooperative solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict and serves only to undermine Israel's right to exist. The decision by NUS to politicise itself by endorsing BDS is a betrayal of its core commitment to student welfare. The Cambridge University Society is profoundly disturbed at the prospect of such a divisive and inflammatory movement infecting our university and is deeply concerned about the impact his would have on Israeli and Jewish students.
The poisonous effects are self evident. Accessing Kosher food,
involvement in Israeli and Jewish Societies and simply expressing a viewpoint
become dangerous activities with the arrival of this indiscriminate and hateful
campaign. The descent into violence that much of Europe has demonstrated in the
past few weeks, including the burning of a Synagogue, reveals how dangerously
porous the line between “anti-Zionism” and anti-Semitism is. To have a campaign
of hostility endorsed by the very student body which is meant to protect the
welfare of religious and national minorities is totally unacceptable and must
be condemned.
It is squarely contrary to student welfare to have our voices crushed
and our identities smeared by virtue of our passport or religious affiliation.
The viability of our own university society will immediately be put in jeopardy
and the cross-communal engagement which we so treasure cannot happen in the
shadow of a boycott campaign.
It will be a sad day when our campus turns its back on such a vibrant
Israeli community within our student and teaching body. It will be an even
sadder day when this is perpetrated in the
name of peace. The idea that progress can be made by the discriminatory
intolerance of others is one which must not be tolerated.
At a time when leaders on both sides of the
conflict sit down and discuss the future, a movement like BDS, which suppresses
dialogue and rejects co-existence, should be wholeheartedly rejected not
embraced.
The Cambridge University Israel Society
emphatically rejects this decision and implores you to publically do the same.
The Cambridge University Student Union can never comply with this motion.
Yours sincerely,
Joshua Gertner and Aviv Fonea,
Presidents Cambridge University Israel Society
c.c. Miss Hoogewerf-McComb (President CUSU)
