At the end of April, the governing council of Britain’s Association of University Teachers, with more than 40,000 members, voted to boycott two of Israel’s major universities – Bar Ilan and Haifa. This was the culmination of a three-year campaign by a small group of obsessed and radical anti-Israel activists and the broader demonization of Israel that is prevalent in England, particularly on university campuses. After an initial effort to boycott all Israeli universities bogged down, and in what was to be the first stage of a process, Bar Ilan and Haifa were singled out as being the most vulnerable.

But this transparent strategy failed, Bar Ilan and Haifa universities proved to be highly resilient, and a massive campaign reversed the outcome in less than six weeks. As a result, a new vote was called, and the boycott was rescinded by a large majority of the AUT council, without conditions. In the process, its promoters were widely ridiculed, with pictures of one of them, Susan Blackwell (a professor of English of little note at the University of Birmingham), wrapped in a Palestinian flag providing the dominant theme.

This was an important and rare victory in the political war designed to undermine the legitimacy of Israel, and its details, as well as its lessons, deserve careful attention.

First, the implications of this academic boycott were recognized – this was not a minor incident that would soon “blow over,” but rather it was part of a concerted strategy and required a major effort to reverse the outcome. It was important to exact a high cost from those who supported the boycott, both actively and passively, in order to deter similar efforts in the future. In the process, the opponents threatened lawsuits against any academic engaging in a boycott, and were very active in writing letters and op-ed articles. For once, Israel’s attackers, who have had the public relations arena largely to themselves for decades, were placed on the defensive.

This mobilization also highlighted the major ethical implications of the effort to violate free speech in pursuit of an ideological agenda. Bar Ilan University’s campaign for academic freedom emphasized that the open exchange of ideas and search for knowledge – without political, religious, or other boundaries – has been a central pillar of civilized society for centuries. The violation of this core principle in the pursuit of the anti-Israel obsession on many college campuses was correctly understood to be a danger that went far beyond the threat to Israel.

At the same time, it was also necessary to defeat efforts to justify an academic boycott by calling Israel the new “apartheid state,” similar to South Africa, where various sanctions were employed. Indeed, the “apartheid” strategy against Israel, including the use of boycotts, was proclaimed in public at the UN’s conference against racism, held in Durban, South Africa, in September 2001. This orgy of hatred was the result of the combined efforts of many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and UN groups that exploit human rights and humanitarian claims to promote the destruction of Israel.

The Durban agenda – created by NGOs funded by the Ford Foundation, the governments of Canada (through CIDA) and Europe, and other sources – continues to promote a variety of anti-Israel boycotts. In the process, the heads of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, etc., use their money and media access to paint highly distorted images of Israeli “human rights violations,” and to promote boycotts. However, by directly confronting this great lie of Israel as a “racist state,” rational people without an ideological chip on their shoulders were able to recognize the inherent immorality of this claim.

The success of this two-track strategy – combining the emphasis on academic freedom and the rejection of efforts to demonize Israel – is an important lesson for future battles in this deadly political war. Despite the difficult conditions, we have shown the ability to mobilize massively and quickly to defeat such efforts. Indeed, this political victory is no less important than any victory on the military battlefield.