On British moral superiority

Haaretz: By Yossi Sarid

UNISON, the trade union that represents 1.3 million workers in the United Kingdom, decided yesterday to impose an economic and cultural boycott on Israel. Britain's National Union of Journalists made a similar decision in April, and the University and College Union decided to recommend that its 120,000 members boycott our institutions of higher education [not precisely]. ...

...The ADL and the British academics have also forgotten two other countries, which over the past four years have harmed human rights and been involved in war crimes more than any others. Ladies and gentlemen, you have totally forgotten about the United States and the United Kingdom.

These upstanding nations have felled hundreds of thousands of victims in Iraq and Afghanistan; they have turned four million people into refugees who are now knocking on their locked gates; they have made suspects vanish, of whom some were dispatched to shadowy countries to be interrogated and tortured while others were sent to Guantanamo, and this week, American judges - even military judges - ruled that these were offenses that the American constitution cannot tolerate.

Granted, the Bush-Cheney administration is the one leading this black flag brigade, but the poodle follows after the bulldog. And up to now, there have been no initiatives to boycott American products or American universities. The distinguished British professors would have done well to have first disavowed any contact with their colleagues across the Atlantic; after all, America and not Israel is the leader of the Free World. It sets the example. Others watch it and follow its lead.

But why even cross the ocean, if the learned academics already live and work in a country that is a partner in crime to its bigger ally? Those who are busying themselves with boycotts and ostracism would have acted more rationally and fairly if they had first boycotted the products of their own country. If they had boycotted the institutions of higher education that employ them. If they had boycotted themselves.