By JONNY PAUL, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT IN LONDON
The largest academic trade union in the UK has been accused of "ethnically cleansing" itself of Israel supporters and Jews after repeating its 2007 call for a boycott of Israeli academia at its annual conference in Bournemouth last week.
The University College Union (UCU), the UK's largest trade union for academics, lecturers and researchers, passed a motion calling to discuss, at branches of the union across the country, a boycott call of Israeli academia.
Defying a warning from the union's leadership that they would render a boycott call void if it carried, a small number of fringe members in the union managed to push through a motion in support of a call to discuss a boycott.
"The boycott and sanctions call makes life very uncomfortable on campus for Jewish and Israeli students and lecturers," said Ronnie Fraser, chair of the Academic Friends of Israel, who attended the conference.
"Whereas in 2007 there was a proper debate about boycotting Israel, this year it was not a debate but a procession of speakers one after the other demonizing Israel and their actions in Gaza.
This was because over the last two years the Socialist Workers Party has ethnically cleansed Congress of any Jewish or Zionist opposition to their racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic policies." http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1243872309115&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull