The UK Higher Education minister is in Israel this weekend to apologise for last weeks decision by British university lecturers to join the international boycott of Israeli academia.
Bill Rammell's will visit Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories and talk to academics on both sides.
Last week the University and College Union voted to boycott Israeli academic institution for what it called the "complicity of Israeli academia" in Israel's 40-year occupation that has "seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective punishment and restriction of movement."
"The UK government fully supports academic freedom and is firmly against any academic boycotts of Israel or Israeli academics," a spokeswoman for the Department for Education and Skills said. "Whilst the government appreciates the independence of the UCU, it is very disappointed that the union has decided to pass a motion which encourages its members to consider boycotting Israeli academics and education institutions."
But the UCU motion noted that Israel denies educational rights to Palestinians by invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests of teachers, lecturers and students.
"The British government profoundly believes this does nothing to promote the Middle East peace process," the DfES spokeswoman added. "In fact the reverse."
The Jewish lobby group Anti-Defemation League denounced the boycott as as "biased, unfair and destructive."
"These outrageous initiatives sully the character and devalue the reputation of all British academics by clearly violating basic standards of academic freedom and by holding Israel and its academic community – the only one in the Middle East where scholarship and debate are permitted to freely flourish - to a different standard than any other country in the world," the ADL stated.
But the UCU motion stated that "criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic."
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