Declare Yourself an Israeli Academic!

Please sign the petition proposed by SPME:

"We are academics, scholars, researchers and professionals of differing religious and political perspectives. We all agree that singling out Israelis for an academic boycott is wrong. To show our solidarity with our Israeli academics in this matter, we, the undersigned, hereby declare ourselves to be Israeli academics for purposes of any academic boycott. We will regard ourselves as Israeli academics and decline to participate in any activity from which Israeli academics are excluded."

This is the continuation of the action SPME initiated last year, which has to do date garnered over eleven thousand signatures from around the world. The petition has now been reactivated for it would seem that we presently exist in a time warp around here where, each year, we're required to perform the very same actions all over again, such behaviour being necessitated by my 'colleagues' not giving a damn about waging an insufferable racist campaign year upon year, regardless of the damage it does, in fact, wearing their being the cause of it as a badge of honour. The good news, at least in terms of staving off the feeling of being stuck in time, is that, if you've already signed, there's no need to do so again. At least one step which doesn't have to be senselessly repeated as we fight this beast which refuses to go away...

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The story of this blog, the story of BBA, a beginning:

BBA started in life signing this petition, when it was originally proposed, roughly this time last year. It was in the act of doing so that I first applied the label 'boycotted' to myself, a label which has since come to have so much resonance in capturing my condition, as I try to sustain a job as an academic here in Boycotting Britannia.

Initially, I signed in something of a state of stupor, desperate to do something about what had come to pass. As you'll see from the links to the right, I regard signing such petitions as therapy - it was a relief to be able to do something, to lessen the feeling of powerlessness in the face of this tide of hatred whose existence I'd finally been forced to stop denying.

You know the scene: a few clicks, without much thought or planning, as one does, in that weird way of the world wide web. It was only afterwards, as I contemplated what I'd just done, that I realized how apt this act had been in terms of representing the state in which I found myself and, thus, BBA virtually entered the world.

I started thinking about what this would mean, to be boycotted in this way, according to how I'd just pledged in the petition: I asked myself which parts of me would be boycotted, how much of me - BBA going through the motions of being an academic here in the UK - how much of that would remain and how much of it would fall under the formulation "for the purposes of any academic boycott". Gradually, I grew to realize that this splitting just won't do - it's part of the denial I no longer seem to be able to engender; and it yields the sort of madness with which I am presently having to contend, just for doing this job, at this time...(to be continued)