The decision by Britain's 40,000 member Association of University Teachers (AUT) to boycott two Israeli universities on Friday has ignited scathing condemnation from Jewish communities worldwide and has prompted the immediate resignation of Jewish academics from the AUT.

In a blitz procedure timed - on the eve of Passover - to exclude Jewish members from the conference, the AUT rushed through two motions to boycott Haifa and Bar Ilan universities, exhibiting an unprecedented escalation of a campaign by British academics to target Israel.

In her allegations against the Israeli institutions, Ms. Blackwell relied heavily on a letter by Ilan Pappe, lecturer in political science at Haifa University. A message from Dr. Pappe was distributed to every executive member at the conference, in which Pappe called on the conference to adopt a boycott of his own university, and alleged he was the victim of "restriction" and "harassment."

The speeches were met with rapturous applause from the audience, before AUT executive president Angela Roger cut short the session and moved to deny a right of reply to opponents of the motions. The session was then directed towards a vote, and a "lack of time" was cited as the reason preventing challenges to the motions from being heard...

Michael Segal, Boston, USA: The Israeli universities should issue adjunct professorships to a large number of prominent academics who would then inform the British of their association and thus be boycotted.

Ariel Lab, Simcha Monica [Heh], California, USA: When Jews sit on their hands and make excuses for decades and when the Jewish media prides itself on being liberal enough to criticize their country as if it where just another western democracy, this is the result.

Maybe now British Jews will care less about what is socially appropriate and more about virulent anti-Semitism.

Maybe now the middle left in Israel will comprehend that Jews on the right are better friends than Europeans on the left, but they just don't seem to comprehend the reality.

The initiators of this action are amongst the most prejudiced, most manipulative and most hypocritical examples of the dishonest extremist left.