Call for US academic boycott!

Something really is stirring in the USA, see this:

CALL to JOIN

The U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

Mission Statement:

Responding to the call of Palestinian civil society to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement against Israel, we are a U.S. campaign focused specifically on a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, as delineated by PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel):

In Ha'aretz they're crapping themselves:

"The response has been remarkable given the extraordinary hold that lobbying organizations like AIPAC exert over U.S. politics and over the U.S. media, and in particular given the campaign of intimidation that has been leveled at academics who dare to criticize Israel's policies," Lloyd wrote in an e-mail to Haaretz Monday. "Within a short weekend since the posting of the press release, more than 80 academics from all over the country have endorsed the action and the numbers continue to grow."

Gerald Steinberg, the American-educated chair of Bar Ilan University's political studies department puts it down to lack of Hasbara preparation:

"The government and the universities have completely neglected not just the academic boycott but in general this kind of soft war," he said. "The military prepared to go into Gaza for two and half years. But in terms of the boycott movement, both the ministry of education and the foreign ministry - which had pledged support for the existing anti-boycott frameworks - completely failed to prepare their own portfolios for this."

Two images spring to mind: Alan Dershowitz frothing at the mouth and Mad Mel Flips suffering a breakdown, now that some of the last "defenders of the Free World" are succumbing to the barbarians at the gates...

Right now, any publicity is good publicity.