Madam, - There are many fallacies in John Harpur's letter on the UK Association of University Teachers' boycott motion against two Israeli universities (May 19th).
The near impossibility "to raise rational arguments in defence of Israel" is apparently "due to an embedded anti-Semitism in European intellectual culture", an assertion frequently made by Israel's defenders but never backed with evidence.
A more dispassionate appraisal might conclude that the absence of rational arguments is due to the indefensible nature of the illegal Israeli occupation itself, a factor Mr Harpur neglects to mention.
Even if it were true that Israel "is the only reasonably functioning democracy" in the Middle East, this would have no bearing on the two specific issues cited by the AUT: Haifa University's persecution of world-famous historian Illan Pappe, and Bar Ilan University's links to a college in the illegal settlement of Ariel.
There are indeed "political movements in Israel that profoundly object to the political privations imposed on the Palestinian population" (note again the omission of the word "occupation"), but Mr Harpur omits to mention that many of these movements support the academic boycott he rejects.
The AUT boycott is one component in a global campaign by civil society to isolate the state of Israel until it abides with international law.
This campaign is necessary because our governments have abdicated their responsibility to ensure the implementation of successive UN resolutions condemning the Israeli policies of occupation and colonisation, and the building of what has become known as the Apartheid Wall.
Finally, it is the Jewish people "that has suffered so much indignity historically" and not the state of Israel, which has done nothing but impose such indignity on others. - Yours, etc,
RAYMOND DEANE, Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Dublin 1.