As the doors of the Arab world open to Israel, and as citizens from here become welcome guests in Arab countries, another professional association of American academics has closed its doors to Israeli research institutions.
This time it was the Association for Middle Eastern Studies, which decided, following a referendum it held among its members last month, to boycott Israel.
Like other professional associations that preceded it, the boycott decision of the American Oriental Association is deliberately worded in a deceptive and misleading way.
But if one scrapes over the decision the sweet formulations about freedom, equality and human rights, one gets to the essence very quickly.
The decision does not require Israel to reconcile with the Palestinians, or even to withdraw to the 1967 borders.
It seems that a peace agreement will not be enough either.
Instead, the association called for the lifting of the boycott by allowing Israel to make all UN resolutions on the question of Israel, most notably the decision to return the Palestinian refugees who fled the War of Independence. The boycott movement.
Unlike in the past, the decision did not attract attention in Israel and the rest of the world.
After all, this association, like its own, has long ceased to serve as the gateway for Israeli academics to the wider world.
Israeli researchers can now visit most Arab countries, and some of them - including the Emirates - are even welcome guests.
The wider world is open to Israel, and senior research institutions promote close cooperation with it, in recognition of academic excellence.
On the other hand, the professional associations calling for a boycott of Israel have long since ceased to express research and academic excellence.
They are usually controlled by a bunch of activists or activists who do as they please, taking advantage of the fact that the silent majority is not inclined to take an interest in pragmatism and politics.
It is a fact that about two-thirds of the members of the American Oriental Association did not bother to participate in the vote at all, thus clearly expressing the lack of interest they have in the mix of academic research and politics.
Many of them even terminated their membership in the association.
Among the group of activists leading the call for a boycott, most of them on the sleepy fringes of the American left, are also Arab-American scholars who have turned hatred of Israel - hatred, not criticism - into a common denominator that unites them and gives them their identity.
All of these can not agree on any issue related to the Arab world - the struggle between Sunni and Shia, between secularism and Islam, between dictatorship and democracy - and therefore Israel is the ax to dig with in search of their lost identity.
In fact, when they attack Israel, they mean the United States, where they see the source of all evil in the Arab world. But because the American taxpayer finances their salary, it is more convenient for them to point the arrows at Israel.
But in the face of any boycott decision by such a group of activists and activists, dozens of agreements are signed for scientific and academic cooperation between institutions around the world and Israeli institutions, and more and more countries around the world and the US are enacting anti-boycott laws.
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