The dangerous repercussions of this silly spat among academics

Something distinctly chilling is happening in parts of British academic life. Until this week, a mere handful of people in either this country or Israel will have heard of two learned journals called Translator and Translation Studies Abstracts, published by a professor at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (Umist). Indeed, neither circulations exceeds 1,000. But they are now central to an extraordinary manifestation of prejudice and political correctness which, it's not too much to say, risks helping to undermine the cause of attacking the policies of Ariel Sharon's Likud government just when the cause is at its most legitimate. It should not be obscured by the far more comprehensible outcry in London yesterday over the supply of British components for the US-built F16s ordered by the Israeli armed forces.

The facts are fairly straightforward. Mona Baker, a professor of translation studies at Umist who runs the journals, was, along with some other eminent academics, including Richard Dawkins, Colin Blakemore and Steven Rose, one of a 700- strong international list of signatories to a petition last April calling for a moratorium on EU funding for Israeli academic research. The signatories have said that they can no longer "in good conscience" co-operate with Israeli institutions, including universities.

No doubt acting in accordance with this cold logic, Professor Baker sacked from the journals' boards two Israeli academics. As it happens, they were far from being Sharon supporters. Indeed, one of the academics, Dr Miriam Schlesinger, a former Amnesty International chair in Israel, is a member of a multi-ethnic group that has been defying the security forces by supplying Palestinian towns in the West Bank. But in one of her dismissal letters, Professor Baker explained that her decision was "political and not personal" and that she did not "wish to continue an official association with any Israeli in these circumstances".

What repels about this approach is that the two academics were dismissed from the boards simply because they were Israelis. This a fate that was not even, for the most part, meted out to white South African academics at the height of apartheid. And it is unaltered by the extremely fine distinction underlying Professor Baker's explanation that she is not boycotting Israelis but Israeli institutions.

Even if it were the (pretty extraordinary) case that she would be happy to have them on her boards if they resigned their university jobs, it still amounts to an extraordinary assault on academic freedom from the one quarter that you would expect to respect it, a fine British university. Which is presumably why the Umist authorities have hastened to say that the boycott isn't their fault.

Never mind, as Dr Schlesinger has herself pointed out in a commendably measured reaction, that Ariel Sharon isn't going suddenly to withdraw from the West Bank because she is no longer on the board of one obscure journal. Or that the logical conclusion of not only Professor Baker's but Professor Dawkins's assertions would be to cut off precisely the kind of exchange of views between intellectuals on which progress everywhere, including Israel, partially depends. Shunning people because of their nationality rather than their merits sets a frightening precedent. It is also wilfully to ignore the level of dissent many Israelis – especially in universities – have for their government's policies.

The current row over the F16s falls into an altogether different category. Here, to put it mildly, there is a real debate to be had. The Government implies, at best unprovably, that both the defence industry and the all-important strategic relationship with the US would be threatened if Britain refused to supply the avionic units for the F16s. But certainly there is a difficult choice. Tony Blair is famously protective of BAe and the defence industry in general. And he may be right in his instinctive view that jobs would be lost if the UK were too choosy about its customers.

Nevertheless, this might have been, in the current extreme circumstances, a price worth paying, especially while the aircraft are likely to be used in support of a policy that the British government has publicly and rightly criticised. The new sales regime directly contradicts Jack Straw's promise (after it was discovered that converted Centurion tanks had been used as troop carriers in the occupied territories) that British weaponry would not be used in Israel either for internal repression or external aggression. F16s have been used – and recently – to launch attacks against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

What's more, on the more general issue of arms sales, there has been even more dissent within the Cabinet than has widely surfaced. Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and not exactly old Labour, loyally backed the new policy in relation to the F16s yesterday. But this does not of itself undermine reports that she expressed strong reservations before it was agreed. And we now know, thanks to an article by his former special adviser David Clark in the current edition of the New Statesman that Robin Cook, as Foreign Secretary, opposed Hawk spare-part sales to Zimbabwe forces active in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but he was overruled.

Above all the issue of whether to help the F16 programme for Israel is a real world question, in a way that an academic boycott can't be. Ministers routinely assert that if we don't sell the components, another country will go ahead. But even if that's true, a refusal to go ahead would at the very least put British economic self-interest firmly in the column entitled "Do all that you can to persuade the Israelis to change their policy and start talking peace, so that we can eventually supply them with a clear conscience".

Given all that, why should an obscure little academic row matter? Because this very contrast illustrates something fundamental. Which is that it is possible, as Professor Baker and her colleagues fail to realise, to criticise in the strongest possible terms the Israeli government, and apply policies accordingly, without condemning an entire country or its people. Of course intellectuals have a right – indeed on occasions an obligation – to be politically engaged. But there are many other channels through which to do that.

Above all the academic boycotters give lethal sustenance to the lie that such criticism, even if it isn't simply anti-Semitic, amounts to saying that the state of Israel should not exist. If that's what they think, then they should say so frankly – and find themselves alienated from the large majority of people in this country. If it isn't, they should foster links rather than increase Israeli paranoia by cutting them off. Universities, above all, should be plural institutions that encourage free speech and debate. When they refuse to do so, they make peace and justice that little more difficult to achieve.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk