Later this year, the European Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapists (EABCT) will hold its annual conference in Jerusalem - or, as the official conference website put it, "Jerusalem, Israel." There's nothing out of the ordinary about this arrangement. In 2011, the Israeli Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Therapists, an affiliate of the EABCT, offered to host the 2015 gathering. The offer was accepted, and the conference arrangements are well advanced. Entitled "A Road to Hope and Compassion for People in Conflict," the conference will explore "cross-cultural topics" and the contribution that cognitive and behavioural therapies can make to "peace-making and conflict resolution."
All very commendable, you might say. But that's only on the one hand. On the other, the choice of venue - "Jerusalem, Israel" - has naturally angered a number of Judeophobic practitioners of the therapeutic arts, who are making it clear that a conference in "Jerusalem, Israel" is something they are determined not to put up with. And they have therefore launched a campaign against it, utilising for this purpose something called "The UK-Palestine Mental Health Network". In relation to the network, I employ the word "Judeophobic" (as opposed to, say, "antizionist") deliberately.
In April last year, I used this column to draw attention to the establishment of the network, whose founding members pledged themselves "to challenge, as effectively as possible, official rationalisations for lending… protection to the project of creating an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine."
The report of the foundation meeting contained not so much as one word in reference to the psychological well-being of Jewish inhabitants of Israel, subject to the daily threat of bombardment from Palestinian Gaza and of random shootings and knifings from Palestinians on the West Bank. I also noted that members of the network seemed not the least bit concerned about the mental health of the Jewish inhabitants of Sderot, whose plight the report simply ignored.
Never mind pious platitudes, concealed under a veneer of psychiatric mumbo-jumbo. The network's agenda is suffused with malicious anti-Jewish sentiment. Had the EABCT's 2015 conference been held in Ramallah, or "Occupied East Jerusalem," we may be sure that network members would have rushed to secure their registrations.
But the chosen venue - "Jerusalem, Israel" - has ignited their smouldering passion against the Jewish state.
Last July, the network scored a success, of sorts, when the AGM of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies was persuaded to pass a resolution calling on those of its members who were minded to attend or make presentations to the Jerusalem conference to think again, in the light of the network's condemnation of it. As a result, the BABCP will apparently not be sending a representative to Jerusalem. But we can be sure attendees were not remotely representative of the membership at large, which I suspect has paid little attention to the call for a boycott of the Jerusalem event.
Last week the UKPMH Network emailed its "friends," asking them to "think carefully" before making their way to Jerusalem, and inviting them to sign a letter to be published in an unidentified newspaper.
The fact this email was sent seems to expose the inability of the network to mobilise the British mental health community to follow its lead. But it also points to home truths about the boycott movement and its influence, which seems to have been extremely limited.
In the professional circles in which I move there certainly are boycotters. But there is no boycott "movement" worthy of the name. Even among colleagues and acquaintances who make no secret of their critical view of elements of Israeli policy there is a conviction that boycott is not a weapon professionals should use, while comparisons between Israel and South Africa are treated with contempt.
I've also heard it said we would do well not to underestimate the impact of ''silent'' boycotts - such as the alleged disinclination of learned journals to consider articles written by Israeli scholars. I don't deny that this might be happening. But I must ask for proof before I rush to any judgment.