Academic boycotts are an onslaught on academic freedom and make it impossible for universities to exist outside of politics. The UCT that I celebrate would never pride itself with severing relations with the very institutions from which a possible solution should emanate.

One of the stories I grew up hearing in the African National Congress and later at university is that Israel is an apartheid state and, therefore, all South Africans had a duty to stand in solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine. In ANC circles such acts of solidarity are often occasioned by a suggestion that Israel does not have a claim to the Holy Land, that Palestinian people have a monopoly between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

One morning I decided to make a trip to Israel and the West Bank in order to see for myself what the real issues were in the region. This I did in service of our historical debt to the support that the international community offered black South Africans during apartheid.

It was during this trip that I reflected on many similarities between us Africans and Jewish people. Coincidentally, this was at a time when Afrikaners in our country...