UK: British IVF pioneer: boycotters of Israel are mostly “second-rate academics”

The Tower reports:

Lord Robert Winston, a British academic and leader in the field of in vitro fertilization (IVF), said that anti-Israel boycotters are “mostly second-rate academics from minor universities who have never done anything,” during a dinner hosted last week in his honor by the British ambassador to Israel, Ha’aretz reported. Winston received an honorary degree from the Weizmann Institute of Science on Monday.

“The people who have signed up for that boycott are mostly second-rate academics from minor universities who have never done anything. They really are,” Winston emphasized in a pre-dinner interview with Haaretz. “Not exactly at the cutting edge of British intellectual thought.”

Winston, who was born into an Orthodox Jewish family and first visited Israel in 1958, said that his religion complemented his chosen field. He added that his work, which included pioneering surgical techniques that improve fertility treatments, was “always backed” by rabbis.

His lectures were, in the early days, picketed by those who considered his work to be “immoral,” and “an infringement on human dignity,” and he was called – by many in the Catholic church, among others – “evil.” But the rabbis, he points out, always backed him.

Winston also commended Israel for its extensive support of IVF treatments for infertile couples, and noted that in the bible most of the matriarchs were infertile. It is “remarkable,” he observed, that Jews became a nation despite being “from an infertile stock.”

Winston is the latest notable British figure to denounce the movement to boycott Israel. Last month, more than 150 British artists, including J.K. Rowling, Simon Schama, and Hillary Mantel, signed a letter declaring that “cultural boycotts singling out Israel are divisive and discriminatory and will not further peace.” A week later, Oscar-winning actress Helen Mirren said in an interview, “I completely agree with Hilary [Mantel] and J. K. Rowling, a cultural boycott is really a bad idea,” while she was attending the Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles.  Read more.