Gesture politics are rarely edifying. At times, though, they are downright stupid. Yesterday's decision by Britain's University and College Union (UCU) of academics, to boycott their counterparts in Israel because of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, is a good example.

No reader of these columns would be in any doubt about the Financial Times' view of the occupation and the continuing and expanding colonisation of Palestinian land: illegal, immoral, self-defeating for Israel and incendiary for the Middle East.