At its 2015 annual conference, the American Historical Association (AHA) discussed, and eventually rejected, a boycott-Israel resolution similar to those circulating among other academic organizations. Jeffrey Herf, a prominent historian of the Holocaust, explains how his colleagues were dissuaded:
The AHA [was] faced with deciding between the account of [last summer’s Gaza war] offered by Israel, a liberal democracy with a thriving political opposition and free press, compared to accounts offered by Hamas, a terrorist organization which suppressed all opposition, intimidated the press and media, and whose charter repeats the falsehoods of classic Jew-hatred. . . . AHA members could not as historians render judgments about [the war]. Why would the AHA give the benefit of the doubt to Hamas rather than to Israel? If the AHA had adopted the [boycott] resolutions, the name of the American Historical Association would be associated in public with the version of events associated with Hamas, an organization justly famous for terrorism and anti-Semitism and which did not permit academic freedom to thrive under its rule.
Read more on Legal Insurrection: http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/01/inside-account-how-anti-israel-resolutions-were-defeated-at-american-historical-association/#more-111798