Israel Found Guilty by the ICJ over its Colonial Wall

We also call upon world governments to

impose sanctions against Israel to pressure it to comply with international law and the

pertinent UN Security Council resolutions.

It is no coincidence that a similar

advisory opinion by the ICJ, which in 1971 denounced South Africa’s occupation of

Namibia, triggered what became the world’s largest and most concerted campaign of

sanctions directed against the apartheid regime. Today’s ICJ ruling should equally

inspire a comparable reaction.

We are specifically focusing on boycotting Israeli

academic institutions -- mostly state controlled -- because they have contributed,

directly or indirectly, to maintaining, defending or otherwise justifying Israel’s colonial

policy, including the construction of its colonial Wall. The Israeli academy’s silence is a

telling sign of its complicity in this policy.

Since scholars and intellectuals have

historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in their

struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa, and in the spirit of international solidarity,

moral consistency and universal resistance to injustice and oppression, we call upon

our colleagues in the international community to comprehensively and consistently

boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a contribution to the struggle to

end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid.

This call for

academic and cultural boycott has been endorsed by close to 60 of the most

representative academic, cultural, professional and trade unions and associations in

the occupied West Bank and Gaza, including the Federation of Unions of Palestinian

Universities’ Professors and Employees and the umbrella organization of Palestinian

NGOs in the occupied West Bank, PNGO.