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.