The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has recently learned that you are scheduled to accept an honorary degree from Ben Gurion University (BGU) in May, as well as participate in a conference titled “Israeli involvement in Africa: Past, Present and Future,” that will be organized by the Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid.

March 2011 was marked by major successes for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, especially on the academic and cultural boycott front. There is much cause to celebrate, take stock of and continue to creatively and affectively mobilise around, based on the three basic and just demands of the BDS campaign. We hail BDS victories, knowing full well that they are the result of remarkable efforts by people of conscience around the world working tirelessly to support Palestinian human rights.

Occupied Ramallah, March 23, 2011

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), representing a wide spectrum in the Palestinian academy, salutes our South African colleagues at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) for their principled support for the cause of justice in Palestine by upholding the 29 September 2010 UJ Senate resolution to sever its links with BGU [1].  The UJ press release notes that:

In a protracted and

Palestinians everywhere were jubilant when two of the most tyrannical regimes in the Arab world were overthrown by youth-initiated people’s revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Palestinian civil society has enthusiastically stood with both revolutions' demands for full freedom, rights, dignity, social justice, sustainable development, and emancipation from Western economic and political hegemony.

If 2010 witnessed an exceptional growth of the global BDS movement, especially in the cultural and consumer products fields, one of the main challenges facing the movement in 2011 will be to start putting into effect concrete boycott measures against Israeli universities and to further spread the artists’ boycott of Israel.

With world renowned artists, bands and writers refusing to perform, exhibit or speak in Israel, cultural boycott took off in 2010, especially following Israel’s bloody attack on the Freedom Flotilla.

PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, recently released its December 2010 newsletter, with many informative updates and articles.

It is available here: http://www.pacbi.org/newsletter/december2010.php

The newsletter includes important editorials from PACBI on academic boycott in 2011 and from the BDS National Committee on the second anniversary of the war on Gaza.

This article was written in 2010 as a contribution to a BNC e-magazine commemorating the 5th anniversary of the BDS call in July 9th 2005.