Palestinian Call for Academic Boycott Receives Extensive South African Endorsement

PACBI has called for a comprehensive boycott of Israeli academic

and cultural institutions due to their complicity in Israel’s racist and colonial policies.

The Association of University Teachers (AUT) in Britain heeded that call in its Council

meeting on 22 April 2005, when it voted to boycott Bar-Ilan and Haifa Universities as

well as to consider boycotting the Hebrew University.

In October 2004, a similar

call for comprehensive boycott of Israel was endorsed by major South African

organizations and unions, including the Congress Of South African Trade Unions

(COSATU), Landless People’s Movement, South African NGO Coalition, Anti-War

Coalition and Physicians for Human Rights. That initiative, led by the Palestine

Solidarity Committee in South Africa, was modelled after the anti-apartheid boycott and

sanctions regime that eventually brought about democratic rule in South

Africa.

This momentous support for boycotting Israel comes in the context of the

rapidly growing South African awareness and recognition of the significant parallels

between Israel’s distinct form of apartheid and its South African predecessor. It also

expresses a laudable moral stand by South Africans in solidarity with the people of

Palestine.

Whatever the outcome of the frantic, well-oiled efforts by Israel and its

supporters to overturn the AUT boycott decisions, using misinformation, intimidation

and vilification of the boycott activists, the most significant achievement that will persist

is the fact that boycotting Israel has been solidly placed on the international agenda as

a morally and politically sound form of civil resistance to Israel’s oppression of the

Palestinians.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural

Boycott of Israel (PACBI)
[email][email protected][/email]
P.O. Box 1701,

Ramallah, Palestine