The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) condemns the participation of a Palestinian scholar in an event recently organized in the Netherlands by the Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI), the main lobby group there for Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid, illegal military occupation, and genocide.
On 15 September 2026, CIDI hosted a panel titled "Academic Freedom as a Foundation for Peace between Israel and Palestine," pairing Palestinian sociologist Sari Hanafi with the former rector of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Barak Medina, who denied the genocide in this dialog. In October 2023, after Israel’s genocide in Gaza had already killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, Medina co-authored a “legal opinion” defending Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians. He argued that, while intentional wholesale targeting of Palestinian civilians is forbidden ethically and legally, there is room for Israel to “take steps that involve widespread harm to those not involved” for the purposes of “prevention” and “deterrence.”
CIDI was founded after the 1973 war to keep the Netherlands firmly on Israel's side, and it openly describes its work as lobbying for Israel. It co-hosted with the Israeli Embassy Benjamin Netanyahu's 2012 appearance in Amsterdam.
CIDI won from this recent normalizing Palestinian-Israeli event what it came for: a photograph, a recording, and a talking point that Israeli academia is engaged in "dialogue." A pro-Israel commentator who covered the event said as much. For him, the fact that the evening took place at all was a victory, because CIDI is widely boycotted, including by Dutch universities, venue owners and civil society groups. A Palestinian scholar has been brought in, it seems, to legitimize the illegitimate and normalize the abnormal.
It is morally unconscionable and indefensible for scholars to provide a fig leaf to an Israel lobby group, particularly in the midst of an ongoing Israeli genocide. What makes this worse is that the event is desperately trying to rehabilitate Israel’s image in the Netherlands, where 76% view Israel unfavorably or very unfavorably and where support for BDS is growing at an inspiring rate. After mass solidarity efforts by students, academics, trade unions, activists, and civil society, several Dutch universities have cut ties with complicit Israeli universities; hundreds of cultural institutions have endorsed the cultural boycott of Israel; and even the Dutch government was compelled to declare sanctions against Israel’s illegal colonies in the occupied Palestinian territory.
This event clearly violated the BDS movement’s international academic boycott guidelines and anti-normalization guidelines set by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and approved and adopted by the Palestinian Council for Higher Education and the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE). It is worth mentioning that PACBI rejects, on principle, boycotts of individuals based on identity or opinion.
The PACBI Guidelines for the International Academic Boycott of Israel state:
Academic events … convened or co-sponsored by Israel, complicit Israeli institutions or their support and lobby groups in various countries [are boycottable]. All such academic events, whether held in Israel or abroad, deserve to be boycotted on institutional grounds. ...
The general principle is that an event or project carried out under the sponsorship/aegis of or in affiliation with or funding by an official Israeli body or a complicit institution (including lobby groups) constitutes complicity and therefore is deserving of boycott. The same may apply to support or sponsorship from non-Israeli institutions that serve Israeli propaganda purposes.
Even if someone ignores the above and tries to defend this event as a “debate,” that would not hold. The BDS movement’s international academic boycott guidelines and anti-normalization guidelines state that “public debates, in international venues, between Palestinians/Arabs and Israelis do not constitute boycottable normalization, if organized without any cooperation with or official representation from Israel, its lobby groups, or its complicit institutions” [emphasis added].
We call on academics, students, cultural workers and institutions, and especially those in the Arab world, to:
- Decline invitations to events, debates, lectures or trips convened, sponsored or funded by Israel, its lobby groups or its complicit institutions.
- Withdraw from programs once such sponsorship becomes known, and state publicly why, if feasible.
- Hold to account those who cross the BDS picket line and fail to admit wrongdoing and apologize to their community for violating the BDS guidelines that are supported by a near consensus in Palestinian civil society.