Professors come from 72 institutions, including Oxford, Cambridge and LSE, have signed a pledge to boycott Israel’s universities in solidarity with Palestinians. Israel is the most stable nation in the Middle East. Israeli Arabs and Palestinians attend Israeli universities, Israeli hospitals are treating wounded Syrians and Israel sends relief workers and equipment to virtually every global natural disaster.
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And there is also Arabic literature scholar Professor Rasheed El-Enany, who obtained his undergraduate degree in Cairo, Egypt.
It has declared that the signatories will not accept invitations to visit academic institutions, act as referees in any of their processes, corporate or participate in conferences funded, organised or sponsored by Israeli academic institutions.
Simon Johnson, chief executive of Britain’s Jewish Leadership Council, said: “These academics should realise that boycotts…do nothing to advance peace or improve the lives of Palestinians”.
In the letter, the signatories countered a letter published in the paper in February which called for a boycott of Israel.
According to organisers, the Commitment “is a response to the appeal for such action by Palestinian academics and civil society due to the deep complicity of Israeli academic institutions in Israeli violations of global law”.
The letter called for others to join the boycott.
Board of Deputies Senior Vice President Richard Verber said: “We would ask why these academics are singling out Israel in such a discriminatory fashion?”
‘Their energy would be much better spent encouraging academic dialogue and relations between like-minded Israelis and Palestinians who believe in a brighter future’.
One of the signatories is Professor Ted Honderich of UCL, who donated £5,000 to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s election campaign and said in 2006 that Palestinians have a “moral right” to terrorism.
“The change in mood is palpable; many people have been critical of Israel and its policies privately, but until now, many have not thought they wanted to state this publicly”, London School of Economics professor Jonathan Rosenhead, who helped to organize the academic commitment, told Al Jazeera.
They will, however, still work with individual Israeli academics, it adds.
Various BDS activists have previously gone on record opposing the two state solution and affirming that the movement seeks Israel’s destruction, with BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti saying in 2014 that Palestinians have a right to “resistance by any means, including armed resistance”, and leading activist As’ad Abu Khalil writing in 2012 that, “Justice and freedom for the Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the state of Israel”.
The boycott appeared as an advertisement in The Guardian yesterday. The British ambassador to Israel, David Quarrey, said he was “deeply committed” to promoting academic and scientific ties.
“We have had a stalled peace agreement for 20 years and [US Secretary of State] John Kerry has blamed the Israelis for not negotiating”.
She added: ‘Stamping out academic dialogue is a divisive tactic.
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Increasing numbers of religious Jews visiting the compound – which is Islam’s holiest site outside Saudi Arabia and revered in Judaism as the location of two destroyed biblical temples – led to Palestinian allegations that Israel is violating a “status quo” under which Jewish prayer there is banned.
