[News] US academics: join us in Israel boycott call
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Thu Jan 22 14:38:49 EST 2009
US academics: join us in Israel boycott call
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10235.shtml
Appeal, USCACBI, 22 January 2009
Mission statement
Responding to the CALL of Palestinian civil society to join the
boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, we
are a US campaign focused specifically on a boycott of Israeli
academic and cultural institutions, as delineated by PACBI
(Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel):
In light of Israel's persistent violations of international law, and
Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned
Israel's colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called
for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and
Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making
have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with
humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its
occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and
In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international
community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to
fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid
in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions;
Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in
the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and
resistance to injustice and oppression,
We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon
international civil society organizations and people of conscience
all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment
initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa
in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective
states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also
invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of
justice and genuine peace.
These nonviolent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel
meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's
inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the
precepts of international law by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and
dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian
citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian
refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN
resolution 194."
PACBI and the entire BDS movement (representing the overwhelming
majority among Palestinian civil society parties, unions, networks
and organizations) view three fundamental Palestinian rights,
sanctioned by international law and universal human rights
principles, that ought to be respected by Israel to end the boycott.
All we endorse and struggle to achieve is an end to Israel's
three-tiered injustice and oppression:
1) occupation and colonization in the 1967-occupied Palestinian territory;
2) denial of the refugees' rights, paramount among which is their
right to return to their homes of origin, as per UN General Assembly
Resolution 194; and
3) the system of racial discrimination, or apartheid, to which
Palestinian (all non-Jewish) citizens of Israel are subjected.
The principles guiding the PACBI campaign and the three goals
outlined above are also points of unity for the US Campaign for the
Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USCACBI). We believe it is
time to take a public, principled stance in support of equality,
self-determination, human rights (including the right to education),
and true democracy, especially in light of the censorship and
silencing of the Palestine question in US universities, as well as US
society at large. There can be no academic freedom in
Israel/Palestine unless all academics are free and all students are
free to pursue their academic desires.
If you are committed to these principles of unity, and wish to work
on a campaign of boycotting academic and cultural institutions guided
by this approach, please join our campaign.
Urgent appeal
Furthermore, we are also responding to the Open Letter to
International Academic Institutions from the Right to Education
campaign at Birzeit University in Palestine (17 January 2009):
In light of the ongoing massive Israeli bombardment of the Gaza
Strip, in which more than 1,200 people have been killed -- more than
1,000 (86 percent) of whom were civilian men, women and children --
and where more than 4,000 have been maimed and injured, the Right to
Education Campaign at Birzeit University calls upon the international
academic community, unions and students to show support and
solidarity with the people of Gaza by calling upon their respective
governments to impose immediate boycott, divestment and sanctions
against the state of Israel until it abides by international human
rights and humanitarian laws, dismantles its apartheid regime
spanning both the occupied territories and Israel proper, and commits
to pursuing a long-lasting, just peace.
The war on Gaza marks a breaking point: the world cannot remain
silent while Israel instigates a war (they broke the ceasefire by
killing six Palestinians on 4 November 2008 and four more on 17
November 2008), annihilates all civilian infrastructure, targets
civilian shelters, prevents medical teams from reaching victims, uses
internationally banned substances like white phosphorous on
civilians, prevents medical aid and equipment from entering the
Strip, cuts off fuel, electricity and running water making daily
life, especially for the injured, a living hell, and prevents anyone
from escaping their carnage. These are not actions of a state which
respects international laws and norms. Distinguished international
lawyers have denounced the disproportionality of Israel's attacks as
a war crime, and its indiscriminate killing as a crime against humanity.
Enough is enough."
Gaza is but the latest incident in a series of ongoing Israeli
massacres, from Deir Yassin (1948) to Kafr Kassim (1956) to Jenin
(2002) to the wars on Lebanon (from 1980s to 2006). All demonstrate a
pattern of violence by a state that will not end its violations of
international law and war crimes on its own, without international
pressure. We must act now. As academics working in the US, we wish to
focus on campaigns in our universities and in institutions of higher
education to advocate for compliance with the academic and cultural
boycott, a movement that is growing internationally across all
segments of global civil society.
This call for an academic and cultural boycott parallels the call in
the non-academic world for divestment, boycott and sanctions by trade
unions, churches and other civil society organizations in countries
such as the United States, Canada, Italy, Ireland, Norway, the United
Kingdom, Brazil, South Africa and New Zealand.
Actions
Since Israeli academic institutions (mostly state-controlled) and the
vast majority of Israeli intellectuals and academics have either
contributed directly to maintaining, defending or otherwise
justifying the above forms of oppression, or have been complicit in
them through their silence, we call upon our colleagues 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, by
applying the following:
1. Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural
cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions;
2. Advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the
national and international levels, including suspension of all forms
of funding and subsidies to these institutions;
3. Promote divestment and disinvestment from Israel by academic institutions;
4. Work toward the condemnation of Israeli policies by pressing for
resolutions to be adopted by academic, professional and cultural
associations and organizations;
5. Support Palestinian academic and cultural institutions directly
without requiring them to partner with Israeli counterparts as an
explicit or implicit condition for such support.
As educators and scholars of conscience in the United States, we
fully support this call. We urge our colleagues, nationally,
regionally, and internationally, to stand up against Israel's ongoing
scholasticide and to support the nonviolent call for academic
boycott, disinvestment, and sanctions.
Please email us with your full name and institutional affiliation if
you fully endorse the Mission Statement of US ACBI Campaign and
authorize us to use your name publicly: uscom4acbi A T gmail D O T com.
Freedom Archives
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415 863-9977
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