Embedded Files
Israeli Scholars for the American Anthropological Association Resolution on the Academic Boycott
We, the undersigned, are social science and humanities scholars and citizens of Israel. We wish to express our full and unequivocal support of the AAA endorsement of the boycott of complicit Israeli academic institutions.
Every day, Israel violates the inalienable rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, Palestinians under military occupation, and Palestinian refugees. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement seeks to address all three dimensions of Israeli settler-colonial violence. In the absence of action on the part of the international community to uphold Palestinian rights, Palestinian civil society has turned to global civil society. Palestinians are calling to hold Israeli institutions accountable for their role in sustaining Israeli military occupation and apartheid. As Israeli citizens, we recognize our obligation to stand with Palestinians as they call for international intervention until Israel recognizes their rights and complies with international law.
Israeli universities are thoroughly complicit in Israeli state violence and the violation of Palestinian rights. Departments across disciplines collaborate with and provide expertise for the Israeli security state that maintains the military occupation of Palestinian territory. All Israeli universities also provide academic training through tailored programs for the Israeli military, police, and the Shin Bet, forces repeatedly found by international human rights organizations to have committed war crimes. Of particular relevance to the AAA vote, Israeli archeology is directly complicit in Israeli violation of international law. Defying the 1954 Hague Convention, Israeli archeology departments continue to conduct digs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including East Jerusalem, and to participate in the theft of Palestinian artifacts.
When the AAA membership voted on the academic boycott in 2016, the Israeli Anthropological Association and several leading Israeli anthropologists campaigned against the boycott, claiming Israeli academics cannot be held accountable for Israeli government policies. But Israeli universities actively sustain these very policies and have consistently worked alongside the Israeli government to repress Palestinian knowledge production, pedagogy, and political expression. In the years since the last AAA vote, Palestinian students on Israeli campuses have faced escalating suppression, interrogations, and violent arrests. Palestinian students in the OPT have faced Israeli military interrogations, torture, and administrative detention, while their universities have been increasingly isolated by Israeli policies limiting their international collaboration and exchanges.
Israeli academics frequently voice their opposition to the academic boycott, yet the majority overwhelmingly fail to advocate for the academic freedoms of Palestinian faculty and students at their own universities, let alone Palestinian scholars and students in universities under Israeli military rule. Institutionally, Israeli universities remain as deeply imbricated in Israeli settler-colonialism and military occupation as they were when the AAA voted in 2016. It is precisely for this reason that the academic boycott is urgent.
Palestinian civil society has called to hold accountable all institutions supporting Israeli apartheid. In apartheid South Africa, some faculty and students in historically white institutions heeded the calls of the ANC and fought for their universities to sever ties with the apartheid regime. Israeli academics can and must do the same.
We join the Palestinian call to the AAA to endorse the academic boycott and advocate for the academic freedom of all Palestinians living under Israeli rule.
*Signatories appear in alphabetical order, some wished to sign anonymously.
Dr. Uri Davis
Dr. Neve Gordon
Dr. Uri Horesh
Dr. Anat Matar
Dr. Natalie Rothman
Dr. Catherine Rottenberg
Dr. Noa Shaindlinger
Eyal Sivan
Dr. Elian Weizman
Dr. Maya Wind
Dr. Haim Bresheeth-Zabner
Dr. X
Dr. X
Dr. X
Dr. X
Dr. X
Dr. X
Dr. X
Dr. X
Dr. X
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