Fact Sheet: Israel’s Ongoing Violence Against Palestinian Academia

Since the narrow defeat of the AAA Resolution 100 days ago, the Israeli state has intensified its flagrant violations of Palestinians’ basic human rights, including attacks on academic freedom. These routine violations include:

• Attacks on the basic functioning of Palestinian universities
  • Banning Dr. Adam Hanieh, Senior Lecturer at the School of Oriental & African Studies in London, from traveling to Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank to deliver a series of lectures to students.
  • Preventing Birzeit University from hosting an international Taekwondo tournament.
  • Attacking students on the campus of Al Quds University with tear gas and stun grenades.
  • Firing live bullets at students during a raid on Birzeit University
  • Refusing to recognize nursing degrees granted by Al Quds University in East Jerusalem.

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Middle East Studies Association Criticizes Israeli Travel Restrictions on Boycott Activist

On 16 May, the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association sent a letter to Israeli authorities criticizing an effective travel ban imposed by Israeli authorities on Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. This is only the latest instance of Israeli restrictions on freedom of expression, especially of critics of government policy.

A copy of the letter is below.

 

Panic in Israeli Media Over Proposed AAA Boycott

This is a translation of a report that aired on Channel 10 in Israel on November 16, 2015.

For more on the boycott’s impact on Israeli public opinion, see I. ben Alek’s essay, “Is an Academic Boycott Effective? Ask Israeli Leaders.”

[click on “CC” for English subtitles]

Is the Largest Ever Academic Boycott Against Israel Coming on Friday?

Anchor: This Friday, the biggest academic boycott resolution against Israel ever is expected to be adopted. And it’s happening, of all places, in the United States at the major association of anthropologists, which numbers twelve thousand members. The fear in Israel is that the resolution would have a snowball effect of boycotts which would be impossible to stop. A report by our education correspondent, Omri Yaniv.

Palestinian Universities and Everyday Life under Occupation: Why Boycotts Make Sense to Many

[this essay originally appeared in Academe, a publication of the AAUP]

By Kamala Visweswaran

On my last night in the old city of Jerusalem, I enter through the Flower’s Gate and walk through a busy market, past boys chasing each other on narrow streets, clusters of old men visiting in shop doorways, women leaning out of upper windows. The fading afternoon light amplifies the social relations of a neighborhood bound by intimate conversation and cheerful laughter. Just before I reach the Muslim cemetery, however, teenagers loitering a block away from the Lion’s Gate fling an empty glass bottle in front of a car backing out of a narrow driveway. As the glass shatters next to me, I glance back and see a youth holding the neck of a bottle, jagged face up, another fully intact bottle in his left hand. I step aside, but I am not in danger—the youth’s attention is focused on the car.