Universities across globe urge end to Israel's apartheid against Palestinians

Hundreds of universities and academic institutions have strongly denounced Israel's recent military aggression, stressing that the regime is pursuing a policy of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians. 

In an unprecedented wave of solidarity, over 300 academic departments, programs, centers, unions, and societies worldwide endorsed statements in support of Palestinian rights in response to Israel's war and violent attacks this month.

They said that Israel has been committing the crime of "apartheid" by seeking to maintain its domination across the occupied territories. 

The academics also censured Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, particularly in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem al-Quds, as well as of Arab Israelis — a term referring to Palestinians who stayed on their land following Israel's creation in 1948.

Similar statements from individual scholars, researchers, university staff, students, and alumni have garnered more than 15,000 signatures.   

Most of the statements described Israel’s apartheid regime as the root cause of the violence.

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Among the signatories, hundreds of scholars called for pressure on academic institutions to end "complicity and partnership with military, academic, and legal institutions involved in entrenching Israel's policies."

In the United States, 120 studies departments and programs said they "refuse to normalize or accept the United States' financial, military, diplomatic and political role in Palestinian dispossession." 

Faculties at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Stanford, Georgetown, City University of New York, and the University of California Berkeley and Davis also issued statements.

The United Educators of San Francisco, representing 6,200 teachers and staff, became the first teachers union to endorse the international anti-Israel movement of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS).

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) said decades of "anthropological literature has empirically demonstrated the many forms of structural and everyday violence imposed by the Israeli regime on the Palestinian population" and called on the US government to take a stand.

In the Netherlands, more than 40 university departments and programs as well as museums and cultural centers affirmed their "responsibility to speak out" against Israel's human rights violations.

Nearly 600 academics in the Netherlands pledged to support the boycott of complicit Israeli universities.

In Belgium, two dozen academic departments, research groups, unions, student organizations, and 1,300 faculty and staff members at Ghent University recommended support for the boycott of and sanctions against Israel.

In the United Kingdom, 1600 faculty members, staff, students, and alumni urged the University of Cambridge to "sever formal links and partnerships" with corporations and institutions perpetuating Israel's injustices against Palestinians.  

More than 130 anthropologists in Australia called for an end to "Australian collusion" in the "murderous" arms trade with Israel. Some 500 academics across Australia urged the government to suspend military cooperation and re-evaluate trade agreements with Israel.

National Tertiary Education Union branches at the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales passed motions by overwhelming majorities calling members' attention to the boycott of complicit Israeli academic institutions.

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More than 2,800 healthcare workers, scholars, researchers, and students in Canada denounced Israel's "destruction of medical facilities" and killing of Palestinian physicians and healthcare workers in Gaza and called on the country to "end its military support to Israel."

In South Africa, more than 600 health professionals, academics, and students denounced Israel's medical apartheid against Palestinians and endorsed "the call for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions on Israel," urging South African academic institutions to "cut all ties with apartheid Israel."

The Irish Center for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway, called for sanctions on Israel and the Irish Network for Middle Eastern and North African Studies (INMENAS) pledged to "refuse any collaboration with Ariel University," an Israeli university located in an illegal settlement.

In Denmark, faculty members called on Danish universities to end "institutional collaborations with Israeli universities and research institutions complicit in Israeli occupation and militarism."

The Gaza war began on May 10 and lasted until May 21, when the occupying regime announced a unilateral ceasefire which was accepted, through Egyptian mediation, by the Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza.

Throughout the 12-day asymmetrical encounter, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 254 Palestinians, including 66 children, wounded almost 2,000, and displaced over 72,000 people in the besieged enclave. On the other side, Palestinian rocket attacks killed 13 people in the occupied territories.

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