Aims | Why | Do it yourself

Relevant website: www.pacbi.org

Academic and cultural collaboration boosts Israel’s image on the international stage. By refusing to participate in cultural exchange, artists and cultural institutions globally can send a clear message to Israel that their occupation and discrimination against Palestinians is unacceptable. In particular, the academic boycott can have significant impact on the establishment that is responsible for promoting theories and knowledge necessary for the pursuit of Israeli policies of occupation and discrimination.

Aims

- Institutionalizing a ban on cultural and academic exchanges, programmes, and visits with Israel.
Using Israeli performances, visits, and film screenings as an opportunity to highlight occupation and apartheid amongst the wider public.
- Undermine the academic contribution to the Israeli economy that sustains the occupation and end all cooperation on projects used to create propaganda, know-how and weapons used to sustain the Israeli apartheid structure and to oppress and expel Palestinians.
- Forging ties of cultural and academic support and solidarity with Palestinian universities and academics as well as with Palestine by artists and performers from across the world.

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Why

While Israeli academics, singers and writers enjoy relatively free global freedom of movement and access to well equipped facilities, Israel has subjected Palestinians to movement restrictions and a lack of adequate funding for cultural and academic facilities. Palestinian cultural heritage is actively destroyed by Israeli attacks and Israeli academic institutions continue to support the Occupation.

Artists and cultural institutions have an obligation not to lend their names and work to Israeli projects, and as a consequence provide support and complicity to the Israeli occupation and apartheid. The sixty-year campaign of destruction of Palestinian culture and education constitutes a deliberate programme to wipe out Palestinian heritage. Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank make Palestinian artistic cultural life almost impossible. There are over 427 cultural facilities in Gaza and the West Bank, yet they are under sustained assault from the occupying forces in terms of the severe economic damage caused by the occupation and restrictions placed on the movement of staff and visitors.

Perhaps more serious, however, is the ongoing destruction of Palestinian heritage and frequent demolitions of television, radio and media outlooks that aim to destroy any burgeoning national culture. Some of the most appalling attacks include the demolition of the 125 houses that formed the Maghariba Quarter in the heart of the Old City in Jerusalem just after 1967 to build a plaza for the Western Wall. This act set a precedent for the intervening years, which have seen increasing destruction of Arab culture in Jerusalem and Palestine as a whole. In December 2005 work began on digging up the holy Maman Allah graveyard, the oldest such site in Jerusalem. The destruction of the site will be followed by the construction of a new Zionist museum in its place.

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Palestinians in their homeland are unable to welcome the musicians, poets and singers all around the Arab world that have dedicated many of their songs to the Palestinian liberation struggle and its ancient cities of Haifa, Yafa and Jerusalem. Their art has inspired generations to continue the struggle, yet they are barred from singing or reciting in Palestine. Israel further bans imports of books to Palestine from any Arab country, except for Jordan and Egypt. On 13 December, 2001, Israeli bulldozers destroyed the building and transmitters of Voice of Palestine radio and on 24th January 2002, the Israeli military blew up the five-storey Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) building in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Many aspects of Israeli cultural life are directly linked to the occupation, expulsion and systemic discrimination of the Palestinian people. Israeli architects and designers are engaged in the construction of settlements, roads and facilities on illegally confiscated Palestinian land. Israeli writers and intellectuals continue to promote the myths of Zionism among a global public via their novels and essays.

While Palestinian culture is suppressed and destroyed, Israeli academic institutions offer "strategic analysis" and advice to military-intelligence agencies. Israeli scientists develop technologies for the weapons of the Occupation forces. In a very real and practical sense, Israeli academia provides material and intellectual support to the ongoing occupation and violence against Palestinian people, and in particular the crushing of the Palestinian education system and discrimination against Palestinians within the Green Line. At ideological level, academics such as Professor Arnon Sofer of Haifa University who is infamous for his argument that Arab Israelis pose a ‘demographic threat’ to the State of Israel produce the research, arguments, and new leaders for the Israeli state. Israeli universities are closely linked to the Israeli economy that supports and enables the ongoing occupation. Israeli universities are ranked second in the world in meeting the “needs economy”. Israeli academics who have a unique responsibility to promote awareness of human rights abuses perpetrated by their government, are failing to do so.

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Israeli academics cannot exempt themselves from boycott on the grounds of ‘academic freedom’ while they fail to speak up for the academic freedoms of Palestinians. Israeli academia was silent when in June 2007 when the Knesset cut educational allowance by 24 percent allowances for children whose parents have not served in the army, actively discriminating against Palestinians within the green line. They were silent when Israeli forces bulldozed the educational studies campus of al-Aqsa University in Gaza on 16 March 2004. They say nothing when the Occupation rides roughshod over the 4th Geneva Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child by preventing Palestinian children from accessing schools.

The Palestinian education system in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza is brought to the edge of break down as access to educational facilities is denied for staff and students. Between 2000 and 2007, 803 children have been killed and 450 remain in detention. The Occupation attacks education establishments. Over 300 schools have been damaged by Occupation military attacks. Bir Zeit university was sealed by a military checkpoint for 2 1/2 years between 2001-2004. In 2003 Hebron University and the Palestine Polytechnic University were closed for 6 and 3 months respectively.

Within Israel itself, education is provided along apartheid lines. The Israeli state attempts to exclude all voices that challenge the Jewish-only character of Israeli institutions. Children are taught a curriculum that explicitly denies their Palestinian identity, and the state keeps watch to ensure that Arab schools fulfil this role. In September 2005 the Minister of Education cancelled an experimental education program because it included articles by Edward Said and Arab Member of Knesset (MK) Dr. Azmi Bishara. In Israeli schools, the political activity of Palestinian teachers both in the classroom and out of hours has always been strictly monitored. Teachers are denied employment or fired for ‘security’ reasons. Universities have passed out fliers to international students warning them to stay away from Palestinian localities inside Israel. Continues...

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Israeli academics cannot exempt themselves from boycott on the grounds of ‘academic freedom’ while they fail to speak up for the academic freedoms of Palestinians. Israeli academia was silent when in June 2007 when the Knesset cut educational allowance by 24 percent allowances for children whose parents have not served in the army, actively discriminating against Palestinians within the green line. They were silent when Israeli forces bulldozed the educational studies campus of al-Aqsa University in Gaza on 16 March 2004. They say nothing when the Occupation rides roughshod over the 4th Geneva Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child by preventing Palestinian children from accessing schools.

The Palestinian education system in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza is brought to the edge of break down as access to educational facilities is denied for staff and students. Between 2000 and 2007, 803 children have been killed and 450 remain in detention. The Occupation attacks education establishments. Over 300 schools have been damaged by Occupation military attacks. Bir Zeit university was sealed by a military checkpoint for 2 1/2 years between 2001-2004. In 2003 Hebron University and the Palestine Polytechnic University were closed for 6 and 3 months respectively.

Within Israel itself, education is provided along apartheid lines. The Israeli state attempts to exclude all voices that challenge the Jewish-only character of Israeli institutions. Children are taught a curriculum that explicitly denies their Palestinian identity, and the state keeps watch to ensure that Arab schools fulfil this role. In September 2005 the Minister of Education cancelled an experimental education program because it included articles by Edward Said and Arab Member of Knesset (MK) Dr. Azmi Bishara. In Israeli schools, the political activity of Palestinian teachers both in the classroom and out of hours has always been strictly monitored. Teachers are denied employment or fired for ‘security’ reasons. Universities have passed out fliers to international students warning them to stay away from Palestinian localities inside Israel. Continues ...

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Do it yourself

1. Resolutions, statements and declarations from artistic groups, academics and institutions acknowledging the rights of the Palestinian people while refusing to maintain links with the Israeli state, its institutions and the artists and academics representing them.

Institutions, festivals and other events should refuse to allow themselves to be an arena where Israel can promote itself as an internationally accepted and respected state and society and refuse participation to Israeli or international artwork and artists accordingly.

2. Promote the campaign

Cultural institutions can publicize the constant attacks upon Palestinian culture and arts, and destruction that threaten the existence of Palestinian cultural heritage. Academics in all fields can draw attention to the situation in Palestine through their written work and their lectures, raising academic awareness about Israeli academia and its crucial role in providing material and ideological support to the occupation.

A vocal cultural boycott of Israel can have a major impact in shaping public opinion particularly across the younger generation. Solidarity groups must make outreach work a priority and ensure artists as well as the general public have access to information that documents Israeli apartheid and the continuous crimes inflicted upon the Palestinian people.

3. Sponsorship, funding and divestment

Institutions, festivals and other events should refuse sponsorship and funding from Israel and its institutions. In the university setting, academics and faculty members can support the efforts of students in divestment campaigns against companies known to be complicit in supporting Israeli apartheid. This can include pressuring institutions´ boards of trustees to sell Israeli related securities in investment portfolios of endowment funds.

4. Create links and help promote Palestinian artists, research and institutions

The boycott must forge links and relations with artists who lack access to basic resources, materials and services due to Israeli apartheid and ensure the continuation of Palestinian culture and academia in a climate where such expression is under severe threat. Palestinian artists in the West Bank and Gaza as well as inside the Green Line and the diaspora are a successful medium through which the realities of Israeli Apartheid can be exposed in the rest of the world. Their work needs to be actively promoted and distributed.

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