Update

Palestinians Urge Dr. Ahmed El-Hady to Withdraw from Hebrew University Seminar

Following the letter from Palestinian Students at Hebrew University, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) urges Dr. El-Hady not to participate in event at complicit Israeli university partially built on stolen Palestinian land in occupied East Jerusalem.  

Dear Dr. Ahmed El-Hady,

We are writing from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee, the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society. 

We echo the call from Palestinian students at Hebrew University urgently requesting that you cancel your participation in the "ELSC Seminar Series" this Thursday.

As the student activists noted, Israeli universities, including Hebrew University, have long played a willing and active role in planning, implementing and justifying Israel’s decades-old regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid. 

Hebrew University is partially built on stolen Palestinian  land in occupied East Jerusalem, in violation of international law. The university has joined legal actions to forcibly displace Palestinians to allow for campus expansion.

Hebrew University also hosts the Israeli military’s Havatzalot program, effectively a military base on campus that includes combat training. 

Hebrew University has also hosted recruitment events for Shin Bet, Israel’s notorious domestic intelligence agency. Shin Bet has been condemned by the UN Committee Against Torture over its use of violent interrogation tactics on Palestinians. 

The Israeli organization Academia for Equality has documented Hebrew University’s active cooperation with Israeli occupation forces subjecting residents of the adjoining Palestinian neighborhood of Issawiya in occupied East Jerusalem to “unrelenting and unfathomable police brutality,” including lending its rooftops to Israeli police for mass surveillance of Palestinians.  

As you may know, in 2021, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s leading human rights organization B’Tselem issued separate reports condemning Israel as an apartheid state against the entire Palestinian people. Israeli universities, including Hebrew University, are a crucial part of Israel’s apartheid apparatus.

Regardless of your intentions, participating in the ELSC Seminar Series at Hebrew University would help whitewash Israel’s apartheid regime and its grave violations of international law, including war crimes, gradual ethnic cleansing, home demolitions, expanding settlement enterprise, and administrative detention of political prisoners. 

At a time when academics and academic associations worldwide are increasingly refraining from any engagement with Israel’s universities, including Hebrew University, for their deep, decades-long complicity in apartheid and settler-colonialism, we ask you not to be a part of the ongoing normalization of these complicit institutions. We call on you to urgently withdraw from this seminar series.

Sincerely,

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)


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