PACBI welcomes the decision by the International Sociological Association (ISA) to suspend the Israeli Sociological Society (ISS) over its failure to condemn Israel’s ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. We salute the scholars (including Global Sociologists for Palestine within ISA), activists, and civil society groups whose collective pressure and support for the PACBI demands made the ISA executive committee take this necessary yet extremely late measure of accountability, over 20 months into Israel’s genocide.
However, suspending the ISS is insufficient for ensuring that ISA’s Forum in Morocco does not harm the struggle for Palestinian rights, nor the Moroccan and broader Arab struggle against normalization. Giving an unconditional platform to de facto representatives of complicit Israeli universities that have for decades been a pillar in Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid, and military occupation further entrenches normalization, as defined by the Palestinian-led BDS movement. Israeli universities and institutions are today actively supporting the genocide, not just failing to condemn it or staying silent.
The ISA executive committee has not heeded the main Palestinian demands raised in PACBI’s statement of 24 June – that were widely endorsed by Arab and international sociologists as well as by the Palestinian Sociological and Anthropological Society, the Moroccan Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (MACBI), among others. We therefore reiterate our call to boycott the ISA Forum in Rabat.
Particularly given that the ISA Forum is taking place in the Arab region, PACBI has called on ISA to:
- Ensure that Israeli scholars de facto representing complicit Israeli universities while participating in the Forum publicly uphold Palestinian rights under international law
- Vet those scholars for possible involvement in Israel’s gross human rights violations against Palestinians, particularly war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
- Adopt a consistent policy of Land Acknowledgement for universities in all settler-colonial situations, including Palestine, in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and acknowledge the complicity of Israeli universities in their state’s crimes against Palestinians.
However, we understand and appreciate that many planning to attend the ISA Forum have not been able to cancel flights and accommodations and will end up going to Rabat. Given the difficulty of finding sufficient alternative spaces in the short time left, we urge them to join Global Sociologists for Palestine and Moroccan partners in boycotting any panels in which Israeli scholars, who de facto in the Arab region represent complicit Israeli universities, may still be speaking, unless those scholars publicly state the following:
I certify that I have not been directly or indirectly involved in Israel’s gross human rights violations, particularly war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, against Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians or others in the SWANA region;
Furthermore, I uphold the comprehensive, inalienable rights of the Palestinian people under international law. At a minimum, and in order for the Palestinian people to exercise its right to self-determination as stipulated in international law, I support:
- An end to Israel’s illegal occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem*;
- An end to Israel’s system of apartheid over the entire Palestinian people, as recognized by UN experts, Amnesty International, Palestinian human rights organizations, among others; and
- The right of Palestinian refugees to return to their lands of origin and receive reparations, as stipulated in UNGA Res. 194.
ISA’s decision to suspend the complicit Israeli Sociological Society makes it better than most international scholarly associations. But that does not exonerate it from meeting ethical requirements to ensure it does no harm to the Palestinian and solidarity struggle to end the genocide and dismantle Israel’s 77-year-old regime of settler-colonial apartheid. ISA can do better. ISA members can make it become more ethical.
* Israel’s illegal occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights and the Lebanese Shebaa Farms must also be brought to an end in accordance with international law.