The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a founding member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest entity in Palestinian society that leads the global BDS movement, calls on all speakers and participants to withdraw from the Islamic Archaeology Conference (ISAC) scheduled to be held at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, November 7-9, 2024.
The conference is in violation of the BDS movement’s anti-normalization guidelines.
Normalization, agreed upon by the overwhelming majority in Palestinian society, is the participation in any project, initiative or activity, local or international, that brings together (on the same “platform”) Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis (individuals or institutions) without meeting the following two conditions:
The Israeli side publicly recognizes the UN-affirmed inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, which are set out in the 2005 BDS Call.
The joint activity constitutes a form of co-resistance against the Israeli regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.
While this conference claims to “provide a platform for contributions from diverse groups of people and the exchange of ideas, methodologies and discoveries in Islamic archaeology,” it not only centers the Israeli speakers as “experts” in the field of Islamic antiquities and sites, but also features primarily those who work for the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The IAA has been deeply complicit since its establishment in serious crimes against our people, our heritage and our Arabic, Islamic and Christian civilization, in the systematic destruction and looting of this heritage carried out by Israel, and in its persistent attempts to erase Arab and Islamic identity and landmarks in the Palestinian homeland, in blatant violation of international law and of basic ethical principles that should guide this discipline.
The conference uses Palestinian and Arab participation as fig leaves for Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime to cover up its ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. Israel’s Gaza Genocide has killed at least 43,000 Palestinians and injured more than 100,000, while recently its massacres in Lebanon have killed more than 2,500 people and injured more than 11,000.
In addition, the overwhelming majority of German organizations and institutions adopt an unethical politicization of science, placing normalization as a goal in itself in the context of their unlimited complicity in funding, arming and shielding from accountability Israel’s 76-year-old regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid. They desperately attempt to divert attention from the genocide it is committing against our people, with the full support of the German government, German corporations, and most German institutions.
We therefore call on all speakers to withdraw from the conference and on participants to boycott it in order to do no harm to the Palestinian liberation struggle.