The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) condemns journalist and City University of New York faculty member Peter Beinart’s decision to speak at Tel Aviv University (TAU) today, particularly during Israel’s ongoing, live-streamed genocide of millions of Palestinians in Gaza.
PACBI has privately urged Beinart to cancel, particularly given his condemnation of Israel’s genocide and his welcome shift over the last few years in recognition of fundamental and inalienable Palestinian rights and away from “liberal” Zionism, a desperate attempt to make Israel’s Zionist regime of settler-colonialism, dehumanization, and elimination of the Palestinian natives seem palatable. We now publicly call on him to immediately cancel this unethical, unjustifiable engagement that, regardless of its content, can only be used to whitewash the unspeakable crimes committed by Israel and its institutions, including TAU, against Indigenous Palestinians.
TAU is deeply complicit in enabling and trying to whitewash Israel’s US-armed and funded genocide as well as its decades old regime of settler-colonialism, military occupation and apartheid. It has developed many weapon systems used by Israel in committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and now genocide against Palestinians. TAU’s venture capital firm, TAU Ventures, boasts of investing in Xtend, which provides systems to deploy “swarms” of armed drones that have been used in the Gaza genocide.
TAU has also run joint centers with the Israeli military and Israeli arms industries. It hosts the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), which boasts of having developed the so-called Dahiya Doctrine, or doctrine of disproportionate force. Adopted by the Israeli military, the Dahiya Doctrine calls for “the destruction of the national infrastructure, and intense suffering among the [civilian] population.” Disproportionate force is expressly prohibited under international law.
TAU has also instituted a “hasbara” (propaganda) course on Israel's genocide and organized paid staff to prepare “battle rations” for soldiers involved in genocidal crimes in Gaza. Just days ago, TAU announced an initiative to provide full tuition scholarships to active duty IDF reservists who have served at least 200 days during the genocide, priding itself that 8,000 TAU students, the largest number of any Israeli university, have served during the genocide.
PACBI has advocated since 2004 for a boycott of complicit Israeli academic and cultural institutions. Speaking engagements, such as Beinart’s, explicitly violate PACBI’s academic boycott guidelines, as do all academic events, whether held in Israel or abroad, that are convened or sponsored by complicit Israeli institutions. Many universities worldwide have cut ties with TAU and other Israeli universities over their proven complicity in Israel’s crimes.
Israeli universities have been for decades a key part of the ideological and institutional scaffolding of Israel’s regime of colonial oppression, dispossession, and violence against the Indigenous Palestinian people. Since their founding, they have been essential in the design, implementation, justification and whitewash of Israel’s structural and systematic denial of Palestinian rights, as documented extensively by many academics, including, most prominently, by Israeli anthropologist Maya Wind in her authoritative book Towers of Ivory and Steel.
We call on Peter Beinart to withdraw from this event as well as respect the nonviolent Palestinian picket line and PACBI’s academic boycott guidelines. Whitewashing genocide can never be reconciled with any claim to humanism or moral consistency.