‘UCT must cut ties with Israeli institutions over oppression’

THE UCT Palestine Solidarity Forum will hold its Israeli Apartheid Week at the University of Cape Town from March 27 to 31.

As part of Israeli Apartheid Week, the Palestine Solidarity Forum is launching a campaign to pressure UCT to adopt a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The principle of applying wide-ranging boycotts on a country already has proven to be an effective strategy, as seen in the case of apartheid South Africa.

The boycott proposed follows the clear guidelines set out by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. These guidelines can be found on Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel or BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) websites.

It has been well documented that the state of Israel was founded through the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. The legacy of this is still profoundly felt by Palestinians, and exacerbated by the daily abuses of Palestinian human rights by the Israeli state.

Israeli universities are complicit in this oppression. As universities, they promote and entrench a national ideology which justifies the oppression of Palestinians. These institutions are the bastions of Zionist ideology, an ideology which effectively reduces all non-Jews to the “other”, which is used in justifying the oppression of Palestinians.

Israeli universities also actively support the Israeli army in its repression of Palestinians. Technical and academic support in areas such as the development of weapons, military training and funding is provided by the universities to the Israeli army.

In the past, UCT has rejected calls for an academic boycott of Israel as it has claimed it violates the academic freedom of Israeli academics. The proposed boycott violates Israeli academic freedom inasmuch as UCT cares about Palestinian academic freedom – it does not.

The proposed boycott targets institutional links between UCT and Israeli universities. It does not threaten the work of individual Israeli academics, nor limit their participation in academic engagement with UCT academics. However, on the other hand, Palestinian universities are routinely bombed, closed and controlled by the Israeli army. Hypocritically, UCT has remained silent on the violation of the academic freedom of our Palestinian colleagues. By remaining silent, UCT is complicit.

The university is in a position where it can play a pivotal role in applying pressure on the Israeli state to concede the human rights of the Palestinian people.

More information on the campaign for UCT to boycott Israeli academic institutions can be found on the UCT Palestine Solidarity Forum Facebook page. UCT Palestine Solidarity Forum University of Cape Town