More than 1,000 professionals have signed a manifesto, released by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) academic campaign for Palestine, demanding to end all institutional relations with the Israeli academic world, until it stops supporting occupation and apartheid in Palestine. The campaign, which started two years ago, asks for support from professionals from the academic and scientific field, and also from associations linked to this field, such as student’s and worker’s unions, research centres, professional associations, etc.
MARTIN SHAW 31 July 2014 The latest Israeli assault on Gaza is for one scholar an occasion to rethink the fundamental arguments for and against a boycott of the country. Israel’s slaughter in Gaza must make us all pause and ask whether we should rethink our stance on the Palestine conflict. The killing is presented as a regrettable response to Hamas’s provocations, an almost routine police action as the Israeli euphemism "
The Israeli government has already proven that it fears international isolation YARA HAWARI Wednesday 30 July 2014 Israel has lost its grip on reality. The death toll in Gaza stands at well over a thousand and continues to rise by the day. The coastal strip has been reduced to rubble. Rather than celebrating Eid this week, Palestinians in Gaza have been burying their dead. Jon Snow’s poignant message after his return from Gaza on Channel 4 news was heart-breaking.
31 July 2014 As we write this statement, 25 days after the brutal incursion on Gaza, over a thousand and four hundred of innocent civilian women, men and children have been butchered by Israel’s war machine and much more are threatened to be killed. The call for raping Palestinian women by the so-called “Bar-Illan University Arabic Literature Professor” teaches us, once again, that Israeli “scholars” and “academic institutions” are an organic and integral part of the Zionist colonial project.
Adam Horowitz on August 1, 2014 In light of the ongoing Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip and the renewed call from Gaza civil society to enact boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel, Verso Books is offering a free ebook download of its 2012 BDS anthology, The Case for Sanctions Against Israel, with contributions from authors such as Ilan Pappe, Noura Erakat, Mustafa Barghouthi, Rebecca Vilkomerson, Haneen Maikey, Nada Elia, Naomi Klein, John Berger, Neve Gordon, and Slavoj Žižek.
Israelis in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square light candles for Palestinians killed in Gaza on 26 July. (Yotam Ronen / ActiveStills) Ilan PappeThe Electronic Intifada 27 July 2014 I do not know yet who your loved one was. She might have been a baby a few months old, or a young boy, a grandfather or one of your children or parents. I heard about your loved one’s death from Chico Menashe, a political commentator on Reshet Bet, Israel’s main radio station.
David Cronin on Fri, 07/25/2014 I vividly recall the first time I saw live. She looked shy and fragile as she walked onstage. And then she began her song “Troy,” whispering to us one second; screaming at us the next. It was enchanting and haunting. That was 26 years ago. Ever since then, I’ve admired O’Connor as a woman of talent and courage. So I felt a bit hurt when she rejected me in a distinctly twenty-first century manner last month: by blocking me on Twitter.
