YOUSEF ALHELOU: The world-renowned British physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has joined
the Academic boycott of Israel by refusing to attend a conference hosted by the Israeli
president Shimon Perez, in protest at Tel Aviv's treatment of Palestinians.
Hawking's move follows a boycott of Israel by the Teachers' Union of Ireland and by the
American members of the Association for Asian American Studies.
BDS activists consider Hawking's decision a huge victory in the campaign for boycott,
divestment, and sanctions targeting Israeli academic institutions.
In the past few years, dozens of artists, musicians and cultural figures have refused
to perform or canceled scheduled performances in Israel, in response to calls by the global
movement for the campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which was
launched in 2004 by a group of Palestinian academics, cultural figures and intellectuals
say that boycotting Israeli academic and cultural institutions is an urgently needed form of
pressure against Israel that can bring about its compliance with international law and
the requirements for a just peace.
HAIDAR EID: I think one of the most important forms of BDS campaign is the Academic and
cultural boycott.
I mean, during the heydays of apartheid, the apartheid system of South Africa suffered
from the sport boycott.
And here right now in Palestine we are calling on international academic institutions, cultural
figures, singers, writers, you name it, to boycott apartheid Israel until it complies
with international law.
What is extremely important for us is that our movement is a movement of civil society
and it calls for the implementation of international law.
We have three demands.
Demand number one is for the international community to impose sanctions against Israel
until it withdraws from Arab lands it occupied in 1967.
And we also expect Israel to implement United Nations Resolution 194, which calls for the
right of return of Palestinian refugees.
And demand number three is an end to Israel's discriminatory policies against the Palestinian
citizens of the state of Israel.
In 2011, the University of Johannesburg severed ties with Israel's Ben-Gurion University in
a campaign backed by over 400 South African academics and the Nobel laureate Archbishop
Desmond Tutu.
BDS--Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions--is a global campaign led by Palestinian civil
society, which issued a call back in 2005 calling on the international community to
boycott what they termed "apartheid Israel", impose sanctions against it, and divest from
it and from companies that invest in it, in line with the same policy that was used against
the apartheid system in South Africa, which untimely led to the collapse of the apartheid
system in 1994.
ADIE MORMECH: One barometer of the success of the boycott is that Israel has called them
an existential threat.
So they see the threat of the growing boycotts around the world.
They need the Western appreciation and the Western links, the connections culturally,
commercially, diplomatically.
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always maintain their position, really.
They need Europe and America to be continuously supporting.
So they want to show that they're the--they call themselves the only democracy in the
Middle East, when really they've got a military dictatorship over 2.5 million people in the
West Bank, and of course the siege and complete imprisonment of Palestinians in Gaza.
So they are worried.
They're worried that the West is going to gradually turn against them.
The victories around the world have been huge, and they're growing not only on a symbolic
level, which is on the cultural boycott with many famous musicians such as Snoop Dogg,
Massive Attack, Elvis Costello, The Pixies, Faithless, and many others, Annie Lennox,
all saying they will not perform in Israel--these are big groups.
ALHELOU: For decades, Israel has denied Palestinians their fundamental rights of freedom, equality,
and self-determination through ethnic cleansing, colonization, racial discrimination, and military
occupation.
EID: What we are actually calling for is an end to Israel's illegal polices against the
Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and Palestinian refugees.
We want an end to Israel's military occupation of the West Bank and Israel's policy of ethnic
cleansing.
ALHELOU: The BDS campaign has also attracted some leading Jewish peace activists.
And one of the most effective solidarity groups are the Israeli group Boycott from Within,
a group made up of Israeli peace activists who are encouraging the boycotts against Israel
until it ends its oppression of the Palestinian people.
Hasbara propaganda campaigns have been initiated by Israel to counter the damages caused by
the growing Palestinian-led BDS campaign.
AYAH BASHIR: Actually, Israel tries to accuse BDS activists of trying to delegitimize the
state of Israel.
And I will argue here that the effectiveness of the BDS primarily comes from being a strategy
of nonviolent resistance and cross-border solidarity for advancing our rights.
ALHELOU: Demonstrations, banner drops, flashmobs, workshops, as well as the annual Israeli apartheid
week are different forms of actions organized by BDS activists to raise awareness about
Israel's apartheid policies towards the Palestinians and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions
(BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.
Israeli Apartheid Week's rapid expansion, alongside that of the BDS movement, has arguably
established the two as the most prominent global projects by Palestinian activists and
their supporters.
Students often play an important role in driving the growth of progressive movements and the
BDS movement is no exception, with a rapidly growing number of student groups working to
pressure their universities to end ties with Israeli universities and corporations that
are complicit with Israeli human rights violations.
Palestinian academics and students have issued a thank you note to Professor Hawking in which
they express their deep appreciation for his principled position and for his support of
the Palestinian civil struggle for justice and peace in Palestine.
Yousef Alhelou for The Real News, Gaza.