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Wednesday 28 Oct 2015 - 10:19 Makkah mean time-15-1-1437
AFP image
London, (IINA) - More than 340 academics from dozens of British universities have pledged to boycott Israeli academic institutions in protest against what they call intolerable human rights violations against the Palestinian people, according to media reports.
The declaration, by 343 professors and lecturers, is printed in a full-page advertisement carried in Tuesday’s Guardian newspaper with the title: “A commitment by UK scholars to the rights of Palestinians.”
The 343 academics from 72 institutions said they would still work with Israeli colleagues on an individual basis.
“We are deeply disturbed by Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land, the intolerable human rights violations that it inflict on all sections of the Palestinian people, and its apparent determination to resist any feasible settlement,” the advert said.
They said they would not accept invitations to visit Israeli academic institutions, participate in conferences funded, organized or sponsored by them, “or otherwise cooperate with them.”
“We will maintain this position until Israel complies with international law and respects universal principles of human rights.”
Jonathan Rosenhead, from the London School of Economics, a spokesman for the boycott, said Israeli universities were “at the heart of Israel’s violations of international law and oppression of the Palestinian people.”
The boycott cited Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, as having created “special technology” to detect tunnels out of the Gaza Strip, and “weaponized unmanned bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes.”
Meanwhile, Ben Gurion University had conducted research "underpinning the on-going existence and deepening of discrimination within Israel's water system," it claimed.
The campaign comes a week after a letter signed by 150 British authors and artists, including Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling and double Booker Prize-winning novelist Hilary Mantel, said cultural boycotts that singled out Israel were “divisive and discriminatory, and will not further peace.”
SM/IINA
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