Palestinian Call for Academic Boycott Receives Extensive South African endorsement

The Call for Boycott issued by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic
and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) received today the critical
endorsement of the South African Council of Churches (SACC)
 representing millions- and of more than a hundred South African academics,
including Dennis Brutus, John Pampallis, Steven Friedman, Adam Habib and
Judy Favish.

PACBI has called for a comprehensive boycott of Israeli academic and
Cultural institutions due to their complicity in Israel’s racist and
colonial policies.

The Association of University Teachers (AUT) in Britain heeded that call
in its Council meeting on 22 April 2005, when it voted to boycott Bar-Ilan
and Haifa Universities as well as to consider boycotting the Hebrew
University.

In October 2004, a similar call for comprehensive boycott of Israel was
endorsed by major South African organizations and unions, including the
Congress Of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), Landless People’s Movement,
South African NGO Coalition, Anti-War Coalition and Physicians for Human
Rights. That initiative, led by the Palestine Solidarity Committee in South
Africa, was modeled after the anti-apartheid boycott and sanctions regime
that eventually brought about democratic rule in South Africa.

This momentous support for boycotting Israel comes in the context of the
rapidly growing South African awareness and recognition of the significant
parallels between Israel’s distinct form of apartheid and its South African
predecessor. It also expresses a laudable moral stand by South Africans in
solidarity with the people of Palestine.

Whatever the outcome of the frantic, well-oiled efforts by Israel and its
supporters to overturn the AUT boycott decisions, using misinformation,
intimidation and vilification of the boycott activists, the most significant
achievement that will persist is the fact that boycotting Israel has been
solidly placed on the international agenda as a morally and politically
sound form of civil resistance to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
(PACBI) *** Info@BoycottIsrael.ps