4 November 2024
Model Motion on Academic BDS
This branch notes:
· the ongoing carnage in the Gaza Strip, the extension of the conflict to indiscriminate bombing and assassinations in Lebanon, and the threat of a regional war in the Middle East;
· the systematic destruction of all of Gaza’s universities, and the targeted killing of their leadership and professoriat, as well as hundreds of their students, in what what has been named a ‘scholasticide’ – the destruction of the entire educational leadership of a society and people;
· the engagement of all Israeli academic institutions in support of these attacks, and their complicity in the protracted suppression of Palestinian rights and the maintenance of the apartheid state;
· the systematic suppression in every Israeli university of any voices raised against the ongoing genocide whether from staff or students and whether of Muslims, Jews or Christians;
· the failure of any Israeli academic institution to condemn the indiscriminate slaughter in Gaza and Lebanon;
· the recent judgments of the ICJ and ICC finding Israel likely to be guilty of war crimes and thus in breach of international law, thus requiring corporate bodies and individuals, as well as governments, to act to prevent the continued commission of these crimes; and
· the call from Palestinian civil society to isolate Israel as a pariah state, and to boycott its academic institutions.
This branch believes that:
· the continuance or the inauguration of any formal or informal relationships with Israeli academic institutions would render individuals, universities and governments in the UK complicit in maintaining the crime of apartheid, and in supporting the perpetration of war crimes;
· there should be no ‘business as usual’ with Israeli institutions, all of which support the genocide in Gaza, the indiscriminate mass killings in Lebanon, and the maintenance of an apartheid system.
This branch resolves:
· formally to endorse the Academic Commitment for Palestine (https://academiccommitmentforpalestine.wordpress.com/)
· to circulate the text of, and the link to, the Commitment to all members with a recommendation that they consider the moral and political and legal implications of having links with Israeli institutions, and that they consider adding their names to the Commitment;
· to arrange to have the issue of an academic boycott raised as a matter of policy on School Boards and on Senates or Academic Boards for discussion and decision; and
· that the branch will raise the issue of an academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions in formal negotiations with the University’s management in the light of the moral and legal jeopardy in which relations with Israeli academic institutions would put the University and individual members of its staff.
