Abstract
‘The intifada reaches the ivory tower’, proclaimed the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz in its May 15 issue. Indeed it has. The shockwaves from Palestinian suicide bombings and Israel's war against terrorism in the West Bank territory are reverberating through scientific and educational organisations around the world. The trigger for the headline was an open letter, published on April 6 in the British daily newspaper The Guardian and signed by more than 130 scientists from Europe and Israel. It called for a moratorium on further European cooperation with Israeli scientific and cultural institutions ‘until Israel abides by UN resolutions and opens serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians […].’ The letter created a flurry of further petitions for and against a boycott as well as articles and editorials in European and Israeli newspapers. The waves of the debate finally reached the secluded shores of various science islands in Europe and the scientific journals at the beginning of May, when Nature devoted its editorial to the topic. The journal has since published correspondence both for and against an academic boycott. The scientists calling for a boycott are dismayed with Israel's incursions into the West Bank and its treatment of the Palestinian population. They think that the political community, particularly the US government and the EU, is not doing enough to restrain either side from further escalating the spiral of violence and thus call for additional pressure on the Israeli government. ‘We view the situation as in the case of the South African boycott,’ explained Steven Rose, a neurobiologist and Director of the Brain and Behaviour Research Group at the Open University in the UK, and the initiator of the open letter. ‘I feel that the civil society has to stand up and do something about it. […] There are ways in which we …
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call