Israeli Academics, including Nobel laureates, Boycott Settlement University

IMEMC – On Sunday, 155 academics joined the boycott of the ‘Ariel University Center of Samaria', located in the illegal West Bank settlement of Ariel.

The university and college faculty members signed a petition calling for an academic boycott of the University Center, based in the largest Israeli settlement of Ariel. The lecturers stated in the petition: "We, academics from a variety of fields and from all the institutions of higher learning in Israel, herein express publicly our opposition to the continued occupation and the establishment of settlements."

Nobel laureates Yehoshua Kolodny, Benjamin Isaac and Itamar Procaccia were among the signatories of the academics' petition, which follows a similar boycott call by artists and actors several months ago.

The document denounced the "unbearably harsh conditions" Palestinians suffer in nearby villages and refugee camps, where the residents are deprived of their basic human rights. According to the petition, "Ariel was built on occupied land. Only a few kilometers away from flourishing Ariel, Palestinians live in villages and refugee camps under unbearably harsh conditions and without basic human rights. Not only do they not have access to higher education, some do not even have running water. These are two different realities that create a policy of apartheid." Read more