The Liberation of Palestine –A Universal Cause Not Merely an Academic Exercise

By Genevieve Cora Fraser Early on the international conference of academics and intellectuals, students and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) at the University of Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium threatened to come apart at the seams. They were gathered for the “3rd International Conference on An End to Occupation, A Just Peace in Israel-Palestine,” also billed as “An International Network in Action.” But shortly after the first panel discussion began, a letter was read demanding a boycott of some of the assembled on behalf of a group calling itself the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and endorsed by sixty of the most important academic, cultural, professional and trade unions and associations in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. The letter focused on Palestinians’ Right to an Education and originated from Beir Zeit University outside of the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

Immediately a noisy protest against the reading of the letter drowned out the speaker until a call for order restored calm and the speaker proceeded. “The Israeli academy has contributed, either directly or indirectly, to maintaining, defending or otherwise justifying the military occupation and colonization of the West Bank and Gaza, the entrenched system of racial discrimination and segregation against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, which resembles the defunct apartheid system in South Africa, and the denial of the fundamental rights of Palestinian refugees in contravention of international law,” the letter read in part.

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