Do European Anthropologists Really Support BDS?
Error: Contact form not found.
by Elder of Ziyon
A pro-BDS demonstration. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
The BDS movement tweeted the following story as a victory:
#EASA2018 in full motion against cooperation with segregatory Israeli institutions established in occupied West Bank: 160+ vote in favor! Victory! pic.twitter.com/0Pjidh5Zct
— Allegra Lab (@allegra_lab) August 16, 2018
But all the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) agreed upon was to not cooperate with “Israeli institutions established in occupied West Bank,” not an academic boycott of Israel, as BDS insists.
Practically, this is a boycott of a single Israeli university — Ariel University — which indeed has a sociology and anthropology department. But is Ariel University “segregatory?” Not at all. It has Arab Israeli students and it would welcome Palestinian Arab students as well, but the Palestinian Authority forbids them to go there.
I couldn’t find the exact text of the motion, so I can’t say much more about it. But I think it is far less than the BDSers are pretending it to be, although it is still horrific for any academic group to knowingly institute a boycott on any university, thereby violating all academic principles and standards on freedom of expression.
There are 14 Israeli members of the EASA, and one person who identifies as Palestinian — who may have Israeli citizenship.
Elder of Ziyon has been blogging about Israel and the Arab world for a really long time now. He also controls the world, but deep down you already knew that.
