Read Palestine

PACBI

Properties2
tags
aliasesPalestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

4 min read

Summary

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, formed in April 2004, whose call for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel preceded and fed into the 2005 BDS Call (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, PDF p.65).

Details

  • “Days before the ICJ ruling, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), formed in April 2004, issued a call for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel endorsed by some sixty unions, organizations, and associations in the Palestinian occupied territories urging the international community to boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions as a “contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization, and system of apartheid.”” (PDF p.65)

  • The British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) was formed in response to PACBI’s call and led several successful campaigns in British academic unions (PDF p.31).

  • The October 2010 Norwegian petition called for an institutional cultural and academic boycott of Israel “in line with the PACBI principles”, and the European Platform for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (EPACBI) was announced “in full coordination with PACBI” (PDF p.31).

  • The book’s appendices include the Call for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and PACBI’s guidelines for the international academic and cultural boycotts (Contents, PDF p.6-7).

  • The BDS Call was modelled on PACBI’s earlier call, the centre of the Association of University Teachers boycott debate of April–May 2005; PACBI’s statement on the AUT decision held that “The taboo has been shattered, at last.” (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, PDF p.84-85).

  • PACBI attributed the AUT’s reversal to intimidation tactics, one-sided media coverage precluding Palestinian voices, and a misinformation campaign (PDF p.97). Its 2004 call’s exclusion clause for conscientious Israeli academics was omitted after criticism (PDF p.100).

  • PACBI has consistently called for an institutional boycott only, in the academic and cultural fields, with no political testing or blacklisting (PDF p.121); its cultural-boycott guidelines treat events under official Israeli sponsorship as complicity deserving boycott (PDF p.127), and with the Palestinian NGO Network it placed the 2008 “No Reason to Celebrate Israel at 60” advertisement (PDF p.130).

  • In this part, the boycott call PACBI issued is the one UNESCO is charged with ignoring: the call was endorsed by dozens of unions and organizations including the Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities’ Professors and Employees (PDF p.140-141). Chapter 12 dates PACBI’s academic boycott call to July 2004 and restates its institutional character: Israeli universities are in “full, organic partnership with the security-military establishment”, and the boycott does not extend to individual academics (PDF p.165-169). The April-versus-July 2004 dating is recorded under Open questions on the source page.

  • Appendix 1 prints PACBI’s 2004 Call for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel in full: colleagues internationally are called “to comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions” by five steps — refraining from cooperation, advocating a comprehensive boycott including suspension of funding, promoting divestment, pressing associations for condemnation resolutions, and supporting Palestinian institutions directly without requiring Israeli partnership (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, PDF p.225-227).

  • Appendix 3 prints the PACBI Guidelines for the International Academic Boycott of Israel (revised August 2010): “all Israeli academic institutions, unless proven otherwise, are complicit in maintaining the Israeli occupation and denial of basic Palestinian rights”, while “mere institutional affiliation to — as opposed to representation of — the Israeli academy is therefore not a sufficient condition for applying the boycott”; twelve categories of boycottable events, agreements and services follow (PDF p.237-245).

  • Appendix 4 prints the PACBI Guidelines for the International Cultural Boycott of Israel (revised October 2010), with the parallel general rule for cultural institutions and five categories keyed to commissioning, funding, sponsorship, unfunded individual products, and false-symmetry events (PDF p.246-252).

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, BDS movement, BDS National Committee, Desmond Tutu

Graph View

Backlinks