Israel worries US boycott could go contagious

Israel has expressed alarm over a boycott of its academic institutions by a powerful group of American scholars, saying other academic organizations in the United States could take similar action.

On Sunday, the American Studies Association (ASA), which has nearly 5,000 members, approved the academic boycott of Israel to protest its treatment of Palestinians, indicating that a movement to isolate the apartheid regime of Israel that is gaining momentum in Europe has also hit the US.

“The ASA condemns the United States’ significant role in aiding and abetting Israel’s violations of human rights against Palestinians and its occupation of Palestinian lands through its use of the veto in the UN Security Council,” the organization said in a statement explaining the endorsement.

On Tuesday, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin termed the ASA as a “radical leftist group”, but added that “we need to prepare for the danger that it (boycott call) will pass to other, more serious academic forums.”

He stated that Israeli officials were striving hard to discourage other American groups from following the ASA’s lead.

Elkin went on to say that the Foreign Ministry had established an advocacy group called the “Faces of Israel” to “work among those who wield influence exactly in order to prevent cases such as this.”

The campaign to cut off ties with Israeli academic institutions dates back a decade, but it was not until April that the Association for Asian American Studies, which has about 800 members, supported an academic boycott of Israel.

The boycott calls on US schools and academic groups to ban collaboration with Israeli institutions, but individual Israeli scholars who do not represent Tel Aviv would still be able to attend academic events in the United States.

In January 2013, Heydar Jemal, the chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia, said Israel is implementing an apartheid system in the occupied Palestinian territories which will most likely lead to its collapse by 2020.

“Israel violates Muslims’ rights, kills Palestinians, and in fact has imposed an apartheid system” in Palestine, he stated.

In an interview with Press TV on August 2, Iranian political analyst Hamid Golpira said that there should be an international campaign “to show that Israel is an apartheid regime, just like South Africa was an apartheid regime. And there should be a worldwide campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against the apartheid regime of Israel, just as there was a campaign against apartheid South Africa.”

Israeli officials have recently announced plans to build thousands of more illegal settler units on Palestinian territory, despite the opposition of the United Nations and the international community.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds in 1967.

The UN and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbids construction on occupied lands.

And the apartheid regime of Israel denies about 1.7 million people in Gaza their basic rights, such as freedom of movement, jobs that pay proper wages, and adequate healthcare and education.

Gaza has been blockaded since 2007, a situation that has caused a decline in the standard of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty.