The following petition was initiated in April by two Australian academics, John Docker, a Jewish Australian author and fellow of the Australian National University's humanities research centre, and Ghassan Hage, a Lebanese Christian Australian of Sydney University's anthropology department. As of July 1, 2002, the petition had 2110 signatories. Together with signatories, it may be viewed at: http://www.petitiononline.com/bin/petition.html
Despite widespread international condemnation for its policy of violent repression against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories, the Israeli government appears impervious to moral appeals from world leaders. It is clear that while the Palestinians are rightly requested to reign in their extremists, the Israelis have elected their extremists to power. The slow, dehumanising and relentless colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza that has been continuing unabated in recent years has now taken an ugly murderous turn of immense proportions. How long are we, the citizens of a Western democracy, going to accept the silence of our government in the face of the current rampage of the Israeli army in the West Bank? How long are we going to look passively at the Israeli crimes of war perpetrated daily and systematically, not as something anomalous, but as a matter of national policy? In the face of our government's unwillingness or inability to act, civil society must step in to exert pressure against the continuation of this savagely anachronistic act of colonisation. In a globalised world, our passivity as citizens of the world in the face of such inhumanity will stain all of us.
Academics and intellectuals as always can play an important role in fostering the growth of such a non-violent movement within civil society. It is in this spirit that we call for a boycott of research and cultural links with Israel. We urge our colleagues not to attend conferences in Israel; to pressure our universities to suspend any existing exchange or linkage arrangements; and to refuse to distribute scholarship and academic position information. We note that while some academics and intellectuals in Israel oppose the government and some also are involved in cooperative Israeli/Palestinian research projects, the vast majority have either supported the current Israeli Army onslaught on the Palestinians, or failed to voice any significant protest against it. The boycott we propose will inevitably also adversely affect those who don't deserve it, and we regret that this has to happen. We ask our Israeli colleagues and friends to bear with us in solidarity. They know as well as we do that what they will endure because of these boycotts is minimal compared to what the Palestinian people and their academics continue to endure. As with boycotts against apartheid South Africa, urgent international action is now required to stop the massacres perpetrated against the Palestinian people.
Signatories (Please note that all signatories are signing in a personal capacity; institutional affiliations are given only for identification purposes).
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
