Academic Boycott Now!

1. The Israeli apartheid system has been in breach of international
law since its foundation with the Nakba—the ongoing displacement and
dispossession of Palestinians from historic Palestine, beginning in 1948
and continuing to the present day. This process constitutes the structural
denial of Palestinian self-determination through military occupation, mass
incarceration, and Zionism (meaning the movement for the establishment
of a Jewish State in Palestine and the ideology of Jewish Supremacy in
Palestine) constitutes the basis for the structural denial of Palestinian self-
determination through different means, among them military occupation
and mass incarceration.

2. In the latest phase of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian
people, which intensified following October 2023,7, Israel has systematically
destroyed the conditions necessary for Palestinian life in Gaza. These
actions constitute genocide as defined in Article II of the Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Israel has directly
killed Palestinians, caused serious bodily and mental harm, and deliberately
destroyed health, education, commerce, industry, services, information and
communication, and municipal infrastructure in order to bring about the
physical and cultural destruction of Palestinians.

3. Israel continues to violate international law by denying Palestinian
refugees their right of return, as stipulated in UN Resolution 194, and by
illegally occupying the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip), and the Syrian Golan Heights.
Since 1967, Israel has extended martial law over these territories, including
arbitrary and indefinite detention, in which torture and sexual violence,
including rape, are systematically practiced. Illegal Israeli settlements
continue to expand through civilian and military intervention, with the
complicity of the international economical, political, and media stakeholders.

In light of our political responsibility and solidarity, we, the signatories,
unite and act at once with an organized collective campaign for a
general academic boycott of academic and cultural Israeli institutions
in accordance with the guidelines of the Palestinian Campaign for the
Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

We proceed to summarise these guidelines on the following three levels:
1. Institutional: We demand educational, scientific, and cultural
bodies active in Germany and internationally to:
a) Fully disclose the nature of their collaborations with
Israeli institutions and other entities that violate or could
violate international and humanitarian law, to enable
individual and institutional accountability.
b) Suspend or terminate collaborations with Israeli
institutions until PACBI conditions are met.
c) Divest from Israeli institutions and companies.

2. Individual: We call on students, academics, administrative and
logistic workers across German institutions to refuse collaboration,
invoking conscientious objection.

3. Organizational: We call for the obstruction and disruption of joint
projects, funding, and cooperation with apartheid institutions and
their agents through direct action and strikes.

Anchored in precepts of international law and universal human rights,
the BDS movement, including PACBI, rejects on principle boycotts of
individuals based on their identity (such as citizenship, race, gender, or
religion) or opinion. If, however, an individual is representing the state of
Israel or a complicit Israeli institution (such as a dean, rector, or president),
or is commissioned/recruited to participate in Israel’s efforts to “rebrand”
itself, then their activities are subject to the institutional boycott the BDS
movement is calling for. Mere affiliation of Israeli scholars to an Israeli
academic institution is therefore not grounds for applying the boycott.
Following PACBI guidelines, this campaign of academic boycott shall
continue until Israel’s academic and cultural institutions meet two basic
conditions:

Recognize the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as
enshrined in international law, including the three basic rights outlined
in the 2005 BDS Call:
a) Ending Israel›s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands
and dismantling the Wall.
b) Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian
citizens of Israel to full equality, and
c) Respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of
Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as
stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

4. The current situation in Palestine transcends regional borders.
To systematically surveil, control, and annihilate Palestinians, Israeli
corporations have specialized in military and policing technologies and
training, which are then exported globally. Israel is a significant driver of
militarization, authoritarianism, and the violation and erosion of human
rights worldwide, providing drones, AI-based recognition systems,
and surveillance spyware. All groups with anti-militarist agendas and
commitments to fundamental human rights, as well as popular struggles
worldwide, should oppose the state of Israel.

5. Israeli cultural and academic institutions are integral to the settler-
colonial project. They contribute to the erasure and rewriting of historical
facts, Palestinian cultural heritage, and academic achievements, as well as
to the illegal appropriation of land and cultural goods. These institutions
directly develop military and policing technologies and train and assist
the Israeli military and intelligence personnel. As institutions of apartheid,
they also systematically discriminate against Palestinians. By maintaining
academic ties, global academia normalizes and funds this state of affairs.
For example, the European Union enables this normalization by allowing
Israel’s participation in Horizon Europe. Italy and Germany even blocked the
partial suspension of Israel from the program, considered by the European
Commission.

6. The Federal Republic of Germany and its institutions are fully
complicit in the provision of military aid to Israel. This includes arms as well
as personal, logistical, and diplomatic support, despite serious accusations
of violations of international law. Germany also enables and abets Israeli
crimes by normalizing apartheid and genocide and by defending Israel’s
continued participation in international cultural, sports, and academic
forums.

7. Germany further contributes to this complicity by persecuting and
criminalizing Palestinians, their organizations, and anti-genocide activism
within its territory; this includes deplatforming and defunding organizations
expressing solidarity with or concern for Palestinian suffering. A notable
example is Bundestag Resolution No. 10191/19, which applies the IHRA
working definition of antisemitism in a manner that equates criticism
to Israel with antisemitism, contradicting ECHR decision 16/15271 and
European Commission decision E2016/005122- (ASW). This repression was
intensified by Resolution No. 2024( 13627/20), which calls for “exclusion
from classes or studies and even up to exmatriculation in particularly
serious cases,” as well as the cancellation of artistic, academic, and cultural
funding.

8. The ongoing Nakba has led to the formation and intensification
of numerous student and academic groups in solidarity with Palestine.
These groups have challenged German complicity in the genocide through
various means, including producing reports on academic complicity and
calling for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions—a measure described
as “the bare minimum” by Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on
the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since
1967.

End all forms of complicity in violating Palestinian rights as stipulated
in international law. This complicity includes discriminatory policies
and practices as well as diverse roles in planning, implementing, and/
or justifying Israel’s human rights abuses and violations of international
law.

Along with the above, we also call on German academia to advocate
for the BDS resolutions, and to advocate for them in international
academic networks and associations. We urge international networks
and associations that have resolved BDS resolutions to hold their complicit
German counterparts accountable for actively opposing them.
As necessary reparations for aiding and abetting Israeli crimes, we call
on German institutions to redirect all the infrastructure, personnel,
and funding currently available for Israeli institutions (e.g., joint
virtual campuses, specially allocated research funding, etc.) toward
Palestinian institutions in the West Bank and in rebuilding institutions in
Gaza. Furthermore, procedures must be implemented to hold accomplices
at German institutions accountable for their contributions toward the
crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people.