Launched
in January 2009 as an ally
of the of
the Palestinian Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee,
the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
(USACBI)
states that
its objective
is to persuade “international civil society organizations and
people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and
implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those
applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.”
Specifically, USACBI
objects to
Israel’s
“persistent violations of international law”; its “system of
racial discrimination, or apartheid, to which Palestinian ... citizens of Israel are subjected”; its failure “to respect [the] fundamental
human rights ... of the people of Palestine”; and its “occupation
and colonization in the 1967-occupied Palestinian
territory.”
Sondra Hale, a longtime professor of anthropology, Near Eastern studies, Islamic studies, and women's studies at UCLA
Rabab Abdulhadi, professor of women's studies at New York University
Lara Deeb, chair of the anthropology department at Scripps College
Marcy Newman, an English professor at Boise State University and a self-described activist committed to "the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees"
Magid Shihade, assistant professor of social sciences at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan
USACBI pledges
to pursue its BDS campaign against Israel until such time as the latter “meets its
obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right
to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of
international law by ending its occupation and colonization of all
Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; recogniz[es] the fundamental
rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality;
and respect[s] ... the rights of Palestinian
refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN
resolution 194.”
Calling
on American colleges and universities to refrain from associating
with Israeli universities, USACBI makes extensive use of social
networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace to disseminate
its message.
According to
USACBI, “Israel is
distinguished from other nations” in a number of ways “that
justify a boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign” against it.
These include the fact that
(a) “Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid and weapons,”
which it uses not only “in the commission of war crimes and crimes against
humanity,” but also in “such daily offenses as collective
punishment, systematic torture, and, indeed, the extended occupation
of Palestinian territory”; (b) “Israel has violated more United
Nations resolutions than any other country in the world, and has been
consistently protected by the U.S.’s Security Council veto power
from any attempt to enforce those resolutions”; (c) “Israel is
institutionally racist” and “engages in ethnic cleansing or
'population transfer' and policies that conform to international
definitions of apartheid for the sake of territorial expansion”;
and (d) “criticism and open discussion of Israel in the U.S. is
suppressed, and critics are aggressively silenced and censored” by
a powerful and deceitful Jewish lobby.
