PACBI – the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel – takes a different and clear stance. The campaign group wrote to The Electronic Intifada:Do these exceptions apply to Omar Barghouti, the founder of BDS?
“Any international student, regardless of her/his identity, enrolling in a complicit Israeli university, like the Hebrew University, is violating the relevant BDS guidelines. We strongly advise against such enrollment and against any other connection to these complicit institutions.”
“The Hebrew University, like all Israeli universities, contributes to Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid. These institutions play a persistent role in planning, implementing, justifying or whitewashing Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights,” PACBI added.
There’s a couple of important things to note about this statement – its reference to international students as well as identity.
Some might argue that Alqasem’s Palestinian ancestry justifies her attending Hebrew University. But this is not the case.
PACBI’s academic boycott guidelines do permit some Palestinians – those with Israeli citizenship – to attend Israeli universities, but this is not merely because of their ethnic identity as Palestinians.
Rather, it is because they are in a “coercive relationship” with the Israeli state. As taxpayers and citizens – albeit second class because they are not Jewish – Palestinians in Israel have no choice but to attend Israeli schools and universities to fulfill their right to an education while remaining steadfast in their homeland.
This “coercive relationship” analysis can arguably be extended to Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, especially East Jerusalem, where Palestinian educational choices are severely restricted by Israel.
Barghouti is not an Israeli citizen although he holds Israeli residency status and lives in Acre. He has a master's degree from Columbia University and appears to have been studying for his PhD in philosophy at Tel Aviv University since 2009. His Palestinian identity is no more relevant than that of Lara Alqasem.
Barghouti routinely travels around the world and gives lectures at universities worldwide. The idea that he is coerced into attending an Israeli university is simply not true - he has the ability and means to attend any university he wants, including in the West Bank but also in the US and Europe where he lectures on supposed Israeli crimes. Nowadays, he can almost certainly tailor a program where he can attend and check in with his thesis advisor online to any major university worldwide he desires. The fact that he has not yet apparently received his PhD after 9 years of study shows that he is not forced to attend classes in person; he could pursue a similar PhD program literally anywhere worldwide and visit his university when he goes on his regular speaking tours.
So if, according to PACBI and Electronic Intifada, there is no "coercive" relationship loophole for BDS' founder, he has violated and may still be violating his own standards on academic boycott of Israel.
This is what a hypocrite looks like.
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| All "international" students without my special "loophole" must "boycott" Israeli universities |