In February 2022, Amnesty International published its extensive report asserting that Israel enforces a system of apartheid over the Palestinian people. Amnesty International is the largest global human rights organisation, with over 10 million members worldwide. Its conclusions and condemnations of Israeli apartheid are significant. Academics for Palestine joins Palestinian civil society and solidarity movements in welcoming the report, and supports its call for international sanctions and an arms embargo against the Israeli state.
Palestinian scholars and activists have indeed consistently named and opposed Israeli apartheid since the 1960s, and Palestinian human rights organisations have been publishing their own legal analyses of Israel’s apartheid system since the 1990s. Over the past two years, the main Israeli and international human rights organisations have also begun to issue reports on Israel’s apartheid regime, after many years of refraining from naming this reality. It is a very welcome development that organisations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have now recognised and reiterated the Palestinian analysis. We hope that they will also take on board the arguments from Palestinian scholars (such as Lana Tatour, Noura Erakat, and Soheir Asaad & Rania Muhareb) pointing to the limitations of their analysis in not sufficiently addressing the foundational structures of Zionist settler colonialism, upon which Israeli apartheid rests. We also encourage Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to now fully endorse and campaign on the core request from Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions.
We as Academics for Palestine came together from the outset as a voice for ‘academia against apartheid’. In particular, Academics for Palestine aims to support Palestinian universities, academics and students, and to raise awareness among Irish academics and students of the grave difficulties faced by their Palestinian counterparts. We also continue to support and encourage the growing global solidarity movement against Israeli apartheid. This includes, for our purposes, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel as well as the wider BDS movement and its ongoing campaign for the UN to investigate Israeli apartheid. In response to the compelling efforts and evidence from Palestinian civil society, certain mechanisms and authorities within the UN system have criticised Israel’s apartheid and segregation against the Palestinians over the past 15 years. This includes various UN Special Rapporteurs, the UN Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.
Most recently, the current UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, Michael Lynk, has indicated that his final report to the Human Rights Council later this month will focus on the question of Israeli apartheid. Academics for Palestine – together with Sadaka and TCD Sociology Department’s M.Phil in Race, Ethnicity, Conflict – is very glad to be hosting Professor Lynk for a public lecture in Trinity College Dublin on Tuesday 29th March 2022 at 6pm. Professor Lynk will present the findings of his report on the question of apartheid, as well as reflecting more broadly on his six-year tenure as UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine. This will be an excellent opportunity to hear from and engage with a leading scholar who has been reporting and advocating on Palestinian rights within the UN system. Attendance is free and we very much look forward to seeing you there.
Further details of the event can be found here.
Academics for Palestine 