Press Release: U.S. Academics Conclude Israel is Engaged in Apartheid in Gaza and the West Bank
Contacts:
Sandra Babcock: slb348@cornell.edu
Susan Akram: smakram@bu.edu
Thomas Becker: thomas@humanrightsnetwork.org
U.S. ACADEMICS CONCLUDE ISRAEL IS ENGAGED IN APARTHEID IN GAZA AND THE WEST BANK
Professors Defy Trump Administration’s Attempts to Suppress Criticism on Israel
On May 15—a day on which Palestinians mourn their 1948 expulsion from their lands and homes and which they commemorate as “Nakba Day”—a group of U.S. academics has issued a 90-page report concluding that Israel has committed the crime of apartheid in Gaza and the West Bank.
The report is the first to analyze Israel’s actions in Gaza under the legal framework of the crime of apartheid. The authors conclude that Israel’s mass killing of civilians and blockade of humanitarian aid prove Israel’s intent to inflict conditions of life “calculated to bring about Palestinians’ physical destruction in whole or in part,” violating the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.
Susan Akram, co-author of the report and a Boston University Law School professor, stated that “Israel’s apartheid policies are inextricably linked to its genocidal assault on Gaza. We cannot understand what is happening in Gaza without the larger context of Israel’s systematic oppression of Palestinians.”
The report cites dozens of experts, human rights organizations, and judicial decisions to support its findings. It concludes that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, which includes mass killing, arbitrary detention, torture, and the imposition of a legal regime that provides far less due process than that provided to Israelis living in the same territory, meets the legal threshold of apartheid.
Thomas Becker, the Legal and Policy Director of the University Network for Human Rights, which co-authored the report, stated, “In almost every aspect of life, the Israeli government treats Israeli Jews and Palestinians differently. The international community must cease its support of Israel’s racist policies, just as it did with South Africa.”
The principal authors of the report, all of whom are senior academics and human rights lawyers, state that they risk censure and possible loss of employment merely by publishing a report critical of Israel. “It is vital that we speak out against Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people,” said Sandra Babcock, a professor at Cornell Law School. “Faculty and students across U.S. university campuses are afraid to criticize Israel for fear they will be fired or deported,” she said. “But we must resist the Trump administration’s efforts to censor all criticism of Israel, particularly when Israel is engaged in war crimes fueled by racial hatred.”
