The Israeli state is a settler colony that maintains a system of apartheid. Universities and research institutions in Israel have historically played, and continue to play, a central role in the training of soldiers, police, intelligence personnel, and administrators essential to the occupation. They develop technologies for war and surveillance, integrating them fundamentally into the industrial-military complex. They also act as cornerstones for the ideology of Zionism and the justification of the oppression of Palestinians.
A large group Palestinian intellectuals, professionals, and academics therefore launched the campaign for a cultural and academic boycott of Israeli institutions in 2004. The aim is to grow international solidarity and generate pressure in order to secure fundamental democratic rights to national self-determination and equal treatment of Palestinians. This was followed in 2005 by a call for a broader Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, modeled on the campaigns against South African apartheid.
As Part of The Internationalist Alliance, the pocket organization “Boykott AG” unites students, scholars, and Workers to follow this call, connecting with existing campaigns such as BDS FU and Cut the Ties TU. Starting Winter Semester of 2025, we will intensify a Berlin-wide campaign for the academic boycott of Israeli institutions that are complicit in apartheid, occupation, and genocide.
To achieve this, we will:
- Deepen research into the complicity of German universities.
- Broaden educational work at our own universities.
- Use the Uppsala Declaration to convince colleagues to end their cooperation.
Our goal remains the comprehensive termination of institutional collaboration for as long as the Palestinian people are oppressed. Through our work, we aim to provide an impetus to unify local approaches of student and academic campaigns for an academic boycott across Germany.
Download & Share Informational Material
Below you will find information material (in german) from the Interalliance on the Academic Boycott Working Group. The files can be downloaded using the button, and we invite you to print out the material yourself and distribute it at your workplace, in your social circle or elsewhere!
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