Major Chilean Universities Heed BDS Call, Cancel Events Sponsored by Israeli Embassy

June 10, 2017 6:28 AM

Students at the University of Chile call for an end to ties with Israeli academic institutions.
Student-led BDS campaigns resulted in two major Chilean universities canceling events co-sponsored by the Israeli embassy and featuring Joe Uziel, a director of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). On Monday, Alberto Hurtado University’s Anthropology Department announced the cancellation of the event, and yesterday the University of Chile’s Social Sciences Faculty did the same.

BDS Chile highlighted the reasons behind the campaign to cancel the event:


Universities cannot be passive accomplices in grave human rights violations. The State of Israel maintains an illegal occupation, colonization and apartheid regime against the Palestinian people, and the Israeli Embassy is this regime’s representative in Chile. In addition, the Israel Antiquities Authority is a government entity illegally based in occupied East Jerusalem that carries out illegal excavations in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. Some of these illegal excavations are directed by the invited speaker, Joe Uziel.


The confiscation and theft of Palestinian cultural heritage are part of Israel’s attempts to erase Palestinian memory and cultural identity. Since 1967, the IAA has been deeply involved in cultural crimes and serious violations of international law, such as illegally removing and plundering hundreds of thousands of precious artifacts from the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including East Jerusalem. Fearing BDS campaigns, Israel has been trying to prevent information about archeological work in the OPT from being made public and to whitewash these violations by promoting events like these abroad.

More:
http://imemc.org/article/major-chilean-universities-heed-bds-call-cancel-events-sponsored-by-israeli-embassy/