Dear Ms. Gordimer,

I am a Palestinian lecturer in Cultural Studies living in Gaza. I happen to also have South African citizenship as a result of my marriage to a citizen of that beloved country. I spent more than five years in Johannesburg, the city in which I earned my Ph.D and lectured at both traditionally black and white universities. At Vista in Soweto, I taught your anti-apartheid novels My Son's Story, July's People and The Late Bourgeois World. I have been teaching the same novels, in addition to The Pick Up and Selected Stories, to my Palestinian students in Gaza at Al-Aqsa University. This course is called "Resistance, Anti-Racism and Xenophobia". I deliberately chose to teach your novels because, as an anti-apartheid writer, you defied racial stereotypes by calling for resistance against all forms of oppression, be they racial or religious. Your support of sanctions against apartheid South Africa has, to say the least, impressed my Gazan students.
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Yesterday, Friday, 29 February 2008, Israel's deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatened Palestinians in Gaza with a "holocaust," telling the Israeli Army Radio: "The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."[1] This date will go down in history as the beginning of a new phase in the colonial conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, whereby a senior Israeli leader, a "leftist" for that matter, has publicly revealed the genocidal plans Israel is considering to implement against Palestinians under its military occupation, if they do not cease to resist its dictates. It will also mark the first time since World War II that any state has relentlessly -- and on live TV -- terrorized a civilian population with acts of slow, or low-intensity, genocide, with one of its senior government officials overtly inciting to a full-blown "Holocaust," while the world stood by, watching in utter apathy, or in glee, as in the case of leading western leaders. read article...

By now, most Palestinians recognize Israel’s entrenched system of colonialism, racism and denial of basic human rights as a form of apartheid. In fact, Palestinians are far from alone in holding this view of Israel; leading South African intellectuals, politicians and human rights advocates subscribe to the same school of thought. For instance, in an article in the Guardian tellingly entitled “Apartheid in the Holy Land,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote:

“I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. […] Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon?”[1]

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In 2004 the 20th Haifa International film festival established a section for "New Palestinian Cinema" in cooperation with Masharaf magazine in Haifa. Several Palestinian film makers were invited to present their films at this festival. A number of us at Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) contacted some of these filmmakers to urge them not to participate in that festival. read article...

On April 22, an important psychological barrier was shattered when the British Association of University Teachers (AUT) decided to boycott Haifa and Bar Ilan Universities because of their "complicity in the racist and colonial" policies of Israel. At its annual meeting, the AUT also voted to circulate the Call for Boycott issued by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) among all its branches. The Palestinian Call is supported by almost 60 of the most important unions, professional associations and educational institutions in Palestine, including the Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities' Professors and Employees and the umbrella organization of Palestinian NGOs in the occupied West Bank (PNGO). read article...

On May 26, the Association of University Teachers (AUT) in Britain reversed its previous decision -- taken on April 22 -- to boycott Israeli universities. Intimidation and bullying aside, no tool was as persistently used, abused and bandied about as much as the claim that academic boycott infringes on academic freedom. Freedom to produce and exchange knowledge and idea was deemed sacrosanct regardless of the prevailing conditions read article...

"'Are the Israeli 'racist and colonial policies' similar to those of apartheid South Africa?'

As a Mathematician, I believe in applying logic to every problem we face: social, political, administrative or any other. When arguments get entangled with relevant and irrelevant claims, one has to stop and think logically about the problem. read article...

La Asociación de Profesores Universitarios (APU) de Reino Unido votó en su asamblea del día 22 de Abril a favor del boicott a las universidades de Haifa y Bar-Ilan, y a favor de la difusión íntegra de la Llamada al Boicot de las Instituciones Académicas Israelíes. Esta decisión histórica, que sienta precedente, permanece como un logro mayor en la lucha por alcanzar una paz justa en nuestra región. Por fin, el boicot a las instituciones israelíes como respuesta moral y políticamente explícita a los crímenes israelíes, está en la agenda occidental, y ya no se puede ignorar. read article...

Some of the most committed Israeli opponents of their state's illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories have recently expressed serious reservations about, if not strident opposition to, the Palestinian call for boycott of Israel's academic and cultural institutions. We think that their concerns are worth addressing. read article...