Berlin, August 26, 2013

Open Letter to Univ.-Professor Dr. Brigitta Schtt, Univ.-Professor Dr. Klaus Hoffmann-Holland, Professor Peter-Andr Alt and the reprsentatives of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Dr. Jeroen Verschragen), Deutschen Institut fr Menschenrechte (Board of Directors), Menschenrechtszentrum Uni Potsdam (Directors)

Dear Sirs or Mesdames, We are writing to express our outrage at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft funded cooperation agreement for the Research Training Group between the Free University and the Hebrew University, Human Rights under Pressure - Ethics, Law and Politics.1 There is in fact nothing ethical or legal in a cooperation agreement with an academic institution that is complicit in systematic violations of human rights and international law. This complicity is illustrated by the involvement of the Hebrew University Jerusalem (HUJ) in the military programme Talpiot, which was started in the HUJ and is situated in the university. 2 As you can learn from the website of the Israeli Ministry of Defence this programme aims to educate a military elite which is also capable to contribute to the research on and development of military weapons. 3 Even besides the education of military elites and thus the continuation and perfecting of the military occupation the HUJ has encouraged students directly to take part in military operations. For example during the operation Defensive Shield in 2002 the students that joined the Israeli army on reserve duty received a grant by the HUJ equating Euro 300.4 This policy to encourage the active participation
1 2

http://www.fu-berlin.de/presse/informationen/fup/2013/fup_13_123/index.html http://www.signallake.com/innovation/Talpiot070607.pdf 3 http://www.mod.gov.il/pages/Talpiot/academic.asp 4 http://alternativenews.org/images/stories/downloads/Economy_of_the_occupation_23-24.pdf , Seite 13

in the fighting has also been supported and subsidized by the HUJ during the second Lebanon war in 2006 and during the aggression against the Gaza Strip (Occupied Palestinian Territory, OPT) in 2008/2009. The respective support and subsidizing included the payment of grants for the students as well as the recognition of the time of military service as academic performance. 5 The Hebrew University illegally acquired a significant portion of the land on which its Mount Scopus campus and dormitories are built. On 1 September 1968, just over a year after Israel's illegal and ongoing military occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank began, the Israeli authorities confiscated 3345 dunums of Palestinian land. Part of this land was used to build the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University, which is occupied Palestinian territory according to international law. Israel's unilateral annexation of occupied East Jerusalem into the State of Israel, and the application of Israeli domestic law to it, are violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and have been repeatedly denounced as null and void by the international community, including by the UN Security Council in its Resolution 252 of May, 21st ,1968.6 By moving Israelis (staff and students) to work and live on occupied Palestinian land, the Hebrew University is, therefore, in grave violation of those same Geneva conventions. To cooperate with an institution that is directly complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands is to endorse this occupation and the Hebrew Universitys grave violations of human rights under the guise of a human rights research program. Your cooperation agreement is in direct contravention of the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions7 against the state of Israel and its institutions8 that are complicit in gross violations of human rights that include the longest running illegal military occupation in modern history, systematic racial discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel and the ongoing denial of the UN-endorsed right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes and lands in the state of Israel. This call, inspired by triumphant the boycott call against Apartheid South Africa, is a nonviolent and a morally consistent strategy with which to hold Israel accountable to the same human rights standards as other nations, the same values which your cooperation purportedly seeks to research . As part of this boycott call, Palestinians have asked the academic community to refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions, until Israel complies with international law and withdraws from all the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; removes all its colonies in those lands; agrees to United Nations resolutions relevant to the restitution of Palestinian refugees rights; and dismantles its system of apartheid that accords Palestinian in the occupied territories no rights at all and those who are citizens of Israel second-class status. Renowned academics and academic institutions have followed this call in recent years and have thus expressed their support demands of the Palestinians which are guaranteed by international law legitimate. These include, for example, the University and College Union9 in the UK, the Association

5 6

http://alternativenews.org/images/stories/downloads/Economy_of_the_occupation_23-24.pdf , S. 12 http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/46F2803D78A0488E852560C3006023A8 7 http://www.bdsmovement.net/call#German 8 The call was published one year after the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory / http://www.icjcij.org/docket/index.php?pr=71&code=mwp&p1=3&p2=4&p3=6 und http://www.un.org/depts/german/gvnotsondert/ar-es10-15.pdf 9 http://bricup.org.uk/documents/FraserCasePR.pdf

for Asian American Studies10 and many others in the U.S. This year, the world-famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking11 decided to withdraw his commitment to the annual scientific conference of the President of Israel and to support the boycott officially. By cooperating with the Hebrew Universitys on nothing other than a human rights research program, the Free University will not only be crossing this picket line, but it will also be making a mockery of universal human rights as it whitewashes and obscures the Hebrew Universitys complicity in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, and as it endorses the Hebrew Universitys working principle of human rights only for some. In view of the everyday discrimination against Palestinian students at the HUJ itself, which are manifested among other things by the violent crackdown of peaceful protests or prohibition of organizing cultural events, the HUJ denies Palestinian students their right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.12 With its cooperation the FU implicitly supports the approach of HUJ to award human rights only to certain people. Instead, we urge you to honor the Palestinian boycott call and their fight against occupation, colonialism and apartheid13 to promote knowledge and education worldwide by standing in support of the struggle for freedom, justice and equality.

We kindly ask for your reply. Kontakt: bdsmovement-Berlin@web.de BDS Berlin BerlinAcademic Boycott Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within (Israel) British Committee for the Universities of Palestine /BRICUP Collectif Judo Arabe et Citoyen pour la Palestine - Strasbourg Deutsch-Palstinensischer Frauenverein e.V. Frauen in Schwarz (Vienna) Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (UK) Jdische Stimme fr gerechten Frieden in Nahost EJJP Germany Kritische Jdische Stimme (Austria) Palstina-Forum-Nahost, Frankfurt/Main Palstinakomitee Stuttgart Palstina/Nahost-Initiative Heidelberg Palstinensische Gemeinde Deutschland e.V.

10 11

http://aaastudies.org/content/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/08/stephen-hawking-israel-academic-boycott 12 http://alrasedproject.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/alrased1_eng.pdf 13 http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html , http://www.un.org/depts/german/internatrecht/roemstat1.html und http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cerd/docs/CERD.C.ISR.CO.14-16.pdf