BDS Australia
Eminent international researchers are calling on an Australian historian to refuse a controversial Israeli award.
In a highly unusual instance of global pressure, over 220 international and Australian academics have written an open letter to UNSW Laureate Professor of History, Alison Bashford, appealing to her to support the Palestinian call to boycott Israeli academic institutions by rejecting the US$1million 2021 Dan David prize, which she is sharing with two other researchers.
The academics’ letter says that accepting this year’s prize, which rewards Professor Bashford’s contributions to the understanding of public health, ‘serves to legitimize and normalize Israel’s colonial violence and apartheid’ against Palestinians. The letter points out the irony of an award for public health from a country actively blocking the delivery of vaccines to the five million Palestinians living under its control in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
PNN/ Ramallah/
The Palestinian Ministry of Education condemned the Israeli occupation’s execution of the student Atallah Rayyan, from the town of Qarawat Bani Hassan in the Governorate of Salfit, stressing that the deliberate killing, detention, and abuse of students and the assaults on their schools are all forms of the war the occupation is waging on Palestinian children and their right to life and education.
The Ministry stressed that these criminal violations and attacks undermine all international charters and treaties on human and child rights, including the right to education. The Ministry called on the international community and its official and civil institutions to declare a clear position condemning these criminal acts and pressuring the occupying state to stop them, affirming that the continuous occupation crimes against the Palestinian people is a result of the international silence towards it.