«Israel» Apartheid Week Held at 30 UK Universities, Despite Repression

Local Editor

"Israel" Apartheid Week took place on more than 30 university campuses across the UK last week despite a massive government backed campaign of repression.

The week saw some events cancelled, with unprecedented and bizarre restrictions imposed on organizers.

"Israel" Apartheid Week is an annual series of events that last year took place in more than 225 cities across the world to raise awareness about how the "Israeli" entity meets the UN definition of apartheid and to build support for the Boycott, Divestment And Sanctions [BDS] movement.

Thousands of students and academics attended events as part of what was one of the biggest "Israel" Apartheid Weeks in the UK to date.

This was doubly impressive given the unprecedented campaign of repression launched against the event by the UK government, universities and the pro-"Israel" lobby. The campaign came in the context of broader attacks on Palestine organizing in the UK and across the world.

On 13 February, UK universities minister Jo Johnson wrote a letter titled "Tackling Anti-Semitism on campus" to Nicola Dandridge, the head of Universities UK, the representative organization for universities.

Apparently signaling that universities should seek to subject "Israel" Apartheid Week events to special scrutiny, Johnson wrote that events which "might take place under the banner of ‘"Israel" Apartheid' events" must be "properly handled by higher education institutions to ensure that our values, expectations and laws are not violated."

Johnson's letter was passed on to the head of each of the UK's universities.

British university staff are also being told to "manage" pro-Palestine events on campus as part of the government's controversial Prevent anti-extremism strategy, Middle East Eye reported.

In addition, pro-"Israel" organizations lobbied universities directly, urging them to cancel "Israeli Apartheid Week" events and organized mass letter writing campaigns. According to an email newsletter it sent out, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a pro-"Israel" organization, met with several universities to call for the cancellation of events.

Yet despite all this, "Israel" Apartheid Week events still took place at more than 30 campuses.

Explaining how the "Israeli" entity meets the UN definition of apartheid and that Palestinians are entitled to the same human rights as everyone else is part of a global anti-racist struggle - despite whatever the "Israel" lobby claims.

It's also significant that academics across the country wrote emails to management and brought up concerns about repression in their departmental meetings. More than 250 academics signed an open letter published in The Guardian denouncing the campaign of repression.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team