Over 600 Scholars and Artists Call For Dismantling "Apartheid Regime" in Israel

Over 600 scholars, artists and intellectuals from more than 45 countries signed a declaration made public on July 5, 2021 calling for the dismantling of the “apartheid regime” set up “on the territory of historic Palestine” and “the establishment of a democratic constitutional arrangement that grants all its inhabitants equal rights and duties.”

The signatories include Nobel Peace Prize laureates Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina and Mairead Maguire of Ireland, legal experts Monique Chemallier- Gendreau and Richard Falk, economist and former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations Sir Richard Jolly, South African politician and veteran anti-apartheid leader Ronnie Kasrils, and Canadian peace activist and former Green Party leader Joan Russow.

Among the academics signing this declaration are Daniel Boyarin, professor of Talmudic Culture at the University of California, Berkeley; Neve Gordon of Queen Mary University, London; Adi Ophir, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University, and Alice Rothchild, professor emeritus at the Harvard Medical School.

The statement declares: “Israel has established an apartheid regime on the entire territory of historic Palestine..Israel itself no longer seeks to hide its apartheid character, claiming Jewish supremacy and exclusive Jewish rights of self-determination in all of historic Palestine through the adoption in 2018 by the Knesset of a new Basic Law.”

It concludes: “The endorsers of this document call for the immediate dismantling of this apartheid regime and the establishment of a democratic constitutional arrangement that grants and implements on all the inhabitants of this land equal rights and duties, without any discrimination relative to race, ethnicity or gender… We call for the establishment of a national commission of Peace, Reconciliation and Accountability to accompany the transition from apartheid Israel to a governing process sensitive to human rights and democratic principles and practices. In the interim, until such a process is under way, we issue a call for the International Criminal Court to launch a formal investigation of Israeli political leaders and security personnel guilty of perpetuating the crime of apartheid.” **