35 Winter 2026 Israel was created unlawfully and therefore should not exist, denying Jews’ right of self-determination. Then UCL announced that it had re-opened an investigation into a student who praised Hamas on October 7, 2023, while those terrorists were raping, kidnapping and killing people in the south of Israel. While that announcement was welcomed, it raised questions about why an investigation of that student, as well as other students, had not been conducted earlier. The UCL blood libel lecture was not an isolated incident. Since the ceasefire was announced on October 10, 2025, the anti-Israel movements on campuses have turned into “De-Zionizing” projects. This is an ugly progression from the traditional Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), and ties in with the claims that Israel has committed “scholasticide” in Gaza.22 That term was first coined by Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian professor of politics at Oxford University, in the context of Operation Cast Lead in 2008. To understand the move to de-Zionize academia, we turn to the recent history of BDS. Long before October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza triggered by those attacks in Israel, condemnations by academics of Israeli policies have prompted many to call for boycotts of Israeli educational establishments. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement23 was founded in 2005 as an international campaign to isolate Israel politically, economically, and culturally. Its stated aims are to eradicate the State of Israel as a Jewish country, and to that end it opposes a peaceful two-state solution. The movement’s three main demands are: (1) Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; (2) Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and (3) Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.24 If those goals were achieved, this would end the globally accepted “two states for two people” formula and replace Israel with an Arab majority state in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. To achieve those aims, the BDS movement advocates for boycott of Israeli academics, musicians, artists, organizations; divestment of funds from companies that have an affiliation with Israel; and government sanctions against Israel. The movement justifies its call for an academic boycott25 by pointing to Israeli universities’ relationships with the state’s military, insisting that they are “major, willing and persistent accomplices in Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler-colonialism, apartheid, and now genocide.”26 In 2011, the University of Johannesburg became the first to act upon the academic boycott calls, severing links with Ben-Gurion University “over its complicity in Israel's human rights violations, including the theft of Palestinian water.”27 Since October 7, 2023, students and academics have renewed their demands for boycotts of Israeli universities and academics. In response, universities in Canada, Brazil, Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia, South Africa, Switzerland, and USA, among others, have cut ties with Israeli counterparts. In Spain, the Conference of University Rectors voted for all universities to “suspend collaboration agreements with Israeli universities and research centers that have not expressed a firm commitment to peace and compliance with international humanitarian law.”28 The demands for universities to boycott Israeli universities and academics have only increased since the ceasefire in Gaza. These have been accompanied by direct actions against Israelis on campus in furtherance of the new aim of de-Zionizing universities. The demands were 22. See, e.g., Avi Shlaim, “Scholasticide in Gaza,” 13(1) J. BRIT. ACAD. a16 (2025); Kate May, “Scholasticide in Gaza: A Need for Recognition of Systematic Educational Destruction as Genocidal,” OPINIOJURIS (July 23, 2025), available at https://opiniojuris.org/2025/07/23/ scholasticide-in-gaza-a-need-for-recognition-ofsystematic-educational-destruction-as-genocidal/ 23. BDS, https://bdsmovement.net/ 24. “Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS,” BDS (Aug. 7, 2025), available at https://www.bdsmovement.net/ call 25. “Academic Boycott,” BDS, available at https:// bdsmovement.net/academic-boycott 26. Maya Wind, “Israel’s Universities Are a Key Part of its Apartheid Regime,” JACOBIN (Feb. 27, 2024), available at https://jacobin.com/2024/02/israel-universitiespalestine-apartheid-academia 27. Supra note 25. 28. “Comunicado de CRUE sobre la situación en la Franja de Gaza,” CRUE (May 9, 2024), available at https:// www.crue.org/2024/05/comunicado-de-crue-sobre-lasituacion-en-la-franja-de-gaza/
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