BDS Praises Georgetown University Students Blocking Funding for a Trip to Israel

Ramallah, MINA -The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has commended the graduate and undergraduate students at the Washington-based Georgetown University who successfully prevented $30,000 in student funding from being used for a propaganda trip to apartheid Israel.

The Georgetown students join hundreds of academic departments, programs, centers, unions and societies and tens of thousands of scholars, researchers, students and university staff worldwide who are standing up for Palestinian rights and urging accountability for apartheid Israel, WAFA reported.

“These trips serve to present Israel in a positive light, whitewashing its regime of military occupation, apartheid, and settler-colonialism and its decades-long denial of Palestinian rights, including the right to education.” The movement said in a statement today.

BDS added, “Israel has bombed and demolished Palestinian schools and universities, carried out military raids on campuses, including using live fire and tear gas, and imposed restrictions preventing travel to campus and abroad for scholarships.”

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“Israel just this week announced new procedures further restricting entry permits for faculty members from abroad and international students wishing to teach or study at Palestinian universities.”

Many major human rights organizations now recognize Israel as an apartheid state, and Palestinians have long called for ending complicity in its military occupation regime at all levels, as was done to end apartheid in South Africa.

“We also salute the Palestinian law students who roundly rebuffed itrek’s deceitful attempts to co-opt Palestinian students, refusing to serve as fig leaves for Israel’s regime of oppression,” the movement added.

“We join the Palestinian law students and the Georgetown students in urging all students to reject itrek’s propaganda trips and to work to ensure their university refuses ties with this organization’s deliberate whitewash of Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated against Indigenous Palestinians.”(T/R3/RE1)

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Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)