Wednesday, July 23, 2008

"I believe that a Penn State boycott of Israel will cause a cascade effect for other institutions to follow..."




LETTER TO THE EDITOR
"Action is required in Israel as was during Apartheid"

Posted on July 23, 2008
DAILY COLLEGIAN (Pennsylvania State University)

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2008/07/23/action_is_required_in_israel_a.aspx



The Palestine-Israel conflict has gone on too long. After more than 60 years of conflict, no end is in sight to the crisis and all military approaches seem to have failed. Therefore, the academic and intellectual communities are probably the only ones that can force a peaceful end to the conflict.


Penn State President Graham Spanier and the Penn State Board of Trustees need to set a precedent and boycott countries that don't adhere to the protection of human rights and international law.


I believe that a Penn State boycott of Israel will cause a cascade effect for other institutions to follow, thus forcing Israel to adhere to human rights and international law. Such actions have already proven to be effective when a world boycott lead to the end of the racist apartheid regime in South Africa.


As long as Israel continues to build illegal settlements, continues to illegally occupy Palestinian land, build an apartheid wall and continues to subjugate the basic rights of Palestinian people, there will never be a peaceful end to the conflict. It is time for Penn State to regard Israel as an apartheid state as we did South Africa.




Shamuel Afani

graduate-electrical engineering


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