Edinburgh University Provides Israel with a Platform to Justify Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing

Monday, 3 March, 2008

SCOTTISH PALESTINE SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) condemns the decision of Edinburgh University to invite UK Israeli Ambassador, Ron Prosor, to speak at the university this coming Thursday.

In the past week over 100 Palestinians have been slaughtered as a result of an Israeli military attack on Gaza, an assault which confirms Israel's determination to continue a policy of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians, including children. It is a policy that is in clear violation of international law and as such it is a disgrace and a stain on the city of Edinburgh that a representative of the Israeli government be given such a welcome and a platform at Edinburgh University. In effect it is to condone Israel's continuing policy of siege, starvation, and military attack against a people whose only crime is that they continue exist.

Outgoing rector of Glasgow University, Mordechai Vannunu, was never able to take up his post due to being placed under house arrest by the Israeli government. His crime was to protest his own government's treatment of the Palestinian people and to reveal the existence of Israel's 'secret' nuclear weapons programme in 1986. For this he has served 11 years in solitary confinement and 18 years imprisonment in total. To this day he continues to be kept under house arrest by the Israeli authorities.

The treatment being meted out to the Palestinians - collective punishment, imprisonment without trial, assassination, economic blockade, and ethnic cleansing - finds its parallel in the treatment meted out to the Jews in Germany and occupied Europe during the Second World War. It was a concerted campaign of demonisation and dehumanisation which culminated in the horrors of Auschwitz.

These are historic parallels which the world, and Edinburgh University in particular, ignores at potentially catastrophic cost, especially given the recent statement of Israeli deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, who warned that the Palestinians of Gaza were facing a 'shoah', the Hebrew word traditionally used to describe the Nazi Holocaust.

We call on the rector of Edinburgh University, Mark Ballard, to denounce Thursday's visit, and we invite him to join what we anticipate will be a large and loud protest outside the venue at 5pm.

Ends.

Mick Napier: 07958002591
Sofiah MacLeod: 07931200361
John Wight: 07738528145

www.scottishpsc.org.uk