PSC calls for Israeli academics at microbial conference in Cape Town to be disinvited

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) picketed outside the Cape Town International Convention Centre where the International Symposium on Microbial Ecology (ISME), which included Israeli academics, was taking place. The Israeli academics who have been invited to the conference which started today and is expected to run until Friday have, according to PSC, “no record of opposing the historical and current colonial genocide of the Palestinian people”.

The PSC says that the invitation of the three academics as speakers has the effect of “normalising apartheid Israel and its society’s genocide of the Palestinian people. Although the Israeli academics may claim to attend the ISME as individuals, we see them as representatives of Israeli institutions and complicit with an oppressive regime,” reads the PSC statement.

Usuf Chikte from the PSC said that the local organising committee of the ISME are also complicit in the genocide that is taking place in Palestine. Chikte said one of the local organising team members that they spoke to defended the Israeli biological warfare and genocide against the Palestinians.

Chikte said that they want the local organising committee to condemn genocide of native Palestinians, immediately disinvite the Israeli academics, remove Israeli institutional affiliations from the conference, and provide information on efforts made to involve Palestinian academics.

“We want to speak to the local organisers to get an agreement with them that they oppose apartheid, they oppose the genocide. The second thing that we want is for the Israelis to be removed from the conference because Israel uses research and academia to normalise its racism, supremacism and genocide. The third thing that we want is for Palestinians to be recognised; we want to rebuild Gaza. We want those microbiological services to be re-installed. We want to re-train micro-biologists and other professionals as well and want this conference to assist with that,” he said.

Chairperson of Healthworkers for Palestine South Africa, Saadiq Molla, told Elitsha that as part of the academic and cultural boycott of Israel, they have asked the organisers in previous communications with them to disinvite the Israeli academics but they snubbed them.

The PSC statement says that all the universities in Palestine have been destroyed and multiple schools have been attacked by Israel. “The United Nations has described the attack on the education infrastructure as scholasticide, a systematic obliteration of education through arrest, detention or killing of lecturers, teachers, students and staff, the destruction of educational infrastructure and the erosion of the intellectual and cultural fabric of Palestinian society.”

The organisation has also called for Israel to be banned from sports tournaments and from the world football governing body (FIFA).