Pro-Palestinian protests on campus: Israeli academics weigh in [Video]

MONTREAL –

One of the demands of pro-Palestinian activists who have set up protest encampments on university campuses in Canada and the United States is a severing of ties with Israeli universities.

Tel Aviv University and other research institutions in Israel are accused of being accomplices in that country’s war in Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian territories. But some prominent Israeli academics argue their universities are also home to leading voices for peace and have been at the forefront of the internal protest movement against the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

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“Academics in Israel are striving for peace – maybe more than any other part of the Israel community,” Prof. Ran Barkai, who teaches prehistoric archeology at Tel Aviv University, said in an interview Wednesday from Israel.

Israeli universities should be empowered, he added, because …