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In Anti-Boycott Move, Largest Ever Academic Delegation from Italy Visits Israel

by TheTower.org Staff |

Italy has sent its largest ever delegation of researchers and academics to meet with their counterparts in Israel this week, defying calls by anti-Israel campaigners to cut ties with the Jewish state.

Nearly 100 Italian academics, including representatives of the Italian Conference of Rectors, a group of the leaders of major Italian universities, are attending a series of ten conferences across Israel to celebrate 15 years of scientific and industrial partnership between the two countries. Led by Education and Science Minister Stefania Giannini, the delegation will sign a number of cooperation agreements with Israeli universities in the fields of material sciences and biophysics at the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv on Thursday, coinciding with Italy’s national day. The occasion will also be marked with the presentation of an Italian translation of the Talmud, as well as a festival of Italian folk-dancing in Tel Aviv.

“We believe that research and universities should be free and open to dialogue and exchange,” Francesco Talo, the Italian ambassador to Israel, told Haaretz. “We thought that the best answer would be action: to concretely do exactly the opposite of what some people ask us to do and bring a significant number of Italian researchers and academics to Israel,” he added. “Everybody is free to say what they want, but we will respond with actions.”

Some 300 Italian academics wrote a letter calling for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions earlier this year.

The move is Rome’s latest show of opposition to anti-Israel boycotts, with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi saying at the Knesset last year that “whoever boycotts Israel doesn’t understand that he is boycotting himself and doesn’t understanding that he is betraying his own future.”

While supporters of boycotts against Israel often attempt to portray their campaign as a protest against Israeli policies, critics have accused their efforts of being discriminatory in tone and intention, and pointed out that many boycott leaders have publicly affirmed that they seek Israel’s destruction. Omar Barghouti, the co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign and an opponent of the two-state solution, said in 2014 that Palestinians have a right to “resistance by any means, including armed resistance,” while leading activist As’ad Abu Khalil acknowledged in 2012 that “the real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel.”

[Photo: David Shankbone / WikiCommons ]

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