Protesters urging a boycott against Israel in Melbourne, file photo (CC-BY SA Takver/Wikimedia Commons)
Thousands of Italians are calling for a boycott of 200 students and lecturers from their own country who urged a boycott of Israel’s Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa.
The original petition called to boycott Israeli universities due to their “notorious complicity” with the country’s “state violence” in the conflict with the Palestinians.
Some 30 of the lecturers teach at the University of Turin in the country’s north. Turin Mayor Piero Fassino expressed his own opposition to the boycott call.
The petition, produced by a group calling itself the Italian Campaign for the Revocation of Agreements with the Technion, accuses the Israeli institute of working in lockstep with the Israel Defense Forces and arms producers.
The center-right Italian daily Il Folio described the efforts to boycott Israeli academic institutions as a return to the days of fascism, when under the dictatorship of Nazi-allied Benito Mussolini Jewish lecturers were removed from academic institutions in Italy, Israel Radio reported Tuesday.
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File: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (R) and Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi hold a joint press conference at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem on July 21, 2015. (Flash90/Marc Israel Sellem/Pool)
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