University head included on anti-Israel hit list blames government inaction over BDS

Ben Gurion University President Danny Chamovitz, one of dozens of Israeli researchers included in a hit list from an anonymous pro-Palestinian website, accused the government Friday of failing to take seriously the threats against Israeli academics at home and abroad.

“There have been threats against us for two years already,” said Chamovitz, a plant geneticist who has headed the university in Beersheba since 2019, in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster.

“We’ve alerted government officials — for example, around the BDS activities — that the threats against academia had to be taken very seriously,” said Chamovitz, referring to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, whose activity against Israeli academia has spiked since the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre that sparked the war in Gaza.

Absent a serious response, the threats were bound to deteriorate into open incitement for violence, said Chamovitz, quipping that he was “honestly pretty insulted by the price” put on his head by The Punishment For Justice Movement’s website, which offered $100,000 for each “special target” listed.

“The government hasn’t done a thing on the BDS issue, but we hope that now this will be a wake-up call,” he said.

Chamovitz linked the foreign intimidation of Israeli academics to threats against them within the country.

He noted that far-right MK and deputy minister Almog Cohen, who, together with right-wing student activists, last week crashed a lecture by a far-left Ben Gurion computer scientist, later said on Radio Darom that Chamovitz himself “should be ashamed and will pay the price” for failing to fire the professor.

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“We see that academia is targeted not just abroad, but also in Israel, so what do we expect to happen?” Chamovitz told Kan. “Two weeks ago, a deputy minister said on the radio that I would pay the price because I wouldn’t take care of Ben Gurion [University] like he wanted me to. Nobody in the government condemned that person. Threats everywhere need to be taken very seriously.”

The university president stressed that he himself was not the story, and that the attacks on Israeli academia had palpable consequences for national security, such as Iran’s targeting of Ben Gurion University’s Soroka Hospital during the 12-day war with Israel in June.

“This is not just a story of Daniel Chamovitz,” he said. “For the past two years, we’ve seen websites abroad saying Ben Gurion University needs to be attacked because we are where all Israeli Air Force pilots get their bachelor’s degrees. We’ve seen Iran attack the university and Soroka Hospital because it was well aware of their significance.”

“Our enemies sometimes read what we write more than the Israelis themselves do,” said Chamovitz.

The website that listed Chamovitz as a target appeared to have been taken down hours after attracting significant Hebrew media attention on Friday. Among the Israeli academics included on the site’s “special targets” list was protest leader Shikma Bressler, who is a physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Some of those listed live outside of Israel, including in the US.

In addition to rewards for their execution, the site offered a reward of $1,000 for placing signs in front of targets’ homes and $20,000 for burning their vehicles.

It claimed that all of the academics were given warnings over the past few months to “abandon criminal activity,” but because they did not, they “have been chosen as legitimate targets for the movement.”

Hundreds of other Israeli academics or students were also listed, and a $50,000 reward was offered for their deaths.

The webpage invited “all unofficial military groups, armed groups and fighters to join the movement to confront these criminals and benefit from the rewards of punishing these victims and killers while trying to defend human rights and help the oppressed children of Gaza.”

The Ynet news site, which first reported on the hit list, said the Mossad and Shin Bet launched a swift probe into the anti-Israel website and that officials suspected Iran was behind it. Israel’s universities have sent messages to academics warning them to be cautious and avoid publicizing details of trips abroad, and report anything suspicious, Ynet reported.

Speaking to Kan, Chamovitz said he learned about the hit list early Friday morning.

“Already at 7 a.m., we informed the Shin Bet and security officials so they’d look into it,” said Chamovitz. “We’re taking it seriously but with a grain of salt. I was not afraid to do Shabbat shopping today. We’re in the State of Israel, I’m not worried for my safety, but if I were abroad, I would act differently.”