Letter to the Spanish Government Condemning Anti-Israel University Course
His Excellency Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón
President of the Government
Madrid, Spain
Her Excellency María del Carmen Calvo Poyato
First Vice President of the Government
Madrid, Spain
Her Excellency María Victoria Chivite Navascués
President of the Government of Navarre
Pamplona, Navarre, Spain
Your Excellencies:
On behalf of B’nai B’rith International’s more than 100,000 members in over 40 countries, we write to express our dismay that one of Spain’s largest universities is currently teaching a course centered on anti-Semitic, anti-Israel hatred.
The Public University of Navarre, a government-funded institution, is offering a course incendiarily titled “Apartheid in Palestine and the Criminalization of Solidarity,” which indoctrinates students in vile hatred. It justifies terrorism, endorses the discriminatory Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and features as a guest speaker BDS founder Omar Barghouti, who has declared the elimination of Israel as the movement’s goal.
Two months ago B’nai B’rith applauded Spain for adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism. Now a major Spanish university is blatantly violating the definition’s precepts, including “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.”
B’nai B’rith calls for the University to immediately terminate this course and to cease the further dissemination of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hatred. Should the University fail to do so, we call on the government to eliminate funding for the instruction of such courses.
Respectfully,
Charles O. Kaufman Daniel S. Mariaschin
President Executive Vice President and CEO