The Biden administration has reversed President Donald Trump’s policy of allowing cooperation between U.S. universities and Israeli institutions in Judea and Samaria, in a gesture that some call an academic “boycott.”
In October 2020, Trump — continuing a series of pro-Israel measures — allowed American researched to work with Israeli institutions across the 1949 armistice line, ending a de facto boycott that existed prior to Trump.
Reuters reported at the time:
The Trump administration lifted a decades-old ban on Wednesday that had prohibited U.S. taxpayer funding for Israeli scientific research conducted in Jewish settlements in occupied territory, drawing Palestinian condemnation.
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The West Bank settlement of Ariel, the site of an Israeli university, was chosen as the venue for a ceremony opening a new avenue of U.S. scientific cooperation with Israeli researchers.
Palestinians, who seek the West Bank for a future state, said the move made Washington complicit in what they termed Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise.
Then-U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman participated in a signing ceremony with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ariel University in Ariel, a city in Samaria, also known as the northern West Bank.
According to Israel National News, quoting Barak Ravid at the Hebrew-language Walla news website, the Biden administration made the decision to rescind Trump’s policy two years ago, but it had not come up until Ariel University researchers applied for a U.S. grant:
According to a report by Israeli journalist Barak Ravid on the Walla website, the decision to cancel the Trump Administration’s policy change was made at the US State Department two years ago, but it was only recently necessary to act upon the policy in practice because of a request submitted to one of the funds for a grant for a scientific project beyond the so-called ‘Green Line.’
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A senior official at the State Department told Walla: “The directive that was circulated made it clear that participation in joint projects with Israel in the fields of science and technology in areas that came under its control after June 5, 1967 and whose future should be determined through negotiations on a permanent settlement, is not consistent with American policy.”
The policy change came before the Biden administration criticized Israel’s recent decisions to build new homes in communities in Judea and Samaria, a move that Israel announced in the wake of Palestinian terror attacks.
Still, the policy resembles the kind of academic boycott that pro-Palestinian activists have been trying to encourage, and which ice cream manufacturer Ben and Jerry’s has attempted in barring sales in the West Bank.
The anti-Israel “boycott, divestment, sanctions” (BDS) movement, which some consider antisemitic because it only targets Israel and ignores other nations in conflict situations, has tried to encourage such boycotts.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.