Britannia Radio

'Boycott Israeli science exhibition'

Mar. 3, 2009
JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST

Britain's Science Museum was at the center of a resurgence in the demand to boycott Israeli academia on Monday night, when a series of over 400 British academics, including a former Nobel laureate, demanded that the prestigious museum stop promoting scientists and academic institutions that are "complicit in the Israeli occupation and in the policies and weaponry recently deployed to such disastrous effect in Gaza."

The Zionist Federation had rented space in the museum for the "Israel Day of Science" seminar, which will showcase the work of Israeli scientists from seven universities. The seminars were scheduled to take place at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry on Tuesday and at the Science Museum on Thursday.

According to a report in the British Independent newspaper, many of the signatories of the demand were involved in the original plea to boycott Israeli academia in 2002, including Jonathan Rosenhead from the London School of Economics, the leader of the protest, Steven Rose from the Open University and the architect and historian Charles Jencks.

Federation chair, Andrew Balcombe, maintained that the seminars were entirely educational and non-political.

"We are proud to be running an event like this," Balcombe said. "It's an educational event, not a political one in any way, shape or form. It's merely to inform people of the contribution that Israel has made to science and technology ... I'm not aware of any connection between defense and university research, and none that is stronger than in any other countries."

The Science Museum announced that the event had been in the works for almost a year and had "no political theme."

According to a statement released by the museum, "Scientists speaking at the event include a marine biologist, a physicist who works on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern [Switzerland], a nanotechnology expert, a water scientist and a geneticist... Having considered the issue very carefully, and while fully respecting the right for everyone to express their views, [we] believe that not to proceed with the event would mean taking a political stand, which would be wholly inappropriate."

The "Israel Day of Science" seminars showcase the work of seven universities for 1,200 largely non-Jewish secondary school pupils. The museums said that they were not co-hosting or sponsoring the events but had rented their corporate space to the federation.

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