Zionist Regime Denies Professor Prize for ‘Supporting’ BDS

Date: 13 April 2021 - 22:19

News ID: ۸۹۱۲۶

WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s education minister Yoav Gallant has denied a professor of computer science the so-called Israel prize over his alleged support of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Oded Goldreich was set to receive the prize in mathematics and computer science on Monday before it was withheld from him.
On Thursday, the regime’s high court asked Gallant to justify his decision within 30 days. Goldreich, professor of computer science at Weizmann Institute of Science, denied supporting BDS, according to Haaretz.
He said that Gallant’s decision is "another small step in the delegitimization of the left in Israel” and is a "political persecution”.
"If I supported BDS I would not have agreed to accept the prize, I would have had to boycott it,” Goldreich said. He insisted that he never supported BDS, saying that the education minister’s goal was "to prevent me from receiving the prize because of my opinions because I am a leftist.”
Goldreich had signed a petition, 13 years ago, that called for the boycott of Ariel University in the illegal settlement of Ariel in the occupied West Bank.
According to Haaretz, Michael Sfard, Goldreich’s lawyer, said in a statement to the High Court that "withholding the prize is an attempt to determine - even by allusion - that anyone who opposes the settlement project and all assistance to it is not a part of Israeli society.”
"The attorney general, together with the education minister, devised a clearly McCarthyist path to prevent awarding the Israel Prize to those with anti-occupation views,” Goldreich’s lawyer said.
In another development in the occupied territories, a veteran trooper with the Zionist regime’s army diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder committed self-immolation outside the offices of the regime’s war ministry, which apparently handles the rehabilitation of injured troops.
The ministry said in a statement that the 26-year-old man arrived at the Rehabilitation Department’s offices in Petah Tikva on Monday afternoon with a bottle full of flammable liquid, doused himself with it, and then set himself on fire in the entryway.
The statement added that the ministry’s guards acted to provide him with first aid, using fire extinguishers. They also called rescue services for medical assistance.
The ministry said medics classified the man as being in severe condition and suffering from intense burns, which cover his entire body.
Separately, the Veteran’s Association of the Israeli army said that the man was frustrated at his treatment by authorities.
Data from the Manpower Directorate of the ministry showed earlier this year that about a third of troops who died last year had committed suicide.
Out of 28 troops who died during their compulsory career or reserve service in 2020, nine took their own lives.