French university cuts ties with Israeli institution over Gaza war

A French university has severed ties with an Israeli higher education institution accusing it of "warmongering" stances over the Gaza war, French media has reported, sparking criticism from Paris.

The move comes after students at several French universities have, like some of their peers in the United States, protested or held sit-ins demanding a ceasefire in Gaza over the past year.

The Political Studies Institute in the eastern city of Strasbourg cut ties with the Reichman University near Tel Aviv in June, local newspaper Dernieres Nouvelles d'Alsace reported on Wednesday.

Students and several teachers had backed the move over what its initiators called the Israeli institution's "deeply warmongering" stances over the Gaza war, calling them "devoid of any humanist perspective", it said.

The institute's director Jean-Philippe Heurtin told AFP he had been strongly opposed, but members of the university board -- which includes students -- approved it in a vote.

"The decision is distressing," French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told the BFMTV broadcaster on Thursday.

"It's not this university that today is bombing Lebanon or Gaza," he said.

"It's in Israeli universities that we find the most fervent advocates for peace and the two-state solution," Barrot added, referring to the idea of an Israeli state and another Palestinian one living peacefully side by side.

France's Higher Education Minister Patrick Hetzel on X on Wednesday said he "deplored the decision" taken by the French university board.

Israeli journalist Gideon Levy in a June opinion article in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper criticised the Reichman University for giving an honorary doctorate to a military commander.

The man had shot dead a 17-year-old Palestinian who had hurled a rock but "posed no threat" to him in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2015, Levy wrote.

The case was brought up during the debate over whether to cut ties in Strasbourg.

Several activists have demanded an academic boycott of Israeli academia.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg was among several arrested in September after occupying a University of Copenhagen building to call for an academic boycott of Israeli universities, Danish media reported.

The academic boycott of Israel is part of the Palestinian-led "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" (BDS) campaign, which says that Israeli universities are "developing weapon systems and military doctrines" used in Lebanon and Gaza.

Israel and its key backer the United States have regularly accused the BDS movement of "anti-Semitism", charges its co-founder Omar Barghouti has denied.

He told AFP the movement's inspiration came from the foreign pressure against South Africa's apartheid regime.

Israel launched a new war in Gaza last year after Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7, 2023 led an unprecedented cross-border attack that left 1,206 Israelis dead.

Israel's response has led to the deaths of 43,204 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.

Several other activists have also pledged a cultural boycott.

Indian novelist Arundhati Roy ("The God of Small Things") and Irish author Sally Rooney ("Normal People") are among more than 2,000 writers and people linked to the publishing sector who have signed a letter pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions that are "complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians".

Before the current conflict, several prominent rights groups accused Israel of "apartheid" against Palestinians since the creation of Israel in 1948, allegations Israel denies.