Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

PACBI is a Ramallah-based campaign launched in 2004 to promote international boycotts of Israeli academic and cultural institutions.[1] It describes itself as a founding member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee and as responsible for overseeing the academic and cultural boycott aspects of BDS. PACBI frames its boycott as institutional and says it rejects boycotts of individuals based solely on identity or opinion.[3]

PACBI was launched in Ramallah in 2004 by Palestinian academics and intellectuals, with Omar Barghouti identified as a co-founder in accounts of the campaign.[1][7] Its initial focus was academic and cultural boycotts. PACBI’s FAQ says it issued an international call in July 2004 urging a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions until specified conditions were met; it reported that nearly 60 Palestinian academic, cultural, and other civil-society organizations had endorsed the call by the time the FAQ appeared.[1]

PACBI’s establishment preceded the Palestinian civil-society BDS call published on July 9, 2005. The Institute for National Security Studies says PACBI joined a coalition of 171 other pro-Palestinian NGOs in launching the global BDS movement.[2] The 2005 call set out demands concerning the end of occupation and colonization of Arab lands and the dismantling of the Wall, equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Palestinian refugees’ right of return.[2][8]

Sources use different milestones when discussing PACBI and the broader BDS campaign. PACBI’s FAQ dates its own launch to April 2004, its institutional-boycott call to July 2004, and the wider civil-society BDS call to July 9, 2005.[1] The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs gives an exact PACBI launch date of April 6, 2004, while NGO Monitor traces precursor boycott appeals to 2002 and 2003.[9][7] The Institute for National Security Studies describes PACBI as launching BDS in 2004 and then joining 171 other NGOs to launch the global movement a year later.[2]

PACBI calls for international boycotts of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, arguing that these institutions are persistently complicit in denying Palestinian rights under international law.[3] Its cultural guidelines say the campaign drew inspiration from the cultural boycott of apartheid-era South Africa.[5] The current academic- and cultural-boycott guideline pages were published in July 2014.[4][5]

PACBI’s academic guidelines frame the boycott as institutional rather than as a penalty based simply on an individual’s Israeli identity or opinion. They say an Israeli scholar’s mere affiliation with an Israeli academic institution is not, by itself, grounds for a boycott. Instead, the guidance identifies institutional activities and projects for boycott, including research agreements, study-abroad programs, institutional honors, and certain teaching, publishing, and reviewing arrangements. It distinguishes these from unaffiliated use of Israeli archives and independent fact-finding visits without institutional links.[4]

The cultural guidelines similarly call for boycotting Israeli cultural institutions and activities they sponsor or support, while stating that an individual’s mere institutional affiliation is not sufficient grounds. They identify products commissioned by Israeli official bodies and events sponsored by official bodies or institutions PACBI deems complicit as boycottable. They say Israeli cultural products receiving state funding without political conditions are not automatically subject to boycott and exclude independent fact-finding visits without institutional links.[5]

A central element of PACBI’s approach is its definition of “normalization.” Campaign materials describe it as participation in projects bringing Palestinians or other Arabs together with Israelis or Israeli institutions when those projects do not aim to resist and expose occupation and discrimination. Its academic guidance objects to joint projects that, in its view, presume parity between oppressor and oppressed or pursue reconciliation without addressing injustice. It exempts projects in which the Israeli participants recognize comprehensive Palestinian rights under international law and the activity constitutes “co-resistance” rather than co-existence.[10][4]

The cultural guidance says many projects fall into a “grey area” and that activists need not campaign against every project meeting the stated boycott criteria, but should prioritize their efforts. The guidelines present the institutional boycotts as continuing until the stated rights are recognized and the institutions end what PACBI defines as complicity in violating them.[4][5]

PACBI’s significance within the wider BDS movement lies in its role translating the movement’s objectives into academic and cultural guidelines and sector-specific public campaigns.[3][11]

PACBI has urged academics to end affiliations with Israeli institutions and artists to cancel planned performances in Israel. Its campaigns have included efforts to discourage international performers from appearing in the country. In 2014, for example, PACBI called on the Rolling Stones to cancel a planned concert, comparing a performance in Israel to one in apartheid-era South Africa; the band performed in Tel Aviv on June 4.[12] PACBI also promoted the #BoycottEurovision2019 campaign and was reported to have pressured artists scheduled to perform in Israel, including Lorde, Radiohead, Lana Del Rey, Nick Cave, and Madonna.[11]

PACBI’s anti-normalization position has applied to joint projects involving Israelis and Palestinians even when the projects address Palestinian issues. In 2025, the group said the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land violated its guidelines because Israeli members of the production team had not publicly supported what PACBI defines as the comprehensive rights of Palestinians and because the film was connected to Close-Up, an initiative for collaboration between Israeli and Arab filmmakers. PACBI said it had not addressed the film earlier because it was not a priority before its Oscar win.[13] The filmmakers had previously issued a statement referring to the Nakba, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and occupation; after PACBI’s statement, they updated it to include the term “genocide” and explicitly attribute the acts to Israel, according to a news report. The report does not establish that PACBI’s campaign caused the change.[14]

Other public calls have targeted cultural works and organizations. In 2012, PACBI published Alice Walker’s letter declining to permit a new Hebrew translation of The Color Purple. Walker said she supported nonviolent BDS and hoped it would affect Israeli society; the book had already appeared in Hebrew translation in the 1980s, and it was unclear whether she could prevent a new translation.[15] In January 2024, PACBI called for a boycott of Standing Together, accusing the Israeli-Palestinian group of distracting from and whitewashing what PACBI described as Israel’s “ongoing genocide in Gaza.” Palestinian citizens of Israel belonging to Standing Together said the boycott call contributed to what they characterized as a government crackdown on antiwar voices.[6]

In 2025, Montreal’s Studio 303 announced that it was joining PACBI and would stop programming classes in Ohad Naharin’s Gaga movement technique. The studio said it would refuse collaboration with the Israeli government or its funding agencies and boycott cultural and academic products it considered to normalize Israel.[16]

PACBI’s judgments about institutional complicity and which Israeli-Palestinian projects constitute normalization are contested. The Anti-Defamation League criticizes anti-normalization as restricting dialogue and exchange, while Palestinian citizens of Israel belonging to Standing Together argued that PACBI’s boycott call against their organization harmed antiwar organizing.[17][6]

PACBI’s guidelines distinguish institutional boycotts from boycotts based solely on individual identity or opinion, but also establish broad presumptions that Israeli academic and cultural institutions are complicit and therefore boycottable.[4][5] NGO Monitor quotes PACBI as placing the isolation of Israeli academic institutions ahead of creating conditions for scholarly cooperation.[7] Terms such as apartheid, occupation, and genocide in PACBI statements are the campaign’s political characterizations as reported by the cited outlets, rather than findings independently established by those reports.[14][6]

The Congressional Research Service notes that the broader BDS movement includes diverse non-state actors and that both membership in the movement and the definition of BDS activity are subject to debate. This context concerns BDS generally and does not independently establish PACBI’s specific role in issuing the 2005 call.[8] A study of 501 Israelis and people from Western countries found that more respondents opposed boycotts than supported them, with Jewish Israelis showing the lowest agreement with BDS and non-Jews from Western countries the highest. The researchers cautioned that the internet-based snowball sample was highly educated and included few Palestinian respondents from the Occupied Territories, preventing a comparison with that group.[18]