{"id":297756,"date":"2026-02-18T18:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/297756\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T18:05:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:05:14","slug":"european-society-of-criminology-votes-overwhelmingly-against-whitewashing-israels-atrocity-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/297756\/","title":{"rendered":"European Society of Criminology Votes Overwhelmingly Against Whitewashing Israel’s Atrocity Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The European Society of Criminology has\u00a0voted<\/a> by a significant majority (62% of those expressing an opinion) in favor of requiring scholars from illegal settlement institutions to indicate in their affiliations such location in accordance with international law. This would require, for example, affiliations to illegal Israeli settlement institution Ariel University to be listed as located in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.<\/p>\n

The membership also voted overwhelmingly (63% of those expressing an opinion) in favor of the society issuing statements condemning Israel\u2019s atrocity crimes against Palestinians, including its war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0membership consultation<\/a> by the ESC Executive Board was held thanks to awareness raising by\u00a0Criminologists for Palestine<\/a> (CfP) within the society calling for consistent respect for international law and a more ethical society.<\/p>\n

The ESC Board\u2019s membership consultation shamefully failed to address the elephant in the room, namely CfP\u2019s primary\u00a0demand<\/a> for ESC to pledge no ties with complicit Israeli institutions.\u00a0 A\u00a0vote by show of hands<\/a> during the General Assembly at the 2025 EUROCRIM conference showed near consensus support from the ESC membership for such a motion, which was undemocratically blocked by the politically biased ESC Board.<\/p>\n

ESC must now recognize the will of its membership and work transparently and inclusively to implement the policies resulting from the vote as a first step to ensure no complicity in Israel\u2019s grave violations of Palestinian rights and international law.<\/p>\n

It must also\u00a0necessarily go beyond the questions it raised in the membership consultation.<\/p>\n

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that Israel is plausibly committing the crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, with a UN Independent Commission of Inquiry and the International Association of Genocide Scholars recently concluding that Israel is indeed committing a genocide. The ICJ further ruled in July 2024 that Israel is violating the prohibition against apartheid and that its military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza is illegal. The ICJ rulings trigger the\u00a0legal obligation not to recognize, aid or assist in Israel\u2019s atrocity crimes against Palestinians.<\/p>\n

ESC must take measures to ensure it is not in breach of the ICJ rulings as detailed in the CfP motion that was blocked at the 2025 EUROCRIM conference and in calls from\u00a0Palestinian civil society<\/a>. It must commit to no ties with complicit Israeli institutions, and it must exclude from its conferences scholars who are knowingly\u00a0participating in war crimes<\/a>, including those affiliated with illegal Israeli settlement universities.<\/p>\n

We trust that CfP and principled society members will continue to work to ensure that ESC fully implements the results of the membership consultation and takes further steps to avoid any complicity in Israel\u2019s atrocity crimes.<\/p>\n

Only then can ESC claim to be the European Society of Criminology and not criminality.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Society of Criminology has\u00a0voted by a significant majority (62% of those expressing an opinion) in favor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-297756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}