An Israeli report has cited a significant rise in academic boycotts targeting researchers and institutions in Israel, even after the Gaza ceasefire.
The report, prepared by the Academic Boycott of Israel Monitoring Team, which was established by the Committee of University Presidents in Tel Aviv, said Israel’s negative image in Europe appears "so deeply entrenched that political moves alone are not enough to shift public perception."
The report, published by The Marker, the economic version of the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz, noted that the truce in the genocidal war did not reduce boycott pressure.
Instead, "the opposite occurred," with a spike in cases filed by institutions and individual academics, it added.
The team warned that expanding forms of academic boycott could push Israeli higher education into "dangerous isolation that poses a real strategic threat to its international standing."
Israel faces deepening isolation
In mid-September, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged for the first time that Israel had entered "a kind of isolation," saying the country must prepare for a more self-reliant economy.
The number of European universities imposing full academic boycotts on Israeli institutions has increased to 1,000 till November, the report noted.
It also cited new cases of European academics refusing to collaborate with Israeli colleagues and universities.
The report said 2025 saw a drop in research grants awarded to Israeli scholars by the EU’s Horizon Europe fund, the main source of scientific research financing for Israel.
The decline is tied to Israeli academics being excluded from international cooperation projects seeking Horizon funding.
According to the report, 57 percent of boycott cases affect individual researchers, mainly through exclusion from international research groups, while 22 percent involve institutional boycotts between European and Israeli universities, 7 percent relate to boycotts imposed by professional associations, and 14 percent concern the suspension of international programmes such as student exchanges and postdoctoral partnerships.
The report concluded that the trend will likely continue, saying the boycott movement "will accompany Israeli academia for a long time and will not ease without major regional and geopolitical changes."
Since October 2023, the Israeli army has killed nearly 70,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, and wounded more than 170,900 during a two-year genocidal war that reduced most of the enclave to rubble.
However, new research revealed that the death toll could be over 100,000.
