French university cuts ties with Israeli institution over Gaza war

PARIS: 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.