Israel has killed thirty-six thousand people in Gaza, including fifteen thousand children, and injured eighty thousand. Ten thousand Palestinians are currently missing. Despite this, support for the war remains strong among the Israeli public, two-thirds of which approve of the ongoing conflict; a majority would like the government to extend the fight to Hezbollah in the north of the country, where exchanges between belligerents have forced over sixty thousand Israelis to evacuate.

On the border with Gaza, far-right vigilantes have organized to prevent aid from reaching over two million Palestinians, who the World Health Organization has said are at risk of famine. The key focus of the mainstream antigovernment protests that have taken place across Israel has been the Benjamin Netanyahu administration’s failure to bring back the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7. These objections, insofar as they can be treated as such, do not come anywhere near to reflections on the causes on the ongoing war, or an admission of guilt for the genocide.

Within this context, Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation, a recently published book by the activist-academic Nick Riemer, could not be more timely. Founded on a solid historical analysis of the specifics of the boycott of Israeli academic institutions, Riemer’s book makes a convincing case that, instead of treating Israeli universities as neutral centers of learning, scholars must answer the call from Palestinian civil society to boycott them. Boycott Theory presents the common arguments against the boycott and offers compelling rebuttals. The book arms the reader with the tools not only to advocate for the boycott against its conservative and liberal critics, but for Palestinian liberation.