Slated to meet in India soon, International Sociological Association urged to uphold Israel’s suspension
by Piyush Mathur
The Palestinian Sociological and Anthropological Association (PSAA) has fervently appealed to members of the International Sociological Association (ISA) to uphold the Israeli Sociological Society’s (ISS) temporary suspension that took effect on June 29, 2025.
Headquartered in Madrid, Spain, the ISA is a non-profit, non-governmental, academic outfit that has ‘countrywide associations of sociology’ as its regular members.
Via a June 29 notification, the organisation—noting its own outstanding ‘public stance against the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza’—had suspended ISS’ membership on account of its failure to condemn ‘the dramatic situation in Gaza’.
This suspension had taken place as a result of protests and pressure from several quarters—leading up to the 5th ISA Forum of Sociology (July 6-11) held in Rabat, Morocco—against the ISS’ continued membership in the ISA.
The ISS’ suspension, however, did not debar Israeli sociologists from participating in the ISA’s events under other membership categories.
The PSAA statement aligns closely with the BDS movement
The PSAA appeal is made in a 2-page statement issued on December 06 from Palestine’s de facto administrative capital, Ramallah; its backdrop is the impending 6th ISA Council of National Associations Conference (6th ISA CNA Conference), to be held in India’s Pune, Maharashtra, through December 17-20.
This conference will devote most of its time to academic presentations and workshops, but it will also include discussions on the ISA’s internal administration and priorities for the next year and beyond. In one of these latter sessions, there will also be a vote (something that Geoffrey Pleyers, the President of the ISA, had stressed in a September 22 press note) on whether to validate or vacate the ISS’ suspension.
The PSAA appeal laments the fact that the ISA took too long to effect the suspension—following ‘the first live broadcast of a genocide in history’ for two years, and only in response ‘to the call of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.’ While appreciating the ISA’s belated reckoning, the statement also alleges that ‘a concerted effort is now underway’ to vote down the suspension, which it seeks to thwart.
The appeal underscores the seriousness of boycott as a means of resistance, mentioning the ‘international anti-apartheid movement in South Africa’ as the source of inspiration for the BDS movement specifically—which it also characterizes as being representative of a broad range of Palestinian civil society, especially within the context of its existential struggle.
The statement further notes that the BDS movement is ‘one of the few effective tools’ that Palestinians and their supporters can use to force Israel to abandon its West-supported occupation of Palestine, stressing the point that the ISS has been complicit in Israeli state’s activities all along. The statement includes the following crucial claim:
The Israeli Sociological Society has neither condemned nor rejected the genocide in Gaza, nor has it fulfilled any of its obligations regarding the recognition of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of our refugees to return to our homes and lands from which we were displaced in 1948, the end of the occupation, and the dismantling of entrenched system of racial segregation and apartheid.
The ISA president had previously undercut the alleged significance of the BDS movement’s hand in the ISS’ suspension
It may be useful to note that in his September 22 press statement, Pleyers had significantly downplayed the role of the BDS movement—specifically as represented by its Moroccan supporters—in the ISA’s decision to suspend the ISS.
His statement had pointed out that the ISA’s Executive Committee had independently arrived at this decision—which, while stridently opposed by the German and Austrian associations, had been supported by many other research committees and national associations, including the French Sociological Association.
His statement also mentions that, in the Morocco meeting, more than ‘200 Israeli colleagues’ had denounced Israel’s crimes in Palestine and sought ‘greater support for the Palestinians.’ Moreover, the meeting’s ‘Local Organising Committee [had] opposed the boycott of individual colleagues’ from Israel, which had also prompted Morocco’s BDS movement supporters to boycott the forum.
All in all, Pleyers’ statement had sought to isolate the BDS movement from the factors and forces that led to the executive decision to suspend the ISS from the ISA; it had also sought to introduce some nuance to the situation.
Last words
While the upcoming conference will be taking place in a country, India, whose media environment has been very favourable to Israel—its close political ally—the internal context of the national associations that constitute the ISA are unlikely to be swayed by all that regarding the vote on the ISS’ suspension. Even the Moroccan state, as Pleyers’ September 22 statement had noted, has also had normal ‘relations with Israel’ since ‘2020 and has since maintained open cooperation, including some military collaboration.’
The accusations of genocide against Israel—including from respectable quarters such as the Amnesty International, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, and the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security—have of course only grown significantly since June 29, when the ISS’ suspension took effect. In August 2025, the International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA), held in India, had suspended the State of Israel from its membership.
The upcoming ISA meeting, incidentally, is titled ‘Building Resilient Sociologies: Voices, Visions and Ventures’—pointing to a vaguely empowering agenda.
A pdf copy of the PSAA appeal can be accessed here.