As reported by the israeli media: Swiss professor speaking at Peace Week says Israel had clear economic motive to kill Palestinian civilians: Swiss professor Riccardo Bocco, a professor of anthropology and sociology for the Graduate Institute in Geneva, claimed Israel had an economic motive in killing Gaza civilians during Operation Protective Edge during a lecture he held at Peace Week, an event held by the Geneva Peace Building Platform. According to Boccos claims, the security industry used Gaza as a field experiment and reaped a $7 billion profit as a result. The killing of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip during Operation Protective Edge had a clear economic motive – the Israeli security industries are the ones who prospered from Protective Edge, said Bocco. Boccos lecture was recorded by an Israeli representative at the conference, and a report was handed over to the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem as part of a mission to track anti-Israel activities with an emphasis on those which receive sponsorship from international and academic institutions. The said event went under the title Geneva Peace Week and included lectures by several other professors. An academic degree never constitutes a guarantee of decency, the Foreign Ministry said in response. The Foreign Ministry fights and will continue to fight all of those who take advantage of their position as academics in order to slander Israel. It is unfortunate to see that the UN and well-known academic organizations sponsor debates and seminars that promote incitement and violence rather than peace. Professor Bocco has been a faculty member at Genevas Graduate Institute of International Studies since 1986, and heads Palestinian research at the academic institution whose graduates include former secretary general of the UN Kofi Annan and award-winning Israeli historian Shaul Friedlander, who also taught at the institute and now teaches at UCLA.
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 01:43:29 +0000