While I agree that Israel has developed its expertise in water conservation at the expense of the Palestinian population, nonetheless they are experts in the field and it would benefit South Africa to take advantage of the technical ability of Israel. No doubt the economic realities will trump the political stand of the academics, noble as they may be. Governmental and industrial deal making with Israeli firms must have an incentive for Israel to change its policies towards the Palestinians by encouraging behaviors that meet international norms and move away from the institutional apartheid in effect in the Palestinian Bantustans. Thus I suggest engagement with Israel but with clear policy mandates that if Israel is to do business in South Africa for instance, that there must be a measurable move to bring a just solution to the Palestinian crisis.

Something is missing from this story, Adri Nieuwhof. I don't understand how the withdrawal of a single person from the conference led to the conference being cancelled. Did the people putting on the conference decide to cancel because they invited the wrong person? Did the fact that the Israeli ambassador was planning to attend make people who had signed up to attend cancel their registration? I would appreciate a clarification.

Israel is set to continue its policy of ethnic cleansing with a diversionary news cycle coming up ctsy the US Presidential race hotting up. UN personnel on the ground already know there is an assault planned. Complicity runs deep, with accepting sans evidence all pretexts and token denouncement of planned escalation by all and sundry the norm. It is up to individuals and greater citizenry to bring our mute governments to not only voice, but register our protests, and damn the cost. Until then, reject anything even tangentially associated with the Zionist state. It's up to us to do our research and spread the word on what to boycott. To hell with the hypocrisy and double standard of criminalising boycotts. Your freedom is a lie if you can't exercise the right to make a choice on matters warranting action. The genocide is set to continue. One can only hope the US is forced to change its policy of aiding and abetting it. Sadly, its populace is kept occupied by concerns about its own water, race relations, basic medical care, manufactured domestic terror threats one can't question and must accept for fear of being labelled a traitor, and a whole lot of BS underwriting the fear of loss of a lifestyle pushed down its throat by a system that worships money and the wars required to make it. The dormant West never gets to see photos of Palestinian schoolchildren maimed by white phosphorus or any damning reportage of Israel's crimes - not war crimes, for it is invariably a one-sided assault. Good luck getting much out of the US or Europe, given the active post-9/11 program of demonising a whole faith. That said, kudos to these South Africans and numerous others taking a stand against Israel's murderous regime. They'll throw that facile Anti-Semitic charge at you, all the while butchering whole families. It falls to us to make them think twice about ever doing either.