LONDON, October 27 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - An Oxford professor was suspended from academic duties without pay for two months after he rejected an Israeli student because he had served in the Israeli army, press reports said on Tuesday, October 28.

Professor Andrew Wilkie, Nuffield professor of pathology, told Amit Duvshani, a graduate student at Tel Aviv university, there was "no way he would accept someone who had served in the Israeli army".

Wilkie, writing in an email, had told the Israeli student that he would not agree to his request to work in his laboratory because the professor had a "huge problem" with Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

The Israelis "take the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because they [the Palestinians] wish to live in their own country," Wilkie said in the e-mail quoted by the Guardian.

He was referring to the student’s three years service in the Israeli army.

"I am sure you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army," he added.

The Israeli army, including 190.000 elements and 450.000 reservists, is committing daily aggressions against Palestinian civilians, including women and children, such as indiscriminate shootings, house demolitions and choking closures.

The Oxford university deemed rejecting to enroll Duvshani, a masters student at Tel Aviv University who had applied to work for a PhD under Professor Wilkie, a "form of discrimination", and imposed the most serious sort of dismissal on him.

"This ruling reflects that there can be no place for any form of discrimination within the University of Oxford," a university was quoted by the BBC NewsOnline as saying.

Professor Wilkie will also undergo equal opportunities training as part of his penalty, while the university will review its program for such training in the light of the case.

Wilkie's suspension follows an investigation by what is called a visitatorial board, a panel of five convened to consider charges against a member of the university's academic staff which, if upheld, are sufficiently serious to warrant dismissal or other serious sanction, said the Guardian.

The board proposed the two-month suspension, the most serious penalty that the university can impose, short of dismissal or removal from office.

As vice-chancellor, Sir Colin has the power to reduce recommended penalties but not to increase them; he accepted the recommendation in full.

Oxford said Wilkie retracted his statements, and he "looked forward to applications from able candidates, whatever their background".

"He fully accepts the gravity of the situation and is determined to make full use of training to ensure that his actions and those of his staff reflect best practice in future," said the university.

Wilkie was quoted as saying "I have a view on the situation in the Middle East but I am not a racist or anti-Semitic. I just want to draw a line under the whole thing".

He was echoing a largely-held world rejection to the attacks against innocent Palestinians, even in among Israelis themselves.

And 52 Israeli reserve paratroopers declared on January 25, 2002, that they refuse to take part in military missions in the Palestinian territories.