The European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) is welcoming scholars who are knowingly participating in a war crime to its annual meeting, Sept 2-6.
As Israel’s genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza destroys Palestinian life and cultural heritage, EAA has a moral and legal obligation not to recognize Israel’s grave crimes against Palestinians.
The EAA 2025 program includes at least three scholars from Hebrew University.
As international jurists have noted, Hebrew University is partially built on land illegally expropriated from Palestinians in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. Israeli colonial settlements constitute a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
This puts EAA in breach of the legal requirements arising from the July 2024 ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ found that Israel’s entire military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza is illegal and must be brought to an end. The ruling triggers the legal obligation not to recognize, aid or assist in maintaining Israel’s illegal military presence in the occupied Palestinian territory.
By allowing multiple scholars knowingly participating in a war crime to participate in its conference, EAA is normalizing these crimes. This is a biased and deeply complicit political decision, not an academic one.
In accordance with international law, UN Security Council resolutions, and the ICJ ruling and the legal requirements above, and as a duty to its members and conference participants, EAA must hold the scholars knowingly participating in a war crime accountable by excluding their participation from the conference.
More than 1,200 archaeologists, many of whom are EAA members, have signed an open letter by Archaeologists Against Apartheid calling on the association to perform due diligence on conference participants to ensure it does not platform individuals knowingly participating in war crimes.
EAA has not responded to the signatories, doing a disservice to its members and the wider archaeological community. It has clearly failed to perform even superficial due diligence on conference participants. It must remedy this failure by instituting a comprehensive impartial ethical policy to ensure no complicity in grave crimes, wherever they should occur.
EAA’s failure does not end with the scholars from Hebrew University. There are more than a dozen scholars affiliated with complicit Israeli universities as well as the deeply complicit Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) participating in the EAA conference.
The Israel Antiquities Authority, which for years and until recently was headquartered in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, has looted and appropriated immeasurably significant Palestinian artifacts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, and is complicit in attempts to erase Palestinian heritage, persistently violating international law.
In her report for the United Nations, From economy of occupation to economy of genocide, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese noted that in Israel, “universities – particularly law schools, archaeology and Middle Eastern studies departments – contribute to the ideological scaffolding of apartheid, cultivating State-aligned narratives, erasing Palestinian history and justifying occupation practices.”
While we do not call to exclude scholars based on mere affiliation, in order to uphold basic ethical principles, EAA conference organizers should also:
- Perform due diligence on participants reasonably suspected of being or having been involved in serious violations of fundamental human rights, in particular war crimes, crimes against humanity (including apartheid), or genocide.
- Ensure that conference programs include a concise and accurate description of the complicity of any institution listed in affiliations that has a record of persistent involvement in grave human rights violations (particularly war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide);
- Include a Land Acknowledgement statement, upholding the United Nations’ 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which acknowledges Indigenous peoples’ inalienable rights to “the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired” (Article 26), acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which the institution to which its authors are affiliated is located and/or on which the research was conducted;
EAA has a duty to the archaeological community, first and foremost to Palestinian cultural heritage organizations, scholars and workers, especially in Gaza, to ensure that its conferences and all its activities live up to the values it claims to uphold.