"The Killing of Learning." Israel's Attacks on Palestinian Education.
Today, on International Education Day, we remind the academic community that as part of its #GazaGenocide, Israel is targeting Palestinian education.
Israeli universities are complicit.
The Palestinian call to boycott complicit Israeli universities is more urgent than ever.
Israel has deliberately targeted and killed 94 Palestinian scholars in air raids on their homes, including Islamic University president Prof. Sufyan Tayeh and Prof. Refaat Alareer, poet and founder of We Are Not Numbers, in addition to 231 teachers and 4,327 students, with more among the missing.
Israel has destroyed ALL Palestinian universities in Gaza, including by placing explosives in empty campuses meant to flatten them, and after some had been occupied and used as military bases and detention centers.
It has completely or partially destroyed 346 schools.
Israel’s attacks on Palestinian education as part of its genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza has been defined as the crime of “educaricide,” or "killing of learning," by UN Special Rapporteur Balakrishnan Rajagopal.
15 major Palestinian universities stated that "Israeli universities, complicit in human rights violations, should face international isolation," calling on the international academic community to urge #CeasefireNow and work to dismantle Israel's settler colonial and apartheid system.
Israeli universities have a long history of actively supporting Israel’s regime of military occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.
They are now supporting genocide.
Tel Aviv University has:
- instituted a hasbara (propaganda) course on Israel's #GazaGenocide;
- bragged about having helped “make” Israel’s propaganda-ridden case before the International Court of Justice;
- crowdfunded for “care” packages for soldiers committing genocide in Gaza.
Hebrew University boasts of providing “diverse logistics equipment to several military units.”
As most Israeli universities, Hebrew University also immediately instituted an “Enhanced Financial Package” for student soldiers committing Israel’s #GazaGenocide, in addition to academic benefits.
Technion boasts of a student who enlisted professors and alumni to create an AI-driven “army of robots to massively increase the impact of pro-Israel efforts on social media,” pushing Israeli propaganda whitewashing its genocide and repressing speech on Palestinian rights.
The time for the global academic community to act is now.
We urge universities, scholars, unions, departments, and associations to call for #CeasefireNow and an end to Israel’s #GazaGenocide, and to work to end institutional ties with complicit Israeli universities.
If not now, when?
