Palestinians Urge Academics to Take Action to Stop #GazaGenocide

Israel’s genocidal war on the 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza “death camp,” which has killed at least 10,022 Palestinians, including 4,104 children, has also targeted Palestinian universities, schools, academics and students, including those sheltering nearly half of the 1.5 million Palestinians who have been forced to flee their homes.

Gaza’s top two universities, the Islamic University of Gaza and Al-Azhar University, have both been carpet bombed and reduced to rubble by Israel’s US-supplied jets and most advanced missiles. According to the UN, a total of 258 schools, or 51% of all schools in Gaza, have been destroyed or partially damaged by Israel’s military assault.

Israeli academic institutions are deeply complicit in Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid that has oppressed Indigenous Palestinians for 75 years. Israeli universities maintain strong ties to Israel’s military and arms industry and develop, implement, maintain and justify Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians.

Scholars across the world, from faculty councils, to conferences, to academic associations, to faculty unions, to scholars of international law, conflict and genocide studies, are taking a stand against Israel’s ongoing crimes, including calls from scholars of philosophy, feminist scholars, and scholars in Ireland, the Netherlands, among others, calling to end institutional ties with complicit Israeli universities.

It is time for the entirety of the academic world to take urgent action to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ongoing scholasticide against all Palestinians. If not now, when?

We urge all universities, scholars, faculty unions, university departments and academic associations; students, student unions, councils, and organizations; alumni and alumni organizations; to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in Gaza; entry to Gaza of life-saving humanitarian needs, and UN protection for the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians trapped under siege Israeli in Gaza.

We call on students, faculty, and alumni to demand that their universities condemn the destruction of Gaza’s two main universities, naming Israel as the perpetrator, and call for an immediate ceasefire.

We call on international university networks, including the International Association of Universities, the Mediterranean Universities Union, and the Association of Arab Universities, to mobilize their networks to call for an immediate ceasefire.

Finally, we call on students and faculty members to work to end all ties between their universities and complicit Israeli academic institutions, as called for by Palestinian civil society, Palestinian universities, and academic organizations, including the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE). Only by working to dismantle Israel’s apartheid regime can we stop the violence, as it is undeniably the root cause. 

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)