In the ongoing genocide against Palestinians, educational institutions are being especially targeted. Universities in Gaza have been levelled, those in the West Bank are under siege. Hundreds of academics – college students and lecturers – have been killed. Palestinian academic bodies have asked for meaningful solidarity from their international colleagues against this destruction of Palestinian higher education. In this context, the December 14 statement by the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) circulated among its membership, and titled “IFUT Statement on the Middle East” is grossly insufficient. It fails to even mention the genocide nor does it offer any concrete actions that Irish academics can take in solidarity with our colleagues in Palestine.
Trinity College Dublin’s Chapter of Academics For Palestine finds the wording and the spirit of this statement inappropriate, ahistorical, and decontextualised. It fails to address the situation in Palestine, the higher education context of it, or to recognise the position of IFUT’s membership on it.
The crux of IFUT’s statement is a call for ceasefire, but there is no way for the reader of the statement to understand what sort of a conflict is happening in Palestine. Shockingly, the statement fails to mention Palestine even once. Instead, IFUT Executive speaks of “parties to the conflict” and “the cycle of violence”, painting a forced two-sided image of the genocidal aggression.
In its statement, IFUT refers to the two organisations it is affiliated with: Education International (EI) and Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU). In choosing lines to quote from the statements these organisations made in October and November, IFUT Executive fails to bring in any context or any factual background those statements contained. Namely, EI dedicated a large portion of its statement (https://www.ei-ie.org/en/item/28161:education-international-calls-for-urgent-humanitarian-ceasefire-in-gaza) to the attacks on educational institutions and population of Gaza; the ICTU statement (https://www.ictu.ie/news/statement-israel-gaza-violence) gave a condensed frame of reference of the situation in Palestine since 1967. IFUT’s statement pulled quotes from these statements that were devoid of facts, at best read as cliché, and at worst run contrary to the spirit of the quoted statements.
The ICTU statement prominently featured ICTU’s long-lasting support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) initiative, and once again urged the affiliated unions (including IFUT) to act upon it. IFUT’s statement makes no reference to BDS. Not only does this run against policy positions of ICTU and spirit of solidarity, but it blatantly ignores the position of Irish academics who overwhelmingly supported the academic boycott of Israel. 3 The letter in the Irish Times (https://academicsforpalestine.org/2023/11/04/letter-to-irish-newspapers-2-november-2023/), signed by over 600 academics (the number is now almost 1000, including about 90 from Trinity College), shows the mass support for the boycott and was published more than two weeks before IFUT’s Executive meeting. It is highly unlikely that the Executive was unaware of it. Members of IFUT have been reaching out to their college branches throughout October and November asking about the status of IFUT’s efforts on BDS, and asking for union action. IFUT’s line on “respectful discourse on divisive issues” suggests that not only is the Executive aware of the overwhelming support for the boycott among the union’s members, but is rejecting it, without consulting its members. In reading this line, we refer again to the attacks on higher education in Palestine and Israel – the destruction of universities in Gaza, the attacks on those in the West Bank and the systemised repression Palestinians experience in Israeli universities. In this context, a line such as “respectful discourse on divisive issues”, could only be written with an eye closed to the Palestinian experience.
Academics in Ireland can show meaningful solidarity. Academics for Palestine continue with the initiative to sever existing institutional partnerships and affiliations with Israeli institutions. Those ties should be suspended until the occupation of Palestinian territory is ended, the Palestinian rights to equality and self-determination are vindicated, and the right of Palestinian refugees to return is facilitated. Anything less at this point amounts to tacit support for crimes against humanity.
December 2023 Over the past two months, people of conscience and organisations in every field around the world have expressed their shared sense of outrage and solidarity in response to the horror that has been unfolding in Palestine. The Israeli military’s bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip has amounted to the most severe onslaught of violence, death, destruction and displacement of Palestinians since 1948. Israeli forces killed more civilians within the first 30 days of this war than Russian forces have killed in over 600 days of their brutal war in Ukraine to date. The rate at which Palestinian children, in particular, have been murdered by the Israeli army is beyond comprehension. The UN Secretary-General has highlighted that the level of civilian death is ‘unparalleled and unprecedented’ in the context of modern conflict, and has described Gaza as a ‘graveyard for children’. In two months, Israeli forces killed more than 10,000 Palestinian children according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor – many multiples of the already shocking figure of 560 children killed in the Ukraine war over the past two years. On top of this, many more Palestinian children have been left in the category devastatingly rendered as: ‘wounded child, no surviving family’. Israeli forces have destroyed large parts of the hospital and healthcare system. 80% of the total population of Gaza has been displaced, with no safe place to go. All eleven institutions of higher education in Gaza have been bombed by the Israeli army, and hundreds of university staff and students have been killed. Recent investigative reports have detailed the particularly pernicious use of digital technologies and algorithms in enabling a ‘mass assassination factory’. Israel has effectively imposed a state of permanent war against the population of Gaza ever since it declared the entire territory to be an ‘enemy entity’ in 2007. Israeli officials have now indicated in the context of this current intensification following a temporary ‘pause’ in late November 2023 that they are planning for a ‘long war’ in Gaza over the coming year or more.\
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We know from history that genocide in a settler colonial context is based on a logic of elimination of the native population which unfolds as a process over time, and is not confined to a single event. In the context of Israeli settler colonialism in Palestine, this process began with ethnic cleansing and genocidal violence against Palestinians in the Nakba of 1948. A constitutionally and institutionally discriminatory apartheid regime was then imposed by the Israeli state, and the violence of domination, colonisation and military occupation proliferated. In 1982, the UN General Assembly declared that an act of genocide was perpetrated against Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila massacres. Israel’s 2008-09 war on Gaza was found by international fact-finding investigations to have involved the crime against humanity of extermination. Its 2014 war on Gaza was more severe again, and prompted examinations of genocidal discourse and incitement by Israeli officials.
The elements of genocide, however, have been more distinctly visible than ever before in the 2023 war on Gaza. From the outset, Israel’s Defence Minister ordered a ‘complete siege’ of the already besieged territory, prohibiting the supply of fuel, electricity, water and other essential necessities. We have all seen the catastrophic consequences that followed: starvation, sickness, surgeries being performed without anaesthetic, newborn infants dying in incubators with no power. The dehumanising language and tropes that are typical of genocidal incitement and intent have been deployed across the board by Israeli leaders. Israeli cabinet ministers and senior officials have made clear that they view the Palestinians as ‘human animals’ and that the emphasis of the military onslaught in Gaza ‘is on damage and not on precision’. The utterly harrowing footage of the limbs and corpses of Palestinian men, women and children being pulled out from under the rubble, day after day after day, is what this ‘damage’ looks like.
More than 800 scholars of international law and Holocaust and genocide studies warned from early on that this was genocide unfolding. In an almost unprecedented collective statement, 36 United Nations Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts subsequently came together to declare that Israel’s attacks amount to ‘genocide in the making’. The leaders of states across the world, including Brazil, South Africa and many more, have stated that Israel is perpetrating genocide. Palestinian human rights organisations have submitted evidence and documentation of crimes of genocide committed by Israeli forces to the International Criminal Court. A leading legal organisation in the US has submitted a case to court there accusing President Joe Biden’s administration of aiding and abetting Israeli genocide, and of breaching its duty to prevent genocide. All states indeed have duties under international law to take concrete action to prevent genocide from occurring where the risk of it arises. Somehow, US officials and some western leaders continue to maintain the deceit that Israel is not acting in breach of international law. It is worth recalling a haunting precedent: in June 1994, two months into the Rwanda genocide, the US administration under Bill Clinton was still refusing to describe the situation as genocide, with government spokespeople actively instructed to ‘avoid’ doing so. This type of denial is what again underlies the western world’s failure to act.
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One day after Russia’s war in Ukraine began in February 2022, Maynooth University issued a public statement to make it clear that ‘Maynooth University condemns the invasion of Ukraine’. The University has subsequently engaged in a wide range of activities in support of Ukrainian self-determination, Ukrainian scholars and students, as well as Ukrainian refugees. The University also supported the suspension of all ties with Russian universities.
In contrast to its immediate and unequivocal condemnation of the Russian war in Ukraine and the range of actions initiated, Maynooth University has not to our knowledge undertaken any substantive action in response to the Israeli war on Gaza. The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on 29th November has come and gone, and the University has not condemned Israel’s ongoing invasion, ethnic cleansing and genocidal violence as such. Staff and students, particularly students of colour, have expressed some distress over this. There has been a growing sense that the University considers Palestinians less worthy of solidarity than Ukrainians. At this point, it is hard to avoid the double standards.
In a recent ‘call for justice and humanity’, 15 Palestinian universities from across the West Bank and Gaza came together to urge the international academic community to fulfil its intellectual and academic duty to seek truth and accountability. We would urge Maynooth University to actively and publicly respond to this call, and to take the specific concrete actions that the Palestinian universities have asked international academic institutions to take:
1. Call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, guaranteed by the UN 2. Urge immediate entry into Gaza of sufficient amounts of life-saving humanitarian needs (incl. water, food, fuel, medicine), equitably distributed throughout the whole territory of Gaza Strip. 3. Demand UN protection for the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians trapped under siege in Gaza 4. Issue clear positions rejecting any ethnic cleansing 5. Support in dismantling the settler colonial and apartheid system and achieving a just, comprehensive, and lasting peace.
As a recent letter to The Irish Times signed by almost 1000 Irish(-based) academics emphasised, with genocidal atrocities unfolding there can be no such thing as ‘business as usual’ continuing on the part of our institutions. As things stand, we as staff and students of the university community in Maynooth feel compelled to make our own position clear. We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. As members of the international academic community, we stand in particular solidarity with Palestinian academics whose universities have been destroyed by Israeli bombardment, and with the academic community that has lost so many scholars killed by the Israeli army. This includes world-renowned leaders in their field such as Professor Sufyan Tayeh – UNESCO Chair in Astronomy, Astrophysics & Space Sciences, and President of the Islamic University of Gaza – who was killed on 2 December 2023 by an Israeli attack on a six-floor residential building in which civilians were sheltering. We stand in solidarity with Palestinian students who have been killed, maimed or detained by Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank, and with Palestinian and Jewish-Israeli staff and students alike in universities in Israel who are being repressed and disciplined for speaking out against the occupation or the genocide. We support the calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, for full delivery of requisite humanitarian supplies, for protection of Palestinian civilians, and for an end to the military occupation of Palestinian territory. We strongly reject any initiatives that advocate the forced transfer or ethnic cleansing of people from Gaza to other states in the region or beyond, and we support the right of all displaced Palestinians and refugees to return home.
Over the past two months, across our various groupings we have been organising teach-ins, walk-outs, vigils, public readings, fundraisers and other events on campus and online – to learn together, to provide mutual support, to mark and mourn the catastrophe that has been unfolding, to hold space in our hearts for all of those who have borne the brunt of this atrocious war and the longer siege and occupation of which it forms part. We will continue to do so, and to do whatever little we can to support the Palestinian rights to freedom, equality and justice.
Academics for Palestine, Maynooth Branch Maynooth Students’ Union Postgraduate Workers’ Organisation, Maynooth IFUT Maynooth Branch Committee SIPTU Admin Maynooth
The War on Gaza: The Assault on Palestinian Education
A first report from Friends of Birzeit University on the right to education in Palestine in the aftermath of the Israeli war on Gaza and the Palestinians. A summary of the report’s findings on the situation since 7 October:
The UN estimates, on 12 December, that over 18,205+ Palestinians have been killed, 49,645 injured, and 1.93 million have been displaced (over 80 percent of the population). More than half of Gaza’s housing stock and critical infrastructure has been destroyed, and many essential services are out of service, including access to clean water and sanitation.
All universities in the Gaza Strip have ceased to operate. The West Bank is experiencing widespread interruption with most institutions shifting to online teaching and support to avoid campus invasions by the Israeli army, and students and staff being harassed, arrested, or shot by Israeli soldiers and armed Israeli settlers.
In Israeli universities, Palestinian students and university staff, who are citizens of Israel, are experiencing personal attacks, arrest, censorship, and disciplinary measures including suspension, expulsion and dismissal. Over 100 students have been expelled or suspended.
The Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education last reported on 5 November that 446 students enrolled in universities and colleges in Palestine have been killed by Israel (438 in the Gaza Strip and eight in the West Bank) in addition to 14 employees working in higher educational institutions in the Gaza Strip.
Background – the situation before 7 October:
Palestine has 53 higher education institutions (35 in the West Bank and 17 in Gaza), and an open education university with centres in the West Bank and Gaza. There are 226,000 Palestinian students enrolled in these institutions (139,000 in the West Bank and 87,000 in Gaza). Higher education in Palestine employs 17,000 staff (12,000 in the West Bank and 5,000 in Gaza), including 9,000 educational academics (7,000 in the West Bank and 2,000 in Gaza). Israel’s army regularly invades Palestinian university campuses in the West Bank, arrests students and staff. Gaza’s higher education system has deteriorated under Israel’s 16-year blockade.
No one can enter the West Bank or Gaza Strip without an Israeli permit. Israel has made it virtually impossible for non-Palestinians to obtain a visa to teach or study at a Palestinian university. This has cut Palestinian higher education off from the outside world, unable to recruit staff and students. The current crisis will make this much worse.
The right to education is enshrined in international law, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions, which govern the conduct of war and military occupations, protect the right to life, and render many attacks on higher education students or staff unlawful.
Academics for Palestine 