Amid protests at dozens of Arab institutions denouncing Israel’s continuing air and artillery strikes on the Gaza Strip, Birzeit University has called on universities worldwide to say “no to silence over genocide”.
That call came in an open letter the Palestinian university issued on October 15, as university students and academics in other Arab countries also expressed solidarity with Palestinian civilians and demanded an immediate halt to the violence, which has killed thousands so far.
Iraqi, Jordanian, Kuwaiti and Egyptian education groups have held vigils and other events to show their support for the Palestinian cause, with students chanting slogans against the “genocide” being committed against Gazans.
‘Stop the Genocidal War’
The letter from Birzeit University calls on international academic institutions to “take concrete action to stop the genocidal war against the Palestinian people and to end Israeli settler colonialism in Palestine.”
The letter from Birzeit University blames the “brutal Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip” for the deaths of thousands of Gazans, including children, as well as “the deliberate displacement of more than half a million Palestinians.”
The current warfare began on October 7, when the Hamas militant group launched an assault on Israel, killing 1,400 people. Israel declared war on Hamas the same day and launched its assault on Gaza. As of Friday, October 20, over 4,100 people had been killed in Gaza, including 1,661 children, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
In its letter, Birzeit University said the “brutal Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip” had caused thousands of deaths and injuries to Palestinian civilians.
The letter denounces Israel for “the deliberate displacement of more than half a million Palestinians and the call for the deportation of another million people from the northern Gaza Strip,” as well as the destruction of more than 60,000 residential units and targeted attacks on hospitals, schools, and universities.
Recent statements by Israeli government officials calling Palestinians “human animals”, and depriving them of food, water, electricity, and fuel are “a continuation of the racist ideology upon which Israel was founded”, the letter says.
It adds: “This racist ideology, whose practices started in the war of extermination during the Nakba in the year 1948, has continued on a daily basis since that date under Western complicity and impunity, and what is happening in Gaza is nothing but a new chapter of genocide.”
Universities Accused of Complicity
The letter calls on the international academic community, unions, and students “to fulfill their intellectual and academic duty of seeking truth, maintaining a critical distance from media misinformation and the processes of demonisation of the Palestinian struggle, and working to hold the perpetrators of genocide and those who are complicit with them accountable.”
The letter also holds Israeli universities responsible, “as they are a central component of the apartheid regime and the settler-colonial structure for their complicity in gross human-rights violations through the development of weapons, military systems and doctrines, and the legal justification for the collective targeting of Palestinians. Therefore, these academic institutions must be shunned by the international academic community.”
“Birzeit University calls on the academic community around the world to immediately intervene to stop this barbaric aggression, protect Palestinians from this wave of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and stop ethnic cleansing in all of Palestine.”
From the university’s letter
“Birzeit University calls on the academic community around the world to immediately intervene to stop this barbaric aggression, protect Palestinians from this wave of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and stop ethnic cleansing in all of Palestine,” the letter says. It concludes by saying: “The impunity granted by the international community to the Israeli occupying forces, which enables them to continue with impunity, must stop immediately.”
Demonstrations in Iraq and Kuwait
Iraqi academic officials have led demonstrations in a number of the country’s universities against “the crimes of the Zionist occupation and its massacres in the Gaza Strip,” according to a statement from the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education.
Naeem Al-Aboudi, Iraq’s minister of higher education, said in a speech that “Palestine is the nation’s main cause.”
In Kuwait, the Quds (Jerusalem) Committee of the National Union of Kuwait University Students organised a speech festival on Wednesday to protest “Zionist violations and practices against the Palestinian people.”
According to local media, Haneen Ghabra, assistant vice president for external research at Kuwait University, said that what is happening in Palestine is genocide and ethnic cleansing, and that 65 percent of those who have been killed in Gaza were women and children.
Noaman Gibran, a professor of Islamic history in the Faculty of Arts at Kuwait University, said “the Zionist enemy” had committed many massacres since the 1940s, culminating in the strike on Al-Ahli Arab (Baptist) Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday, October 17. Gazan authorities say the explosion killed more than 400 people. (Whether Israel or a Palestinian group allied with Hamas is responsible for the blast is still fiercely under debate.)
Muhammad Al-Rashoud, head of Kuwait’s Student Union, said the union highly appreciates the steadfastness of the Palestinian people in defending their land and resisting “the occupying enemy.”
Jordanian and Egyptian Protests
At the University of Jordan, Ashraf Abu Karaky, the acting president of the university, has asked faculty members to begin their lectures by reciting the Surah Al-Fatihah prayer “for the souls of Gaza’s martyrs” who have been killed as a result of Israeli aggression.
At the University of Jordan, faculty members are beginning their lectures with a prayer “for the souls of Gaza’s martyrs” and the university is flying flags at half-staff during a period of public mourning for the victims of the blast at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza.
He also ordered the university to fly the flags at its headquarters at half-staff for three days, in accordance with a decision by Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh declaring three days of public mourning in Jordan for the victims of the blast at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza.
Abu Karaky said that targeting civilians, innocent people, and hospitals was against humanitarian and moral values, and the rules of international law.
In Egypt, massive demonstrations took place in several universities, including Nile University, Minya University, Mansoura University, and the American University in Cairo.
At Misr University for Science and Technology, in 6th of October City, a large gathering condemned the Israeli occupation forces for “bloody assaults, massacres, and crimes that violate all human values, against the brotherly Palestinian people and the Holy Land” and blamed Israel for the bombing of Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza.
Faculty members announced their support for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s decisions supporting the Palestinian cause and rejecting the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank to Egypt and Jordan. They also organised a blood donation campaign for the benefit of the Palestinian people.
Faculty and student groups at several other Egyptian universities organised similar campaigns.
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