Lecture delivered by Mohanad Mustafa, Academic Director of Mada al-Carmel’s Graduate Studies Program, at a conference entitled “Overcoming Barriers, Building Links Conference 2024: Emergency Support for Palestinian higher education”, organized by Friends of Birzeit University on 25 June 2024 in London
The security and political crisis that Israel has been living through since October, and its definition of the war as an existential war, or a second war of independence, provide fertile ground for the growth of open racism towards Palestinians citizens in Israel, both on the part of the state and the general public. This racism has been articulated in statements from the Israeli media, in the words and conduct of political and religious leaders, governmental policies, the actions of the security establishment and academic institutions, and in the attitudes and actions of members of Israeli society.
Since the very first days of the war, Israel’s security organizations have implemented policies to silence anti-war voices within the Palestinian community in general, and among Palestinians students in particular. Israeli academia has participated in this policy of silencing anti-war voices and actions. The Israeli media, political establishment, general public and academic institutions have all been complicit in these policies. As a result, any expression, statement or post made on social media expressing a principled position against the war, against the killing of civilians, or even sympathizing with the residents of Gaza – women or children – has been considered as support for Hamas and terrorism.
This approach has been translated into a campaign of arrests against Palestinians in Israel on charges of supporting terrorism or endorsing Hamas. The police have arrested dozens of them for posting Tweets in support or sympathy with Gaza, including high-profile social media figures and local leaders. They likewise include artists such as the singer Dalal Abu Amneh and the actress Maisa Abd Elhadi, as well as Imams and medical staff working in Israeli hospitals and, of course, Palestinian students.
Israeli academic institutions have been conscripted into the Israeli war effort and have played a central role in curtailing and limiting freedom of expression in general, and academic freedom in particular, by persecuting Palestinian lecturers and students who have expressed views opposed to the genocidal war, killing and devastation of Gaza. Notably, no Jewish lecturers or students have faced harassment or accountability, despite the many statements and articles they have published calling for killing, reprisals and destruction in Gaza, or against the Palestinian people in general. No statement has been issued by any academic institution against the academic and cultural genocide in Gaza, which has included the killing of deans, professors and students in Gaza, and not even against the systematic destruction of academic institutions, libraries, cultural and historical facilities and buildings. Not a word.
Moreover, not only have academic institutions been complicit in the persecution of students and lecturers, but also the National Union of Israeli Students has actively participated in these policies, through a campaign titled “Get the Terror out of Academia”. It has further asked the Israeli government to enact legislation to allow universities to fire any lecturer who describes the State of Israel as an apartheid regime or who challenges the definition of Israel as a Jewish state.
A high-profile example is the incitement campaign instigated by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem against Professor Nadera Shalhoub. The university published a letter inviting Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian to resign from her position at the university after she signed a petition calling for an end to the war and for the rights of Palestinian and Israeli children to be protected. The petition was signed by over 2,000 academic specialists in children’s rights from around the world.
On October 29, 2003, Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian received the letter inviting her to submit her resignation on an email list that includes all lecturers at the Hebrew University; the letter was not sent to her privately, in contravention of the law. As a result, the letter was distributed rapidly and widely, which triggered a large-scale and aggressive campaign of incitement against her. Thus, when she signed the petition, she was not protected by the rights to academic freedom or freedom of expression, which are supposed to cover critical opinions that go against the establishment position, especially in universities.
The Hebrew University administration did not suffice with sending the letter to Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian, however; in mid-March, it decided to suspend her from her teaching position at the university, on the grounds that she had signed “a petition at the beginning of the war that described Israel’s actions as genocidal practices and [Israel as] an occupying entity since 1948.” As the university stated in its decision, “At this stage, and in order to maintain an atmosphere of calm at the university for the benefit of our students, we have decided to suspend Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian from her position.” However, the university retracted the decision less than two weeks later, as a result, among other things, of opposition from several lecturers at the Hebrew University itself, who claimed that the measures taken against her did not comply with the applicable administrative regulations, as well as the fact that a large number of academics from universities worldwide stood in solidarity with her.
The position taken by the Hebrew University and its persecution of Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian should not be seen in isolation from the broader role played by the Hebrew University – and by the Israeli academy in general – in supporting and providing justification for the genocidal war on Gaza, and in suppressing opposition to the war by Arab students at the university. In protest against the suspension of Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Mada Al-Carmel sent a letter to the Hebrew University in which it laid out the wider role played by the Hebrew University in supporting the war and backing the government in its policies towards the Palestinian issue. The letter stated, “It is imperative to emphasize, moreover, that her suspension bears testament to the university’s complicity in upholding and advancing the Zionist project, as manifested in the prolonged Israeli occupation and apartheid regime imposed on Palestinians... The university’s decision was preceded by a harsh and widespread campaign of persecution initiated by all Israeli universities and institutions of higher education against the Palestinian academic community in Israel, teaching staff and students alike.” The letter continued, “A reversal of the decision to suspend Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian in response to mounting international pressure would not erase or undo the harm caused by your actions. It remains clear that you see it as your mission to silence dissent and eliminate Palestinian and humanist narratives about the war.”
The persecution of Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian did not end with the decision to reverse her suspension, however, as the Israel Police decided to open an investigation into her, detained her for 24 hours in mid-April 2024, and interrogated her several times on suspicion of incitement. The investigation centered on the content of her academic research, which has been published in leading academic journals around the world, according to standards of academic publishing. Hence, academic research that has been published in the most reputable academic journals may become a pretext for arrest and questioning by the police if it does not conform to the Israeli narrative and does not accept the justification of killing and war.
From the start of the war on October 7, Arab students at Israeli universities have been subjected to unprecedented levels of systematic persecution. Israeli academic institutions have issued warnings to a large number of Arab students and suspended or expelled some from their studies for expressing views in opposition to the war and in sympathy with the children of Gaza. Around 160 students received summonses from educational institutions in the country due to their social media posts, in which most merely demanded an end to the war on Gaza. Since the outbreak of the war, approximately ten Arab students from universities and colleges around the country have been arrested following complaints filed against them by their fellow students, and a number of students have been suspended from their studies without a decision by a disciplinary committee, as required by the universities’ own by-laws.
The Joint Body of Student Blocs (an umbrella group of 26 Arab student movements from various Israeli universities and colleges that operates under the Arab Emergency Committee) reported in mid-November 2023 that over 100 Arab students had been referred to disciplinary committees within Israeli academic institutions. It further detailed that there had been hundreds of inflammatory posts made against hundreds of Arab students by their peers, with the complicity and cooperation of universities, colleges, and their student unions.
The war therefore clarifies what we have known all along: that academia in Israel is an integral part of the settler colonialism project in Palestine. Indeed, it may be the second most important branch of the occupation after the military. And as we have seen during the war, even student organizations, which appear to be critical, democratic and sensitive to the rights and freedoms of peoples living under occupation, have taken part in the persecution of any critical or democratic voices in the academy.
It is important not to end this discussion without emphasizing that, despite the repressive attempts to silence the Palestinian student movement within Israeli universities, and the fact that universities have assumed the role of surveillance bodies, Palestinian students continue to be active. From the first week of the war, the joint Palestinian body of students from various political movements has worked to stop the campaign against Arab students in Israeli universities. Although their activism during the first months was limited to defending students and protecting them from the rabid campaign of incitement against them, the arrest of Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian marked the beginning of the return of political action by student movements. It started with a student demonstration that took place at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in March, followed by one-hour strikes and sit-ins held in a majority of universities. These demonstrations condemned the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as articulated in a statement released by the Joint Body of Student Blocs.
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