Anti-Israel Activism by Israeli Academics: the Case of Micah Leshem

15.04.26

Editorial Note

At the beginning of April, Israel Academia Monitor (IAM) reported on the University of Edinburgh (UoE) being targeted by anti-Israel activists. The post described how these activists have occupied buildings on this campus because Lord Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) served as the university’s chancellor from 1891 to 1930. At the same time, he served as the British Foreign Minister (1916- 1919) and issued a Declaration expressing British support in Palestine for a “national home for the Jewish people.” The 1917 document has become known as the Balfour Declaration. Also, in 1925, Balfour visited Palestine to inaugurate the Hebrew University, wearing his University of Edinburgh academic robes.

One comment that IAM received was from Micah Leshem, Professor Emeritus at the University of Haifa, Department of Psychology. He wrote, “Thanks, encouraging news, let’s hope the UoE reforms its legacy. Israel Academia Monitor response is full of disinformation and falsifications and totally decontextualized from real-life events. Best, Micah.”

Leshem is a long-time anti-Israel activist. Already in 2002, as IAM noted, Leshem was among the 360 signatories of an “Open Letter from Faculty Members,” urging student army-reservists to refuse, stating, “We, faculty members from a number of Israeli universities, wish to express our appreciation and support for those of our students and lecturers who refuse to serve as soldiers in the occupied territories. Such service too often involves carrying out orders that have no place in a democratic society founded on the sanctity of human life. For thirty-five years an entire people, some three and a half million in number, have been held without basic human rights. The occupation and oppression of another people have brought the State of Israel to where it is today. Without an Israeli declaration of an end to the occupation, accompanied by appropriate action–unilateral, if necessary–the present war is not being fought for our home but for the settlements beyond the green line and for the continued oppression of another people. We hereby express our readiness to do our best to help students who encounter academic, administrative or economic difficulties as a result of their refusal to serve in the territories. We call on the University community at large to support them.”

About a decade later, in 2013, IAM reported on a cartoon drawn by Leshem containing anti-Semitic imagery. The cartoon appeared on an Italian pro-Palestinian website. The image showed two Jews smiling while cutting with a handsaw the limbs of an Arab. As IAM noted, “as a rank and file citizen, Leshem has the right to produce a most egregious anti-Semitic piece that would have found a place of pride in Nazi-era propaganda. The question is whether Leshem, a professor at a public university supported by taxpayers should engage in this type of behavior. Academics are expected to serve as role models in and out of a classroom. By any measure, Leshem does not live up to such expectations.”

In 2014, Leshem was among the signatories to a statement, which says that they are “all academics at Israeli universities, wish it to be known that they utterly deplore the aggressive military strategy being deployed by the Israeli government. The slaughter of large numbers of wholly innocent people, is placing yet more barriers of blood in the way of the negotiated agreement which is the only alternative to the occupation and endless oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel must agree to an immediate cease-fire, and start negotiating in good faith for the end of the occupation and settlements, through a just peace agreement.”

In 2019, the BDS movement reported that some 240 Jewish and Israeli scholars wrote a letter to the German government, stating that “boycotts are a legitimate and non-violent tool of resistance.” Explaining, “We reject this motion, which is based on the false allegation that BDS as such equals anti-Semitism. We call on the German government not to endorse this motion and to fight anti-Semitism, while respecting and protecting freedom of speech and of association, which are undeniably under attack.” Leshem was one of the signatories.

Also in 2019, Academia for Equality, an anti-Israel Israeli academic group, reported that “129 Jewish and Israeli scholars, including some of the most important researchers of Antisemitism today, sent a letter to members of the French National Assembly urging them not to support the resolution equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and endorsing IHRA definition.” The letter was also published by Le Monde Diplomatique. Leshem was one of the signatories.

On October 19, 2023, Israel Academia Monitor reported that the “University of Haifa Students Suspended for Supporting Hamas.” The Rector, Prof. Gur Elroey, suspended six students due to expressions of support for Hamas just days after the terror organization brutally massacred residents of communities along the border of Gaza. Shortly afterward, twenty-five senior lecturers at the University of Haifa appealed against the rector’s decision in a letter, claiming that the suspension was “illegal.” Leshem was one of the signatories. Elroey responded harshly to the lecturers: “Women and men, young and old, IDF soldiers and minor girls were raped, kidnapped and murdered… Hundreds of families are anxious about the fate of their missing, and you are busy with the issue of whether I exceeded my duty and acted contrary to the regulations after suspending six students until it is clarified. We are working to comply with the regulations along with the officer in charge of disciplinary actions.”

In December 2023, Leshem was among the signatories of a letter titled “Biden, stop the assault on Gaza,” addressing President Biden, and stating, among other things, “We call on the US to stop its unconditional support of Israel’s assault on Gaza and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law.”

As these examples show, Leshem and his radical academic peers have unilaterally blamed Israel without mentioning that the Palestinians are culpable in creating the situation by refusing numerous generous offers to settle the conflict with Israel. The October 7 attack and the Gaza War are the most egregious examples of willfully ignoring this reality. Yahia Sinwar, the architect of the assault, made no effort to hide his goal of destroying the State of Israel as part of his divine mission. Documents recovered from the tunnel network and published by the IDF have indicated that Iran has supported Hamas to create obstacles to the Abraham Accords. Indeed, the theocratic regime in Tehran viewed the Accords as an existential threat to its existence and its vision to dominate the Middle East.

Leshem is a prime example of a radical anti-Zionist activist profiled by the IAM since its founding in 2004. The question is always the same – why should a public university in Israel, supported by taxpayers, employ Leshem and his ideological peers? Over the years, IAM have published studies indicating that, in the West, public universities limit their faculty’s political activism. Radical activists who promote army refusal should not be able to teach students, many of whom are army reservists. IAM never received an answer as to why this is allowed to happen.

REFERENCES:

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Micah Leshem
Date: Thu, Apr 2, 2026 at 11:31 AM
Subject: RE: The University of Edinburgh Targeted by Anti-Israel Activists
To: Dana Barnett <email.israel.academia.monitor@gmail.com>

Thanks, encouraging news, let’s hope the UoE reforms its legacy.

Israel Academia Monitor response is full of disinformation and falsifications and totally decontextualized from real-life events.

Best

Micah

From: Dana Barnett <email.israel.academia.monitor@gmail.com>
Sent: 1 April, 2026 20:28
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: The University of Edinburgh Targeted by Anti-Israel Activists

BY ISRAEL ACADEMIA MONITOR (IAM)

The University of Edinburgh Targeted by Anti-Israel Activists

01.04.26

===============================================

https://www.academicsforpeace.org/petition-december-2023

Biden, stop the assault on Gaza

Published December 7, 2023

To sign the petition, use our form. For press inquiries, contact Dr. Lior Sternfeld. For other inquiries, contact Dr. Shira Klein.

President Biden,

We, the undersigned academics and supporters, call on the US to lead the way in negotiating an immediate and lasting ceasefire, implementing a hostage-prisoner exchange, and supplying urgent humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The human toll is unbearable, with both sides committing grave violations of the Geneva Conventions and humanitarian law. Some 1,200 Israelis were killed in the Hamas attack on October 7, close to 7,000 wounded, and 240 taken hostage. Hamas committed atrocious crimes that day, including rape.

Since then, a staggering 15,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombing, the majority of them women and children. Tens of thousands are wounded, 7,000 are still missing under the rubble, and – in what amounts to a humanitarian disaster – most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are starving, displaced, and deprived of water, electricity, and medicine.

We denounce the October 7 attacks. At the same time, 75 years of displacement, 56 years of occupation, and 16 years of blockade have generated an ever-worsening spiral of violence that can only be stopped with a political solution. Israel’s continued apartheid in the West Bank, administrative detention (jail without trial) of 2000 civilians, and daily terrorizing of Palestinians by armed settlers, are causing an escalation of violence. This historic injustice continues unchecked because the US allows Israel to flout binding UN Security Council Resolutions.

We call on the US to stop its unconditional support of Israel’s assault on Gaza and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law. Ideas for a political resolution abound; they require political will. The US must set the tone for a paradigm shift, from managing the conflict to solving it within a short and reasonable timeframe.

Two peoples live and will continue living between the Jordan river and the sea. The only way forward is recognizing the right of both to self-determination and full equality.

We welcome signatures from the broader community, regardless of affiliation or profession.

To sign the petition, use our form. For press inquiries, contact Dr. Lior Sternfeld . For other inquiries, contact Dr. Shira Klein.

List of signatories

Shira Klein, Associate Professor of History, Chapman University
Joel Beinin, Donald J. Mclachlan Profesor of History, Emeritus, Stanford University
Tamir Sorek, Professor of History, Penn State University
Dr. Warda Sada, Educator
Omer Bartov, Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Brown University
Lior Sternfeld, Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies, Penn State University
Meir Amor, Associate Professor Concordia University (ret.)
Nubar Hovsepian, , Associate Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Chapman University
Rabbi Brian Walt, Rabbi Emeritus, Mishkan Shalom, Philadelphia
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman, Congregation Shaarei Shamayim
Karin Loevy, Researcher at the Institute for International Law and Justice, New York University School of Law
Marion Kaplan, Professor Emeritus of History, New York University
Mordehai Amihai Bivas, Ambassador (retired)
Hasia Diner, Professor Emeritus of History, New York University
Rabbi Joey Wolf, Rabbi Emeritus, Havurah Shalom, Portland, OR
Rabbi Benjamin Barnett, Havurah Shalom, Portland, OR
Zachary Lockman, Professor of Middle East History, New York University
Lital Levy, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Princeton University
Max Weiss, Associate Professor of History, Princeton University
Paul Silverstein, Professor of Anthropology, Reed College
Irene Gendzier, Professor Emeritus, Boston University
Howard Winant, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara
Shay Hazkani, Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies, University of Maryland, College Park
Paul Adler, Harold Quinton Chair of Business Policy and Prof. of Management and Organization, University of Southern California
Matan Kaminer, Postdoctoral Fellow, Martin Buber Society, Hebrew University
Arie Arnon, Professor Emeritus, Ben Gurion University
Lev Grinberg, Professor Emeritus, Ben Gurion University of the Negev; ex-president of the Israeli Sociological Society (2020-2023)
Ruth Butler, Professor Emerita, Hebrew University
Janet Klein, Professor of Middle East History, Akron University
Liora Halperin, Professor of History, University of Washington
Hannah Safran, Haifa Feminist Institute
Oren Yiftachel, Professor of Geography, Ben- Gurion University of the Negev
Susan LaDue, Member of Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement
Sandy Polishuk, Retired oral historian and Adjunct Instructor, Portland State University
Diane Koosed, Retired educator
Robin Banerji, Talmud teacher
Carole Romm, Visual artist
Andrea Belasco, Retired physician (psychiatry)
G Brock Roben, Retired physician (psychiatry)
Robin Roth, Retired professor, City College of San Francisco
Aya Rosen, Illustrator and photographer
Mika Nachtailer, PhD candidate, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Noa Shaindlinger, Assistant professor of History, Worcester State University
Alex Lubin, Professor of African American Studies and History, Penn State University
Ron J Smith, Associated professor of International Relations, Bucknell University
Doug Rossinow, Professor of History, Metro State University, St. Paul, MN
Ayelet Ben-Yishai, Associate professor of English, University of Haifa
Carolyn Toll Oppenheim, (retired) Assistant Professor, Emerson Colleege
Yaron Klein, Associate Professor of Arabic, Carleton College
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb
Rabbi David Mivasair, State College, PA
Rebecca Alpert, Professor Emerita, Temple University
Hilla Dayan, Lecturer, Amsterdam University College, co-founder of Academia for Equality
David Zonsheine, Former chairperson of B’Tselem and Courage to Refuse
Johanna Sellman, Assistant Professor, The Ohio State University
Vanesa Ribas, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California San Diego
Ron Naiweld, CNRS, Paris, France
Crystal Murphy, Associate professor of Political Science, Chapman University
Kamel Toubache, Retired IT Manager, Canada
Noel Saleh, Attorney, Saleh & Cordovilla Immigration Law
Edna Gruvman, MS, LCAT, BCDTR
Smadar Lavie, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, UC Davis
Yael Shomroni, Artist
Wendy Busch, Artist
Colin Dayan, Professor of English, Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University
Jessica Mecellem, Independent scholar
Uri Horesh, Honorary Senior Lecturer, Linguistics, University of Essex
Dorit Naaman, Professor, Queen’s University
Shir Alon, Assistant professor of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota
Reut Ben Yaakov, Postdoctoral Associate in Hebrew Culture, Duke University
Alexander Jabbari, Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota
Oana Firica, Journalist, TV producer
Susan S. Lanser, Professor Emerita, Brandeis University
Eleanor Shapiro, Independent scholar
Beverly Shalom, Licensed Clinical Social Worker
Tal Jarus, Professor, University of British Columbia
Rabbi Leah Shakdiel, Rabbis for Human Rights, Israel
Eva Mroczek, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies, UC Davis
Mira Sucharov, Professor of Political Science, Carleton University
Abe Silberstein, Writer
Amalia Saar, Professor of Anthropology, University of Haifa
Ilana Hairston, Tel Hai College
Andy Ratto, journalist
Zachary Kolodny, New Mexico Jew
Sheera Talpaz, Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Jewish Studies, Oberlin College
Noah Asher Golden, Associate Professor of Teacher Education, California State University, Long Beach
Lydia Kiesling, writer
Michelle Decker, Associate Professor of English, Scripps College
Soumava Basu, President and Founder, Council for Global Cooperation
Marcelo Svirsky, Senior Lecturer, University of Wollongong
Rafi Greenberg, Professor of Archaeology, Tel Aviv University
Sasha Senderovich, Associate Professor of Slavic and Jewish Studies, University of Washington, Seattle
Michael Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in Literature, University of Wollongong, Australia
Emmanuel Szurek, Associate Professor of History, EHESS, Paris
Ika Willis, Associate Professor of English Literatures, University of Wollongong
Noor-Aiman Khan, Asc Prof of History and Director, Middle East Studies
William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education, University of Illinois at Chicago
Tamar Novick, Research Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Debbie Eylon, translator and editor
Michal Sapir, writer and musician
Kobi Peterzil, Professor of Mathematics, U. of Haifa
Omri Boehm, Associate Professor of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research
Lynna Dhanani, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, UC Davis
Efraim Davidi, Lecturer, Tel-Aviv University
Roni Tzoreff, Michigan University
Anath Ariel de Vidas, anthropologist, CNRS, France
Dalia Sachs, Assistant Professor Emerita, Haifa University
Rasmus Elling, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen
Renata Schneider, INAH
Aziz Abuzayed, Activist
Eli Osheroff, Historion, Postdoc, Hebrew University
Snait Gissis, Tel Aviv University
Suzi Weissman, Professor of Politics, Saint Mary’s College of CA
Angela Flynn, Lecturer, University College Cork
Robert Brenner, History, UCLA, Director, Center for Social Theory & Comparative History
Dr. Hilla Dayan, Lecturer, Amsterdam University College
Erella Shadmi, Beit Berl Academic College retired, independent scholer
Edna Gorney, Writer
Sara Helman, Associate Professor (retired)
Harry Hochheiser, Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, University of Pittsburgh
Joakim Parslow, Assistant professor of Middle East Studies, University of Copenhagen
Ari Zighelboim, Independent scholar
Jessica Marglin, Professor of Religion, Law and History, University of Southern California
Jeffrey Konen, Electrician
David Blanc, University of Haifa
Robert Kraftowitz, Retired physician
Tayfun Guttstadt, Musician and Scholar
Noa Levin, Postdoctoral Researcher, Università della Svizzera italiana
Elly Levy, Attorney
Gopal Balachandran, Associate Professor of Clinical Law, Penn State Law
Ruthie Wyshogrod, clinical social work student
Amira Saunders, educator
Silvana Rabinovich, UNAM
Ross Hyman Ph.D., Computational Scientist, University of Chicago
Persis Karim, San Francisco State University
Eleanor Stein, lecturer, State University of New York
Irus Braverman, Professor of Law, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Joshua Eisenthal, Research Assistant Professor of Philosophy, California Institute of Technology
Andrea-Luz Gutierrez-Choquevilca, Anthropologist, Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale, Collège de France
Nufar Shimony, Philosophy Lecturer (retired)
Tavi Gevinson, Actor and writer
Wolff Catherine, Teacher
Alina Aksiyote, musician and teacher
George P. Smith, Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences, University of Missouri
Amy L. Beck Associate Professor of Pediatrics, University of California San Francisco
Mairaj Syed, Associate Professor of Religious Studies & Middle East/South Asia Studies, University of California Davis
Martinez Rocio, Profesora
Sarah Carmeli, Speech Therapist
Kimberly Katz, Professor of Middle East History, Towson University
Uri Talil, R. E investor, Los Angeles
Szymon Piechnik, Electronic Musician
Isabel C Gómez, Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Boston
Ryan Brizendine, PhD candidate, Yale University
Ursula Wokoeck, PhD, Historian
Pier-Luc Turcotte, Professor, University of Ottawa
Megan Callahan, Arts educator
Hadas Weiss, Humboldt University, Berlin
Cheryl Harris, MPH, RD
Joshua Schreier, Professor of History, Vassar College
Susan S. Lanser, Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature, English, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Brandeis University
Benjamin Wexler, Student
Yosef Khan, LA Jews for Peace
Miriam Beinin, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Stanford, Retired
Steve Jordan, Associate Professor, McGill University
Nathan Dickman, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of the Ozarks
Yael Zeira, Associate Professor of Political Science, Syracuse University
Carolina Perez, Paralegal
Karen Ross, Univeristy of Massachusetts Boston
Diane L. Wolf, Professor Emerita of Sociology, UC Davis
Eleanor Russell, Lecturer, Texas State University
Dan Berger, Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies, University of Washington Bothell
James Martell, Associate French Professor, Lyon College
Vera Khovanskaya, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California San Diego
Hiba Zafran, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University
David A. Larsen, Professor of Public Health, Syracuse University
Mikael Wolfe, Associate Professor of History, Stanford University
Claudio García Ehrenfeld, Classicist, UNAM
Shoshana Hershkowitz, Lecturer, Stony Brook University
Anna Bigelow, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University
Lisel Hintz, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Johns Hopkins SAIS
Josh Dubnau, Professor, Stony Brook University
Philip Metres Professor of English, John Carroll University
Sharika Thiranagama Associate Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University
Blake Temple, Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, UC-Davis
Paul Smaldino, Professor of Cognitive and Information Sciences, University of California, Merced
Jacob Serruya is Historian
Odalis Hernández, Administrator, Stony Brook University
Zack Furness, Associate Professor of Communications, Penn State University
David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor, Stanford
Heather Randell, Assistant Professor of Global Policy, University of Minnesota
Arlette mintzer poet & clinical psychologist
Aaron Berman, Professor Emeritus of History, Hampshire College
Pernille Blom Hermansen, Philosopher
Aaron Katz, Principal Lecturer Emeritus, University of Washington
Simone Balachandran, Associate Professor Educator, University of Cincinnati
Adam Hochschild, Lecturer, Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley
Alan Balsam PhD, MPH Adjunct Associate Professor, BU School of Public Health and Tufts Medical School.
Sarah Kittilsen, Undergraduate Student in History
Brianna Salinas, M.A. in Literary Translation, M.A. in Hispanic Studies
Caglayan Baser, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Syracuse University
Philip Joseph, Associate Professor, University of Colorado Denver
Peyman Mostafaei, PhD stduent, University of Sheffield
Esra Akgün, Student of Turcology, Hamburg University, Germany
Çağla Canıdar, social pedagogical Assistent
Elliott Green, Professor of Development Studies, London School of Economics
Christiane Burkhard, Filmmaker
Jyoti Balachandran , Associate Professor of History, Penn State University
Kate Levin, Associate Professor, University of Southern California
Thomas Bierschenk, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany
Steven DeLue, Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, Miami University
Tamar Samir, PT Assistant Professor, The New School
Victor Silverman, Professor of History Emeritus, Pomona College
Thomas G. Weiss, Emeritus Presidential Professor, CUNY Graduate Center
Erica Lehrer, Professor of History and Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal
Steven Heydemann, Ketcham Chair in Middle East Studies, Smith College
Steven Gelb, Retired Professor of Education, University of San Diego
Danna Agmon, Associate Professor of History, Virginia Tech
Mackenzie Israel-Trummel, Assistant Professor of Government, William & Mary
Koray Özbagci, Humboldt University Berlin
Tony Papanikolas, Lecturer, San Jose State University
Dr Yohai Hakak, Brunel University London
Cantor Michael Zoosman, Co-Founder: L’chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty
Yuval Yonay, Sociologist, University of Haifa
Ellen Siegel, WILPF
Yonatan Ginzburg, Professor of Linguistics, Université Paris Cité
Michal Brody Bareket, Professor of Mathematics
Beverly R. Voloshin, Professor Emerita of English, San Francisco State University
Betty Sams Board CCAS Georgetown U
Jennifer L. Derr, Associate Professor of History, UC Santa Cruz
Sára Gutvill, lecturer, Amsterdam University College
Alan Wallach, Professor of Art History Emeritus, The College of William and Mary
Ariela Freedman, Professor, Liberal Arts College, Concordia
Steven Ostrow, Research Affiliate, Mass. Institute of Technology
Pini Herman, Research Assistant Professor Geography, Instructor School of Social Work, University of Southern California, Retired
Mohammad Almasri, Associate Professor of Arabic, Oklahoma University
Arlie Russell Hochschild, Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley, Emerita
Robert Neuwirth, writer
Joan Cole, Retired Social -Clinial Psychologist and Professor of Social Work
David Joseph, Visual Artist
Ala Soofian, Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Stanford School of Medicine
Priya Satia, Professor of History, Stanford University
James Sams, International Tax Attorney
Joan N. Radner, Professor Emerita of Literature, American University, and Professorial Lecturer, Lesley University
Sandra Hyde, Associate Professor, McGill University
Michael Alpert, musician, US National Heritage Fellow
Alon Marcus, The Open University of Israel
Nancy Stern, Professor, The City College of New York, CUNY
Chris Muniz, Associate Professor (Teaching) of Writing
Avraham Ozm Professor Emeritus of Drama, University of Haifa
Michael Gallope, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota
Adina Lange, Masterstudent in Education, Sustainability and Transformation, HNE Eberswalde Germany
Anna Torvaldsen, Course Lecturer & PhD Candidate, McGill University
Aron Lee Rosenberg, Faculty Lecturer, McGill University
Lior Levy, senior lecturer in philosophy, University of Haifa
Leslie Dunlap, Continuing Professor of History, Willamette University
Michael Sfard, Adv.
Yael Sela, Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, Goethe University Frankfurt
Seth Cotlar, Professor of History, Willamette University
Jaimien Delp, Instructor of English, University of Michigan
Liron Mor, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, UC Irvine
Anat Matar, Senior lecturer in philosophy, Tel Aviv University
Taiyaba Husain, Associate Professor, University of Southern California
Miriam Eliav-Feldon, History Professor (Emerita), Tel Aviv Universitya
Michael Rothberg, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, UCLA
Ron Barkai, Professor of History (emeritus), Tel Aviv University
Benjamin Arbel, Professor Emeritus of History, Tel Aviv University
Claire Phillips, Lecturer, CalArts
Suhad Shalhoub, Bachelor of arts
Megan Shaw, Attorney
Tamar Katriel, Professor (Emerita), University of Haifa
Cedric Parizot, anthropoogist, researcher, CNRS, Aix en Provence, France
Deborah Hearst, Artist
Alison Lingo, University of California, Berkeley
Avner Giladi, Professor Emeritus, ME and Islamic Studies, U. of Haifa
Mads Berg, Forsker
Yael Berda, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor)r
Nir Shafir, Assistant Professor of History, University of California San Diego
Thomas McAffee, Professor of Law Emeritus
Amos Goldberg, Assistant Professor of Holocsust history, The Hebrew Univeristy of Jerusalem
Orna Ben-Naftali, Full Professor of International Law, college of ManagementvAcademic Studies, Israel
micah leshem, Micah University of Haifa
Nitza Berkovitch, Ben Gurion University, retiref
Regev Nathansohn, Lecturer, Sapir College
Steven Robins, Professor of Sociology & Social Anthropology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
Tali Bitan, Associate Professor, University of Haifa, Israel
Zohar Eviatar, Professor Emerita, University of Haifa
Fannie Agerschou-Madsen, PhD-student, Roskilde University
Nomi Erteschik-Shir, Emerita, Ben-Gurion University
Dani Rodrik, Professor, Harvard University
Victoria de Grazia, Professor of History Emerita, Columbia University
Menachem Klein, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Bar Ila University, Israel
Tommaso Valletti, Professor of Economics, Imperial College London
Rita Maran, Retired, faculty U.C.Berkeley:International Human Rights Law & Policy
Sam Asher, Associate Professor of Economics, Imperial College London
Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, Honorary Professor, Sapienza, University of Rome
Miguel Angel Santos, Dean, School of Government, Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey
Haggai Ram, Prof. Ben Gurion University of the Negev
Mette Jensen, former senior researcher, Aarhus University
Saul Zaritt, Associate Professor, Harvard University
Marianne Hirschberg, Professor, Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Kassel
Gianni Vaggi Professor of Economics and Mangement of Cooperation and Development University of Pavia Italynt
Mike Murphy, Senior Research Analyst, International Food Policy Research Institute
Celeste Marcus, managing editor, Liberties Journal
Lee Mordechai, Senior Lecturer, History Department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Uri Mor, Associate Professor of Hebrew Language, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Rebecca Hill, Professor of American Studies, Kennesaw State University
Joseph Zeira, Professor Emeritus, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hillel Schenker, Israeli Co-Editor, Palestine-Israel Journal
Bruce Robbins, Columbia University
Olivier Blanchard, Professor Emeritus, MIT
Jose V. Rodriguez Mora, Professor of Economics, University of Edinburgh and CUNEF
Oded Na’aman, Assistant professor of philosophy, Hebrew University
Thanasis Stengos, Professor of Economics, University of Guelph
Danny Rosin, Professor of Surgery, Tel Aviv University
Francesc Trillas, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Hanna Herzog, Professor Emerita of Sociology, Tel Aviv Univrsity
Yinon Cohen, Professor, Columbia University
Eric Bottorff, Adjunct Faculty of Economics and Philosophy, Oakton Community College
Isaac (Yanni) Nevo, Associate Proessor of Philosophy, Ben-Gurion University (retired)
Yoav Di-Capua, Professor of History, UT Austin
Lynn Wardley, former SFSU faculty
Itamar Mann, The University of Haifa, Faculty of Law
Annalisa Rosselli, senior professor, Università RomaTor Vergata
Ruth Rosen, Professor Emereita
Andrew Spiegel, Emeritus Associate Professor, University of Cape Town
Liam O’Rourke, Teacher, Pierrepont School
Michael Reich, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Glenna Matthews, Starr King School for me Ministry
Avner Ben-Amos, Professor of History, Tel-Aviv University
Ohad Gur, Aerospace Engineer
Peter Orris, Professor University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health
William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History, The University of Michigan
Judith Harel, Org. Psycholigist, retired.
Elazar Elhanan, Associate Professor, The City College of New York
Hella Cohen, former Associate Professor of English, St. Catherine University
nancy kreimer, Associate Professor, Emerita, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
Joan Meisel – Stanford PhD and MBA
Robert A. Woods Professor of Economics, Smith College
Jaklyn Brookman, Psychotherapist, Jewish Voice for Peace
Rabbi Drorah Setel, Temple Emanu-El, Rochester NY
Yoav Peled, Prof. Emeritus, Tel Aviv University
Cantor Jessi Roemer, Philadelphia, PA
Rabbi Zev-Hayyim Feyer, Retired Hospital Chaplain
Mary Soliday, Professor of English San Francisco State University
Rabbi Barat Ellman, Brooklyn, NY
Daniel Bar-Tal, Professor Emeritus of Political Psychology Tel Aviv University
Ellen Lippmann, Rabbi Emerita, Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives, Brooklyn
Assaf Meshulam, School of Education, Ben-Gurion University
Ram Ben Moshe , MArch UCLA
Outi Bat-El Foux, Professor (emerita) of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University
Hossein Kamaly, Professor of Interfaith Studies, Hartford International University for Religion and Peace
Naftali Raz, Educator & Tour guide, One of the founders & activists of Peace Now. Israel, Mevasseret Zion.
Tirzah Firestone, Rabbi Emerita, Congregation Nevei Kodesh
Vardit Goldner, Artist
Rabbi Doug Alpert, Congregation Kol Ami, Kansas City, MO
Lecturer, American Studies, Assoc. Director, Emeritus, Chinese RR Workers in North America Project, Stanford University
Yael Mizrahi-Arnaud, PhD Student, NYU
Lawrence F. Hanley, Professor, San Francisco State University
Ellen Jaffe-Gill, community rabbi
David Benarroch, Artist
Deborah Garber, Artist
Najib Joe Hakim, Chairman, Network of Photographers for Palestine
Nurit Ofer teacher at The school for eastern music Jerusalem Indian singing
Naomi Benzer , Psycoanalist
Susan Bernofsky, Professor of Writing, Columbia University
Prof. Pnina Motzafi-Haller, Anthropology Dept, Ben Gurion University, Israel
Nancy Ruttenburg, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature, Stanford University
Gayle Reid, retired elementary school teacher
Sara Feldman, Preceptor in Yiddish, Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Harvard University

Supporters with no stated affiliation:

Daniela Lichtman
Robyn Bem, Peace seeker
Karen Alqasem, Peace seeker
Alizah Wolfe
Brooke Daly
Maya Haber
Bo Skibelund
Jane Zighelboim Awni
Carter Vance
Catelyn Booher
Gail Steiner, activist
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi

We welcome signatures from the broader community, regardless of affiliation or profession.

To sign the petition, use our form. For press inquiries, contact Dr. Lior Sternfeld. For other inquiries, contact Dr. Shira Klein.

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———- Forwarded message ———
From: Micah Leshem
Date: Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 5:14 PM
Subject: [Academia-IL] Scholars, Please consider signing: Stop false accusations of Antisemitism in Germany!
To: Academia Network <academia-il@listserver.cc.huji.ac.il>

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Benger Alaluf, Yaara
Date: Sun, Mar 10, 2019 at 12:46 AM
Subject: Please consider signing: Stop false accusations of Antisemitism in Germany!
To:

Dear friends and colleagues,

Please consider signing the attached open letter!

As you probably know a battle over the definition of antisemitism and its relations to harsh critique of Israel, opposition to Zionism and support of the BDS, is being waged in Europe and America. Let us say right at the beginning that as signers of the letter and as stated explicitly in it, we don’t necessarily share a common view of the BDS, but we do contend that this in itself is not antisemitic and should not be abused for silencing harsh critique over Israel and/or its policies.

This is not a theoretical issue but rather a very acute one. Four recent cases in Germany accumulate to a very dangerous trend that if continues will make any substantial critique of Israel and its policies practically impossible:

1.    The Berlin House of Representatives passed the resolution “Against Any Antisemitism – Protect Jewish life in Berlin”, which adopts IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism and consequently describes any criticism of Israel, and even the rejection of the religious-ethnic discrimination within Israel, as a threat to Jewish life.

2.    Three activists who disrupted a “Hasbara” talk given by MK Aliza Lavie at the Humboldt University in Berlin are charged in a criminal court.

3.    The bank account of “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East”, a small activists group based in Germany and comprised mainly of former Israelis is since 2016 under a threat to be shut due to its support of the BDS. Recently the bank decided to conduct a ‘scientific review’ to determine whether the group is antisemitic.

4.    The very group was nominated for the 2019 Göttingen Peace Prize (and received it today!), but the local municipality, the sponsor of the event and the university of Göttingen withdrew their traditional support and participation in the ceremony following false accusations of antisemitism.

We, a group of scholars from Israel and all over the world, view it as our responsibility to protest against these trends and try to change them. We believe none of these actions advances the pressing fight against contemporary forms of antisemitism, but rather plays into the hands of the right-wing forces who wish to reduce the space of free speech when it comes to a discussion over Israel.

In case you decide to sign please send an email to Amos Goldberg (amos.goldberg@mail.huji.ac.il) or Yaara Benger Alaluf (benger@mpib-berlin.mpg.de) and include your full name, your institutional affiliation and your field of study.

March 2019

A CALL TO INDIVIDUALS AND INSTITUTIONS IN GERMANY TO PUT AN END TO THE MANIPULATIVE AND DANGEROUS CONFLATION BETWEEN CRITICISM OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL AND ANTI-SEMITISM

We are scholars, Jewish and non-Jewish, Israeli and non-Israeli, many of whom focus professionally on Jewish studies and the Holocaust. We have been observing with great concern the rise in antisemitism around the world and, in particular, the increase in the number of violent crimes against Jews and Muslims in Germany in the last years. We unconditionally support the fight against hate crimes in Germany and Europe. We are also worried about a parallel trend – the growing tendency, especially in Germany, of conflating Judaism with Zionism and labeling supporters of Palestinian human rights as anti-Semitic.

Last May, the Berlin House of Representatives passed a resolution embracing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) controversial “working definition of antisemitism,” thus describing any criticism of Israel, and even opposition to religious-ethnic discrimination within Israel, as a threat to Jewish life. At the same time, it labels supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic. Not all of us who have signed this letter support BDS, yet we all reject the deceitful allegation that it is anti-Semitic, and we strongly defend the right of any individual or organization to support it. False accusations of anti-Semitism are a shameful mockery of the Holocaust and serve only to bolster racist and anti-democratic forces. Likewise, the identification of anti-Zionism or harsh critique of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism undermines the long history of Jewish opposition to Zionism and/or to Israeli policies, in addition to erasing legitimate critiques by non-Jews which have no basis in anti-Semitism.

Above all, the resolution reflects a persistent effort to delegitimize any discourse about Palestinian rights. Only days after the passing of the resolution, the Freie Universität Berlin was pressured to cancel a talk by the distinguished anthropologist Susan Slyomovics, a Jewish-Canadian scholar and herself the daughter of Holocaust survivors. Slyomovics, whose talk examined the possible application of reparations models to the conflict in Israel-Palestine, was said to be an illegitimate speaker due to her public support of the BDS movement.

A further worrisome example is the ongoing harassment that the organization “Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East” (Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost e.V.) has faced from the Bank for Social Economy (Bank für Sozialwirtschaft) that closed and reopened the organization’s bank account in 2016-2017 because of the group’s support for BDS. The bank’s recent call to “scientifically” determine whether the group is “anti-Semitic” according to the IHRA’s definition illustrates the absurd consequences of the flawed association between critique of Israel and hatred of Jews. Unfortunately, academics are also taking part in political harassment disguised as “a fight against anti-Semitism” and the attendant severe violation of free speech. Today, “Jewish Voice” faces a smear campaign following its nomination for the 2019 Göttingen Peace Prize. Opponents called for the award not to be given to BDS supporters, inciting outrageous accusations that echo Nazi conspiracies. Once again, German politicians evaluate authentic “Jewishness.” Once again, internal Jewish politics are being controlled and monitored.

Last but not least, three BDS activists are being charged in a criminal court in Berlin for disrupting a talk given at the Humboldt University by former Member of the Knesset Aliza Lavie in June 2017. The German press immediately accepted Lavie’s propaganda and framed the incident as an anti-Semitic attack. The charges against the activists – trespassing and assault – are unreasonable and unprecedentedly disproportionate considering that the event was open to the public, that the only participant physically assaulted was one of the activists, and that interrupting a political (not academic) speaker should be considered a reasonable act of protest in any democratic public sphere. This persecution can only be understood in the context of the growing restrictions on freedom of speech when it comes to criticizing Israel and the unbearable ease with which boycott supporters are labelled as anti-Semites.

None of these actions advance the pressing fight against anti-Semitism.Moreover, all of these incidents support and are supported by the most rightwing Israeli government in history. This is a government which denies basic individual and collective rights to Palestinians and other minorities and whose prime minister recently embraced supremacist, misogynistic and homophobic extremists, said to be the Israeli equivalent of the KKK. We fail to see how supporting these political forces helps in the fight anti-Semitism or accords with the post-World War II German commitment to the values of human rights and fighting any form of racism.

The conflation of hostility against Jews with legitimate critique of Israeli policies and non-violent opposition to the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people ignores the serious problems that face us today. In practice, this conflation leads to the targeting of civil society organizations and smears against Jews for their political beliefs, instead of allocating resources for anti-racism education and applying effective measures against anti-Semitic offenders. Further, this conflation obscures valid critique of Israel’s war crimes and violation of human rights, undermining the Palestinian struggle for freedom and equality and discriminating against the Palestinian community in Germany by preventing Palestinian people to freely express their opinions, their grief and sorrow.

In light of both the increase in anti-Semitism and racist crimes in Germany and the escalation in Israeli violence against Palestinians, we urge the German authorities, media, educational and academic professionals and institutions to act responsibly and put an end to this manipulative and dangerous conflation between criticism of the state of Israel and anti-Semitism. We must fight real anti-Semitism and all forms of racism without playing into supremacist interests, and we must safeguard free expression and protect democratic spaces, rather than threaten and silence those who nonviolently express their political beliefs.

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https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2459818620940789&id=1664742203781772

אקדמיה לשוויון Academia for Equality أكاديميون من أجل ألمساواة ·

3 December 2019

English follows

129 חוקרות וחוקרים יהודים וישראלים, בהם כמה מהחוקרים החשובים של אנטשמיות בימנו, פנו אל חברי האספה הלאומית של צרפת בבקשה שיפעלו נגד האנטישמיות הגואה, אך מבלי שהמאבק הזה יבוא על חשבון העם הפלסטיני ומאבקו לחופש ולשוויון. המכתב המלא בהמשך (באנגלית).

129 من الباحثات والباحثين اليهود والإسرائيليين، منهمّ أهمّ العلماء وباحثيّ معاداة السامية في أيامنا هذه ، توجّهوا وناشدوا بطلب من أعضاء الجمعية الوطنية الفرنسية للتحرّك ضد معاداة السامية المتصاعدة والمتزايدة، ولكن دون ان يأتي هذا النضال على حسبان الشعب الفلسطينيّ وكفاحه من أجل الحرية والمساواة. سيتم نشر الرسالة كاملة لاحقا (باللغة الإنجليزية).

129 Jewish and Israeli scholars, including some of the most important researchers of Antisemitism today, sent a letter to members of the French National Assembly urging them not to support the resolution equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and endorsing IHRA definition. The letter was published yesterday by Le Monde:

Dear Member of the French Parliament,

We, Jewish scholars from Israel and elsewhere, many of whom specialize in anti-Semitism and in Jewish and Holocaust history, are writing to you in anticipation of a resolution on combatting anti-Semitism, which the French parliament will debate and put to the vote on December 3rd and 4th.

We wish to express our deep concern about the rise in anti-Semitism around the world, including in France. We view anti-Semitism and all other forms of racism and bigotry as a real threat that must be fought most forcefully, and urge the French government and parliament to do so.

While we strongly emphasize this concern, we oppose the tabled resolution on anti-Semitism for two main reasons and call on you to withhold your signature and support from it.

First, the explanatory statement of the resolution associates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. It even equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism where it says that “criticizing the very existence of Israel as a collective composed of Jewish citizens is tantamount to hatred towards the Jewish community as a whole.”

Before we elaborate, we wish to deplore that the explanatory statement designates Israel “as a collective composed of Jewish citizens”. Some 20 percent of Israel’s population is composed of Palestinian citizens, most of whom are Muslims and Christians. The chosen designation obscures and denies their existence. We consider this highly problematic, also in view of your country’s commitment to a non-ethnic definition of French citizenship.

Our opinions on Zionism may differ, but all of us, including those who consider themselves Zionists, think the association of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is fundamentally wrong. To the many Jews who consider themselves anti-Zionist, it is also deeply offensive.

Anti-Zionism is a legitimate viewpoint in Jewish history, which has a long tradition, including in Israel. Some Jews oppose Zionism for religious reasons, others for political or cultural reasons. Many Holocaust victims were anti-Zionists. The tabled motion dishonours them and disgraces their memory by retroactively calling them anti-Semites.

For Palestinians, Zionism means dispossession, displacement, occupation and structural inequality. It is cynical and insensitive to stigmatize them as anti-Semites for opposing Zionism. They oppose Zionism not because they hate Jews, but because they experience Zionism as an oppressive political movement. It is particularly insensitive to do so, and attesting to a double standard, considering that Israel is denying Palestine’s right to exist – and undermining its very existence.

No doubt, anti-Semites exist among those opposing Zionism. But there are also plenty of anti- Semites who support Zionism. It is thus nonsensical and inappropriate to generally identify anti- Zionism with anti-Semitism. By conflating these two different phenomena, the National

Assembly would undermine the vital efforts to fight the real anti-Semitism, which is multi- dimensional and coming from different sectors in French society.

Our second objection: the tabled resolution endorses the “working definition” of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

This definition is highly problematic. The resolution asserts that the definition “makes it possible to designate as precisely as possible what contemporary anti-Semitism is”. In reality, however, the definition is unclear and indefinite and therefore not an effective instrument to fight anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, legislation to effectively fight and prosecute anti-Semitism already exists in France.

The explanatory statement to the tabled resolution says the IHRA definition “does not recognize criticism of the policies of the State of Israel as antisemitic”. In reality, however, several “contemporary examples of anti-Semitism” have been attached to the definition, which intentionally conflate criticism of and opposition to policies of the State of Israel with anti- Semitism. These examples are presented and treated as an integral part of the definition.

According to the examples and how they are being applied, if you criticize Israel in a way perceived as double standard, you are an anti-Semite. If you favour a binational or a democratic one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you are an anti-Semite. So are you, when you blame Israel for institutionalized racism. One can certainly disagree with these utterances. But such opinions are considered legitimate and protected by freedom of speech in any other political context. As a result, the definition creates an unjustified double standard in favour of Israel and against the Palestinians.

The IHRA definition is already being used to stigmatize and silence critics of the State of Israel, including human rights organizations and respected experts. This has been condemned by leading scholars of anti-Semitism. Kenneth Stern, one of the original drafters of the IHRA definition, has also warned against the definition’s use to undermine free speech.

The key question is: why is all of this happening? We cannot see it detached from the main agenda of the Israeli government to entrench its occupation and annexation of Palestine, and to silence any criticism of this agenda.

For years, the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been denouncing any opposition to its policies as anti-Semitic. Netanyahu himself has been forcefully pushing the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, as well as the IHRA definition. This illustrates how the fight against anti-Semitism has been instrumentalized to shield the Israeli government.

With concern, we note that these endeavours of the Israeli government are getting a political tailwind, also in France. On 28 May 2019, MP Sylvain Maillard participated in an event alongside Yossi Dagan, a militant settler leader, who chairs an Israeli state authority in charge of settlements in the occupied West Bank. As you know, MP Maillard initiated the present resolution on anti-Semitism – notably a few days before the event with Dagan.

We thus urge you: fight anti-Semitism and all forms of racism – but do so without aiding the Israeli government’s agenda of occupation and annexation.

The tabled resolution is not a credible and effective way to do so. Anti-Semitism needs to be fought on universal grounds, along other forms of racism and bigotry, to counter hate. Abandoning this universal approach will lead to further polarization in France, which would also harm the fight against anti-Semitism.

In this context, we note the tabled resolution is also at odds with the position of CNCDH, the French National Consultative Commission on Human Rights. In its 2018 Report on the Fight Against Racism, CNCDH warned the IHRA definition risks weakening the French universal approach to fighting racism and insisted “on vigilance not to confuse between racism and legitimate criticism of a State and its policy”.

We urge you: don’t sign and support a resolution that falsely equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Don’t sign and support a resolution that endorses IHRA’s politicized definition of anti-Semitism, particularly if it does so without any distance to the definition’s problematic examples relating to Israel.

Yours sincerely,

Prof. Howard Tzvi Adelman, Associate Professor of History and of Jewish History, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario

Dr.. Karin Adelman, physician

Prof. Ofer Aharony, Faculty of Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science

Prof. (emeritus) Mateo Alaluf, Institute of Sociology, Université Libre de Bruxelles Prof. Gadi Algazi, Professor of Medieval History, Department of History, Tel Aviv

University; associate fellow at Re:Work: International Research Center Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History at Humboldt University, Berlin

Dr. Hila Amit, writer, researcher

Prof. Gil Anidjar, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department, Columbia University

Dr. Seth Anziska, Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London Prof. Yonathan Anson, Department of Social Work, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Prof. Jean-Christophe Attias, Professor and Chair of Medieval Jewish Thought, École pratique des hautes études, Université PSL, Paris

Prof. (emerita) Elsa Auerbach, English Department, University of Massachusetts Boston (daughter of German Holocaust refugees)

Prof. (emeritus) Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Stanford University

Prof. Avner Ben-Amos, Department of History, Tel Aviv University

Yaara Benger Alaluf, independent scholar

Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai, Department of English Language, University of Haifa

Prof. Andrew Stuart Bergerson, History Department, University of Missouri-Kansas City Prof. Michael Berkowitz, Professor of Modern Jewish History, Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London

Prof. Louise Bethlehem, English and Cultural Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Prof. David Blanc, Department of Mathematics, University of Haifa

Prof. Daniel D. Blatman, Head of Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Max and Rita Haber Chair in Contemporary Jewry and Holocaust Studies, The Hebrew University Jerusalem

Prof. Hagit Borer, Fellow of the British Academy; Fellow of the Linguistics Society of America; Chair in Linguistics, SLLF, Queen Mary University of London

Prof. Daniel Boyarin, Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, University of California at Berkeley, Fellow American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Von Humboldt Senior Laureate Dr. Rony Brauman, physician, Professor at University of Manchester

Prof. (emeritus) Jose Brunner, Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas and Buchmann Faculty of Law, Director, Eva & Marc Besen Institute for the Study of Historical Consciousness, co-founder of Israel’s first legal clinic for the rights of Holocaust survivors, Tel Aviv University

Prof. Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory, University of California, Berkeley

Prof. (emerita) Jane Caplan, Professor of Modern European History, University of Oxford; Emeritus Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford; Marjorie Walter Goodhart Professor Emeritus of European History, Bryn Mawr College; Visiting Professor, Birkbeck, University of London

Dr. Nina Caputo, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Florida

Prof. Michael Chanan, Professor of Film and Video, University of Roehampton, London Prof. Stephen Clingman, Distinguished University Professor, Department of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Dr. Eyal Clyne, unaffiliated

Prof. James Cohen, Institut du monde anglophone, University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 Prof. Alon Confino, Pen Tishkach Chair of Holocaust Studies, Director of The Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies, Department of History, University of Massachusetts

Mike Cushman, research fellow, London School of Economics and Political Science

Dr. Hilla Dayan, Department of Sociology, Amsterdam University College

Prof. (emerita) Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun, Faculty of Social Sciences, University Paris Diderot Paris 7

Prof. Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Professor of Comparative Literature, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Dr. Tal Dor, adjunct researcher, Experice, Université Paris 8

Prof. (emeritus) Tommy Dreyfus, Mathematics Education, School of Education, Tel Aviv University, Awardee of the Felix Klein Medal

Prof. David Enoch, Faculty of Law and Department of Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Prof. (emerita) Judith Ferster, English Department, North Carolina State University

Dr. Cynthia Franklin, Department of English, University of Hawaii

Prof. (emeritus) Gideon Freudenthal, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University

Prof. (emeritus) Chaim Gans, Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University

Prof. Tamar Garb, Durning Lawrence Professor in the History of Art, Director of Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, University College London Katharina Galor, Hirschfeld Visiting Associate Professor, Program in Judaic Studies, Brown University

Prof. Shai Ginsburg, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Duke University Prof. Rachel Giora, Department of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University

Dr. Snait Gissis, Faculty of Humanities, Tel Aviv University

Prof. Amos Goldberg, Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Prof. (emeritus) Steve Golin, History Department, Bloomfield College

Prof. Neve Gordon, Professor of International Law and Marie Curie Fellow, Queen Mary

University of London

Prof. Joel Gordon, The Department of History, University of Arkansas Fayetteville

Prof. Nir Gov, Department of Chemical and Biological Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science

Dr. Yann Guillaud, lecturer at Sciences Po and the Catholic University of Paris

Dr. Gérard Haddad, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, writer

Dr. Ilana Hammerman, writer, winner of the Yeshayahu Leibowitz Prize (2015)

Prof. David Harel, Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, The Weizmann Institute of Science; winner of the Israel Prize (2004) and of the EMET prize Prof. Elizabeth Heineman, Department of History, University of Iowa

Dr. Shir Hever, Political Science, Free University of Berlin

Prof. Eva Jablonka, Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University

Michal Kaiser-Livne, psychoanalyst, Berlin Institute for Group Analysis

Dr. Brian Klug, senior research fellow and tutor in Philosophy, University of Oxford, honorary fellow of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton

Prof. (emeritus) Yehoshua Kolodny, Institute of Earth Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, winner of the Israel Prize (2009)

Dr. Hubert Krivine, physicist

Pascal Lederer, physicist, honorary research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)

Prof. (emeritus) Micah Leshem, Department of Psychology, University of Haifa

Dr. Les Levidow, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The Open University, United Kingdom

Dr. Mark Levene, emeritus fellow, Department of History, University of Southampton UK; Parkes Centre for Jewish/non-Jewish Relations; winner of the Institute for the Study of Genocide, New York; Lemkin prize (2015)

Prof. Joseph Levine, Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Dr. R. Ruth Linden, President Tree of Life Health Advocates, San Francisco; co-founder of the Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project

Adi Liraz, interdisciplinary artist, instructor relating to the history of Jews in Greece and in Germany

Dr. Rachel Livne-Freudenthal, Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem

Prof. (emeritus) Moshé Machover, Professor of Philosophy, University of London

Joëlle Marelli, independent scholar, former program director at the College International de Philosophie, Paris

Dr. Anat Matar, Philosophy Department, Tel Aviv University

Dr. Yehoshua Mathias, senior lecturer, School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Prof. David Mednicoff, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Dr. Oded Na’aman, The Martin Buber Society of Fellows, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Dr. Sheryl Nestel, independent scholar

Prof. Isaac Nevo, Associate Professor, Philosophy

Prof. (emerita) Benita Parry, English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick University

Hadas Pe’ery, lecturer at the The Buchmann Mehta School of Music, Tel Aviv University; laureate of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Award for Composers

Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; The David Yellin Academic College of Education; co-winner of the Sakharov Prize (2001)

Prof. Yael Politi, Center for Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering, Technische Universität Dresden

Dr. David Ranan, Birkbeck University, London

Prof. (emerita) Ada Rapoport-Albert, Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University

College London

Ben Ratskoff, University of California, Los Angeles

Prof. Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Jewish History

Prof. (emerita) Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Departments of English Literature and Comparative Literature, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities

Dr. Noa Roei, Literary and Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam

Prof. (emerita) Lisa Rofel, University of California, Santa Cruz

Prof. Dana Ron, Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University

Prof. (emeritus) Steven Rose, Professor of Biology and Neurobiology, The Open University, United Kingdom

Prof. (emeritus) Jonathan Rosenhead, Professor of Operational Research, Department of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science

Prof. David M. Rosenthal, Cognitive Science Concentration Graduate Center, City University of New York

Prof. Michael Rothberg, 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies, Department of Comparative Literature, University of California; specializes in Holocaust studies

Dr. E. Natalie Rothman, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough

Prof. Catherine Rottenberg, Department of American and Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham

Dr. Sara Roy, Senior Research Scholar, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University

Dr. Hannah Safran, Haifa Feminist Research Center

Dr. Ariel Salzmann, Department of History, Queen’s University, Ontario

Catherine Samary, economist (ret.), Paris Dauphine University

Prof. (emeritus) Donald Sassoon, Professor of Comparative European History, Queen Mary, University of London

Prof. (emerita) Naomi Scheman, Philosophy and Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies, University of Minnesota

Prof. (emerita) Joan Scott, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Sir Stephen Sedley, former Lord Justice of Appeal, England and Wales; former UK Judge ad hoc at European Court of Human Rights; former visiting professor of law, Oxford University

Prof. (emeritus) Graeme Segal, Mathematics, All Souls College

Prof. Gershon Shafir, Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego

Prof. (emerita) Alice Shalvi, English Departments, Hebrew University Jerusalem and Ben- Gurion University of the Negev; former Rector Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies; winner of the Israel Prize (2007), co-winner of the Leibowitz Prize (2009), winner of the Bonei Zion Prize (2017)

Dr. Dimitry Shevchenko, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Asian Studies, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem

Prof. (emeritus) Avi Shlaim, Department of Politics and International Relations, St. Antony’s College and University of Oxford; Fellow of the British Academy

Prof. David Shulman, Department of Asian Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, member Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, winner of the EMET Prize (2010) and of the Israel Prize (2016)

Dr. Dmitry Shumsky, Department of Jewish history and Head of the Cherrick Center for the Study of Zionism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman, Simon Fraser University

Dr. Lisa Stampnitzky, lecturer in Politics, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield

Prof. Marc Steinling, physician, biophysicist, honorary Professor of Universities (son of French resistants FTP-MOI)

Prof. Sacha Stern, Head of Department, Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London

Prof. (emeritus) Zeev Sternhell, Léon Blum Professor emeritus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Israel Prize Laureate in Political Science; Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Letters; International Honorary member American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Howard Rechavia Taylor, Columbia University

Prof. Barry Trachtenberg, Michael R. and Deborah K. Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History, Department of History, Wake Forest University

Prof. (emeritus) Rolf Verleger, psychologist, member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany 2005-2009

Dominique Vidal, historian and journalist

Prof. Roy Wagner, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich

Dr. Yair Wallach, Head of the Centre for Jewish Studies, Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East, SOAS, University of London

Daphna Westerman, MA Fine Arts Bauhaus-University, Weimar

Prof. Diane L. Wolf, Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis

Prof. (emeritus) Niza Yanay, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Prof. (emeritus) Moshe Zimmermann, former director of the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Prof. (emeritus) Moshe Zuckermann, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University

https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2019/12/02/appel-de-127-universitaires-juifs-aux-deputes-francais-ne-soutenez-pas-la-proposition-de-resolution-assimilant-l-antisionisme-a-l-antisemitisme_6021348_3232.html

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https://bdsmovement.net/news/240-jewish-and-israeli-scholars-german-government-boycotts-are-legitimate-and-non-violent-tool
240 Jewish and Israeli scholars to German government: boycotts are a legitimate and non-violent tool of resistance

June 12, 2019 / By 240 Jewish and Israeli scholars / Germany, Palestine

“We reject this motion, which is based on the false allegation that BDS as such equals anti-Semitism. We call on the German government not to endorse this motion and to fight anti-Semitism, while respecting and protecting freedom of speech and of association, which are undeniably under attack.”

June 3, 2019 – Mid-May, Jewish and Israeli scholars, many of whom specialized in anti-Semitism, Jewish history and history of the Holocaust, sounded alarm about the growing tendency to label supporters of Palestinian human rights as anti-Semitic. They did so in a call addressed to the German Bundestag in relation to several motions that were being tabled against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS). Many of us signed this call.

On May 17, one of these motions, sponsored by CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, was adopted. We reject this motion, which is based on the false allegation that BDS as such equals anti-Semitism. We call on the German government not to endorse this motion and to fight anti-Semitism, while respecting and protecting freedom of speech and of association, which are undeniably under attack.

As expressed in the earlier statement, we view anti-Semitism and all forms of racism and bigotry as a threat that must be fought, and we encourage the German government and parliament to do so. However, the adopted motion does not assist this fight. On the contrary, it undermines it.

The opinions about BDS among the signatories of this call differ significantly: some may support BDS, while others reject it for different reasons. Yet, we all reject the deceitful allegation that BDS as such is anti-Semitic and maintain that boycotts are a legitimate and non-violent tool of resistance. We, leading researchers of anti-Semitism included, assert that one should be considered an anti-Semite according to the content and the context of one’s words and deeds – whether they come from BDS supporters or not.

Regrettably, the adopted motion ignores the explicit opposition of the BDS movement to “all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism”. The BDS movement seeks to influence the policies of the government of a state that is responsible for the ongoing occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people. Such policies cannot be immune to criticism. In this context, it should also be noted that many Jewish and Israeli individuals and groups either support BDS explicitly, or defend the right to support it. We consider it inappropriate and offensive when German governmental and parliamentary institutions label them anti-Semitic.

Moreover, the three main goals of BDS – ending the occupation, full equality to the Arab citizens of Israel and the right of return of Palestinian refugees – adhere to international law, even if the third goal is undoubtedly debatable. We are shocked that demands for equality and compliance with international law are considered anti-Semitic.

We conclude that the rise in anti-Semitism is clearly not the concern which inspired the motion adopted by the Bundestag. On the contrary, this motion is driven by political interests and policies of Israel’s most right-wing government in history.

For years, the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been labelling any opposition to its illegal and peace-undermining policies as anti-Semitic. No one can be surprised that Netanyahu warmly welcomed the motion by the Bundestag. This embrace illustrates how the fight against anti-Semitism is being instrumentalized to shield policies of the Israeli government that cause severe violations of human rights and that destroy the chances for peace. We find it unacceptable and utterly counterproductive when supporting “the right of the Jewish and democratic state of Israel to exist” and fighting anti-Semitism in fact encourages these policies.

To make things worse, the adopted motion does not distinguish between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. It categorically condemns all boycotts of Israeli businesses and goods – including of businesses in and goods from Israel’s illegal settlements. As a result, it would label a campaign to boycott of products of a settlement company complicit in human rights violations, as anti-Semitic. This constitutes a deplorable withdrawal from the unequivocal and consistent opposition of the German government and the EU to Israel’s settlement policy.

Furthermore, the motion ignores that statements in the context of BDS are protected by freedom of expression, as also confirmed by the EU, which “stands firm in protecting freedom of expression and freedom of association in line with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which is applicable on EU Member States’ territory, including with regard to BDS actions carried out on this territory”. Precisely because of its history, Germany should be very cautious about any retreat from these basic democratic norms.

Finally, the conflation of BDS with anti-Semitism does not advance the urgent fight against anti-Semitism. The threat of anti-Semitism does not originate from Palestinian rights activists, but mainly from the extreme right and from Jihadist groups. Denying that could alienate Muslims and Arabs from the vital struggle against anti-Semitism and hamper the possibility of building true solidarity between Jews, Israelis, Muslims and Arabs in fighting anti-Semitism and other forms of racism. It also sends a wrong message to those who choose to oppose the oppression of the Palestinian people by non-violent means.

For all those reasons, we, Jewish and Israeli scholars, reject the motion by CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. Now that it has been adopted, we call on the German government not to endorse this motion and to refrain from equating BDS with anti-Semitism. Instead, the German government must act upon its positive responsibility to promote and protect the freedom of expression and of association.

In addition, we call on the German government to maintain its direct and indirect funding of Israeli and Palestinian non-governmental organisations that peacefully challenge the Israeli occupation, expose severe violations of international law and strengthen civil society. These organizations defend the principles and values at the heart of liberal democracy and rule of law in Germany and elsewhere. More than ever, they need financial support and political backing.

Signed by 240 Jewish and Israeli scholars (institutional affiliations mentioned for identification purposes only):

Prof. Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, Mae and Benjamin Swig Professor of Jewish Studies, Director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, Department of Theology & Religious Studies University of San Francisco
Adam Hochschild, Author and journalist, Lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism. University of California at Berkeley, winner of the Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award (2008)
Dr. Adam Kossoff, Reader at the School of Art, University of Wolverhampton, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Prof. Adam Sutcliffe, Department of History, King’s College London, specializes in Jewish History
Prof. (emerita) Alice Shalvi, English Departments, Hebrew University Jerusalem and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, former Rector Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, winner of the Israel Prize (2007), co-winner of the Leibowitz Prize (2009), winner of the Bonei Zion Prize (2017)
Prof. Alon Confino, Pen Tishkach Chair of Holocaust Studies, Director of The Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, Department of History, University of Massachusetts
Dr. Alon Liel, International MA in Security and Diplomacy, Tel Aviv University, former Ambassador to South Africa, Consul General in the south-east of the USA and Head of Diplomatic Mission in Turkey, former Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Planning and of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Dr. Amir Minsky, Assistant Teaching Professor of History, New York University, Abu Dhabi
Prof. (emeritus) Amiram Goldblum, School of Pharmacy- Institute for Drug Research, the Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, one of the founders of the Israeli NGP “Peace Now” and its former spokesperson
Prof. Amos Goldberg, Former Chair of the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializes in Holocaust History
Dr. Anat Matar, Philosophy Department, Tel Aviv University
Dr. Andre Levy, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, specializes in the concepts of diaspora and ethnicity
Prof. Andrew Stuart Bergerson, History Department, University of Missouri-Kansas City, specializes in history of modern Germany
Prof. Aner Preminger, Filmmaker and professor at the Department of Communication, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem and Sapir Academic College
Dr. Annie Pfingst, Independent Scholar, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Dr. Anya Topolski, Associate Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen, specializes in racism in Europe
Dr. Ariel Salzmann, Associate Professor, Islamic and World History, Department of History, Queen’s University
Assaf Gavron, Writer, winner of the Israeli Prime Minister Award for authors (2011) and the Bernstein Prize (2013)
Prof. Audrey Macklin, Director of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, Professor of Law and Chair in Human Rights, University of Toronto
Prof. (emeritus) Avi Shlaim, The Department of Politics and International Relations, St Antony’s College and The University of Oxford, Fellow of the British Academy, specializes in Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Prof. Avner Ben-Amos, Department of History, Tel Aviv University, specializes in nationalism and collective memory in Israel
Avraham Burg, Former Member of the Israeli Knesset, Speaker of the Knesset and Chairman of the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization
Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai, Department of English Language, University of Haifa
Prof. b.h. Yael, Filmmaker, Professor and former chair of Integrated Media at the Ontario College of Art and Design, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Dr. Barak Kalir, Assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Amsterdam, specializes in migration in the Jewish-Israeli context
Prof. Barry Trachtenberg, Michael R. and Deborah K. Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History, Department of History, Wake Forest University
Dr. Ben Silverstein, School of History, Australian National University, specializes in indigenous histories and settler colonialism
Prof. (emerita) Benita Parry, English and Comparative Literary Studies, Warwick University
Prof. (emeritus) Ben-Tzion Munitz, Department of Theatre Arts, Tel Aviv University
Prof. (emerita) Bilha Mannheim, Professor of Sociology, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, winner of the Israel Prize (2003)
Dr. Brian Klug, Senior Research Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy, University of Oxford, honorary fellow of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton
Alex Levac, Photographer, winner of the Israel Prize (2005)
Prof. Bruce Rosenstock, Department of Religion College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Administration, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Prof. Catherine Rottenberg, Foreign Literature and Linguistics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Prof. (emeritus) Chaim Gans, The Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University, specializes in political and legal theory of nationalism and Zionism
Prof. Noy Chaim, School of Communication, Bar-Ilan University, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Prof. Chana Kronfeld, Hebrew, Yiddish and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley
Prof. (emeritus) Christiane Schomblond, Department of Mathematics, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Prof. Colin Dayan, Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities, English Department and Professor at the Law School, Vanderbilt University
Dr. Cynthia Franklin, Department of English, University of Hawai’I, specializes in race and ethnicity
Prof. (emeritus) Dan Jacobson, the Department of Labor Studies, Tel Aviv University
Dr. Dana Kaplan, Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication, The Open University of Israel
Dr. Dana Mills, Department of History, Philosophy and Religion, Oxford Brookes University
Prof. Dana Ron, Computer Science, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Daniel D. Blatman, Head of the Avraham Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Max and Rita Haber Chair in Contemporary Jewry and Holocaust Studies at the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, The Hebrew of University Jerusalem
Prof. Daniel Boyarin, Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley
Prof. Daryl Glaser, Department of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, specializes in the South African context
Prof. David Blanc, Department of Mathematics, University of Haifa
Prof. David Enoch, The Faculty of Law and The Department of Philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. David Harel, Computer Science, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Vice President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, winner of the Israel Prize (2004) and of EMET prize (2010)
Dr. David Ranan, Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck University of London
Prof. David Comedi, Director of the Physics Institute of Northwestern Argentina, INFINOA, National University of Tucumán and CONICET
Prof. David Shulman, Department of Asian Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, winner of the EMET Prize (2010) and of the Israel Prize (2016)
Prof. Debórah Dwork, Inaugural Rose Professor of Holocaust History, Founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Distinguished Research Scholar, Clark University
Dr. (emeritus) Dennis Kortheuer, Department of History at California State University, Long Beach
Prof. Diane L. Wolf, Department of Sociology and former Director of Jewish Studies Program, University of California, Davis
Dr. Dimitry Shevchenko, Post-doctoral fellow, Department of Asian Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Dr. Dmitry Shumsky, Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry, Director of the Cherrick Center for the study of Zionism, the Yishuv and the State of Israel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. (emeritus) Donald Sassoon, Comparative European History, Queen Mary, University of London
Dr. Dorit Naaman, Alliance Atlantis Professor of Film and Media, Queen’s University, Canada, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Dr. E. Natalie Rothman, Department of Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough
Dr. Elizabeth Freund (emerita), Department of English Literature, Hebrew University Jerusalem
Prof. Elizabeth Heineman, Department of History, The University of Iowa, specializes in gender, war, and memory in Germany and in the Holocaust
Dr. Erella Grassiani, Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Prof. (emerita) Elsa Auerbach, English Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, daughter of German Holocaust refugees
Prof. (emeritus) Emmanuel Farjoun, Einstein Institute of Mathematics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Dr. Eric Kligerman, Associate Professor of German and Jewish Studies, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures University of Florida
Prof. (emerita) Esther Dischereit, Writer, poet and Professor of Language Arts, University for Applied Arts Vienna, winner of the Erich Fried Prize (2009)
Prof. Eva Illouz, The Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Hebrew University Jerusalem, The European Centre for Sociology and Political Science , Paris, winner of the EMET Prize (2018)
Prof. Eva Jablonka, Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University
Dr. Eyal Clyne, Department of History, Politics & Philosophy, The University of Manchester, specializes in Israel-Palestine and in Jewish and Zionist thought
Dr. (emerita) Florence Lederer, Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, Université Paris-Sud
Prof. (emeritus) Francis Lowenthal, Cognitive Sciences, University of Mons
Prof. Gabriele Bergers, Department of Oncology, University of Leuven
Prof. Gadi Algazi, Professor of Medieval History, The Department of History, Tel Aviv University, and associate fellow at Re:Work: International Research Center Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History at Humboldt University in Berlin
Dr. Gal Levy, Department of Political Science, Sociology & Communication, The Open University of Israel, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Prof. (emerita) Galia Golan, Darwin Professor, The Department of Political Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Dr. Gayle Levy, Associate Professor, Foreign Languages Department and director of UMKC Honors College, University of Missouri-Kansas City, specializes in Nazi-Germany and the Holocaust
Prof. (emeritus) Gideon Freudenthal, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University
Prof. (emeritus) Graeme Segal, Mathematics, All Souls College
Dr. Hadas Leonov, Software Developer, Bruker BioSpin GmbH, Rheinstetten, Germany
Hadas Pe’ery, Composer, sound artist, educator and activist, teaching fellow at The Buchmann-Mehta School of Music, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Hagit Borer, FBA Chair in Linguistics, SLLF Queen Mary, University of London
Prof. Haim Bresheeth, Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS University of London and Director of Camera Obscura Films
Dr. Halleli Pinson, The Department Of Education, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Prof. (emerita) Hanan J. Kisch, Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Dr. Hannah Safran, Feminist Research Center, Haifa, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Dr. Heidi Grunebaum, Associate Professor at the Centre for Humanities Research University of the Western Cape, specializes in memory and reconciliation in Germany, South Africa and Israel-Palestine
Dr. Hila Amit, Independent scholar of Queer Theory and Migration and Diaspora Studies
Dr. Hilla Dayan, Sociology, Amsterdam University College, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Dr. Idan Landau, Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Dr. Ilan Saban, Faculty of Law, University of Haifa, specializes in minority rights, international law, and Nationalism
Dr. Ilana Hammerman, Writer, editor, translator and activist, winner of the Yeshayahu Leibowitz Prize (2015)
Dr. Inna Michaeli, Independent scholar and activist
Dr. Irit Dekel, Research Associate, Jena Center for Reconciliation Studies Friedrich Schiller University, specializes in memory politics in Germany and Israel
Prof. Ishay Rosen-Zvi, Head of the Talmud and Late Antiquity section in the department of Jewish Philosophy, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Isaac (Yanni) Nevo, The Department of Philosophy, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Dr. Itamar Kastner, Humboldt University, Berlin
Dr. Itamar Shachar, Marie Curie Post-doctoral fellow, Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam
Dr. Itay Snir, Political Philosophy, Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, The Open University of Israel
Prof. (emeritus) Jacob Katriel, Chemistry Department, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Prof. James Cohen, Anglophone World Department, Université de Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle
Dr. Jared Margulies, Post-doctoral fellow, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield
Prof. Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy, Yale University
Dr. (emeritus) Jeanne Fagnani, Senior researcher at The French National Centre for Scientific Research, associate researcher at the Institute of Economic and Social Research, member of the scientific committee of the Nicolas Hulot Foundation for Nature and Mankind
Dr. Jeffrey Melnick, American Studies Department, University of Massachusetts
Prof. (emeritus) Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History, Stanford University
Prof. Joel Gordon, The Department of History, University of Arkansas Fayetteville
Prof. Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor of Comparative Literature and Critical Theory, University of California, Berkeley
Prof. Judith Norman, Department of Philosophy, Trinity University San Antonio, Texas USA
Prof. (emeritus) Jules Chametzky, Department of English, University of Massachusetts
Dr. Karel Arnaut, Associate Professor and Research Coordinator of the Interculturalism, Migration and Minorities Research Centre (IMMRC), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Prof. (emerita) Karen Brodkin, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, specializes in anti-Semitism and racism
Dr. Katharina Galor, Hirschfeld Visiting Associate Professor of Judaic Studies, Brown University
Kathy Wazana, Documentary filmmaker, Master’s student at the Department of Cinema and Media Arts, York University
Dr. Katy Fox-Hodess, Lecturer in Employment Relations, Accreditations Management School, University of Sheffield
Prof. Kobi Peterzil, Department of Mathematics, University of Haifa
Dr. Kobi Snitz, Mathematics Department, Weizmann Institute of Science
Prof. (emeritus) Laurence Dreyfus, Faculty of Music, University of Oxford
Prof. (emeritus) Lawrence Blum, Professor of Philosophy, and Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education University of Massachusetts Boston, specializes in anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
Dr. Les Levidow, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, Open University, UK
Dr. Lin Chalozin-Dovrat, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas and Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University
Prof. (emerita) Linda Dittmar, The English Department, University of Massachusetts, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Prof. Linda Gordon, Florence Kelley Professor of History, New York University, specializes in right-wing populism
Dr. Lior Volinz, Post-doctoral researcher at the Crime and Society (CRiS) research group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Prof. Lisa Baraitser, Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck Institute, University of London
Dr. Lisa Stampnitzky, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, specializes in political violence
Prof. (emeritus) Louis Kampf, Literature and Women’s & Gender Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Prof. Louise Bethlehem, English and Cultural Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializes in South African apartheid
Prof. Lynne Segal, Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck Institute, University of London
Prof. (emeritus) Marc David, Department of Mathematics – Computer Science, Universiteit Antwerpen
Prof. (emeritus) Marc Steinling, School of Medicine, University of Lille Nord de France
Prof. Marianne Hirsch, William Peterfield Trent Professor of English, Department of English and Comparative Literature, co-director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, Columbia University, specializes in politics of memory, the Holocaust and Jewish memory
Prof. (emerita) Marianne Lederer, Former director of the School of Interpreters and Translators (ESIT), Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle
Dr. Marie-José Durand-Richard, Associated researcher at Laboratoire SPHERE, Université Paris Diderot and honorary lecturer of Mathematics and History of Science, Université Paris 8
Dr. Mark Levene, Parkes Centre for Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton
Prof. (emeritus) Mateo Alaluf, Institute of Sociology, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Prof. (emeritus), Maurice Pasternak, Artist and Professor at L’École nationale supérieure des arts visuels de La Cambre
Prof. Menachem Klein, Department of Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University, former advisor for Israeli officials regarding negotiations with Palestinian counterparts and participant in several Israeli-Palestinian peace talks
Prof. Michael Chanan, Department of Media, Culture and Language, University of Roehampton
Prof. Michael Keren, Department of Economics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. (cmeritus) Micah Leshem, The Department of Psychology, University of Haifa
Prof. Michael Rothberg, 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies, Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, specializes in Holocaust studies
DipEd. Michel Staszewski, Visiting Researcher Department of Education Free University of Brussels
Dr. Mir Yarfitz, Associate Professor of History, Jewish Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Wake Forest University
Dr. Miriam Ticktin, Associate Professor of Anthropology, The New School for Social Research
Prof. (emeritus) Mordechai Shechter, The Department of Economics and The Department of Natural Resource & Environmental Management, University of Haifa, former Rector of the University of Haifa, former President of Tel-Hai Academic College, former head of Israel’s National Parks and Nature Reserves Authority Council
Prof. (emeritus) Moshe Zimmermann, Former director of the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializes in the German Jewry during the Second World War and anti-Semitism
Prof. (emeritus) Moshe Zuckermann, The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University, son of Holocaust survivors, specializes in Zionism and anti-Semitism
Prof. (emeritus) Moshé Machover, Professor of Philosophy, University of London
Dr. Na’ama Rokem, Associate Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature & Comparative Literature, University of Chicago, specializes in Zionist and Israeli literature, and German-Jewish relations
Dr. Nadia Valman, Reader in English Literature Co-director, of the Raphael Samuel History Centre, Queen Mary, University of London, specializes in Jewish History
Dr. Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
Prof. Neve Gordon, Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, specializes in human rights and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Prof. Nicholas Stargardt, History Department, Magdalen College, specializes in the history of Nazi Germany
Dr. Nina Caputo, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Florida
Prof. Nir Gov, Department of Chemical and Biological Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science
Prof. (emeritus) Nira Yuval-Davis, Honorary Director Centre for Migration, Refugees & Belonging, The University of East London
Dr. Noa Roei, Literary and Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Prof. (emeritus) Noam Chomsky, Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Laureate Professor, The Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona
Prof. (emerita), Nomi Erteschik-Shir, Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan, The School of Education, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and The David Yellin Academic College of Education, co-winner of the Sakharov Prize (2001)
Prof. Oded Goldreich, Computer Science, Weizmann Institute of Science
Dr. Oded Na’aman, Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. Ofer Aharony, Faculty of Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science
Dr. Ofri Ilany, Post-doctoral fellow, The Polonsky Academy The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, specializes in German history and in German-Jewish relations
D.Arch Olivier Tric, Honorary teacher at School of Architecture of Nantes
Prof. Oren Yiftachel, Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Dr. Orian Zakai, The Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages, The George Washington University
Prof. Pascal Lederer, Honorary research director at The French National Centre for Scientific Research
Dr. Patricia Schor, Department of Social Sciences, Amsterdam University College, specializes in nationalism, race and racism
Prof. (emeritus) Paul Mendes-Flohr, Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History and Thought, Associate Faculty in the Department of History, The University of Chicago Divinity School
Dr. Peter Cosyns, Post-doctoral researcher, Art History and Archeology, Free University Brussels
Pierre Getzler, Artist, “Pupille de la Nation”, his father died in July 1940 fighting with the French Foreign Legion against Nazi Germany and received The Cross of War decoration, his mother was deported to Auschwitz where she died in 1943
Dr. R. Ruth Linden, UCSF School of Medicine, founder of the Holocaust Media Project
Prof. Rachel Giora, Department of Linguistics, Tel Aviv University
Dr. Ran Greenstein, Associate professor, Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Dr. Ran HaCohen, Department of Literature, Tel Aviv University, specializes in German-Jewish literature
Dr. Raya Cohen, Department of History, Tel Aviv University and The University of Naples Federico II, specializes in the history of the Holocaust and in the context of Israel-Palestine
Rela Mazali, Independent scholar, writer and peace activist
Revital Madar, PhD candidate, The Cultural Studies Program, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Prof. (emeritus) Richard Falk, Milbank Professor of International Law, Princeton University and former UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Occupied Palestine (2008-14)
Prof. Robert C. Rosen, Department of English, William Paterson University
Dr. Roi Livne, Department of Sociology, University of Michigan
Prof. (emeritus) Rolf Verleger, Psychologist, Member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany 2005-2009
M.D. Rony Brauman, Director of Studies at the Fondation Médecins Sans Frontières, associate professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, and director of the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom.
Prof. Roy Wagner, Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences, ETH Zürich
Dr. Sagi Schaefer, History Department, Tel Aviv University, specializes in the history of modern Germany
Dr. Sara Roy, Senior Research Scholar, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Prof. Sergio Tenenbaum, Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto
Dr. Seth Anziska, Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London, specializes Jewish-Muslim relations and in the context of Israel-Palestine
Prof. Seth L. Sanders, Professor of Religious Studies, Director of the Graduate Group for the Study of Religion Member, Jewish Studies Program University of California, Davis
Prof. Dr. Shani Tzoref, School of Jewish Theology, Hebrew Bible and Biblical Exegesis, University of Potsdam
Prof. (emerita) Sherna Gluck, Director of the Oral History Program, Department of History, California State University Long Beach, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Dr. Sheryl Nestel, Independent Scholar, Toronto, specializes in race and racism
Dr. Shir Hever, Political Science, Free University of Berlin, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Shira Havkin, PhD candidate in Political Sociology, Centre d’Études et de Recherches Internationales, Sciences-Po Paris
Prof. (emerita) Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, English Department and the Department of General and Comparative Literature, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. (emeritus) Shlomo Moran, Computer Science Department, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
Prof. (emeritus) Shlomo Sand, History Department, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Sidney Corbett, composer and teacher at the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts
Prof. Simona Sharoni, Director of the Women’s & Gender Studies Department, Interdisciplinary Institute, Merrimack College
Smadar Ben Natan, PhD candidate, Zvi Meitar Center for Advanced Legal studies, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University
Dr. Snait B. Gissis, Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas Tel Aviv University, specializes in racism
Prof. (emerita) Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun, Social Sciences, University Paris Diderot-Paris 7
Prof. Stephen Clingman, Department of English, University of Massachusetts
Prof. Stephen Deutsch, Professor of Post-Production, Department of Media Production, Bournemouth University
Prof. Stephen R. Shalom, Political Science Department, William Paterson University, member of the executive board of the Gandhian Forum for Peace & Justice
Prof. (emeritus) Steve Golin, History Department, Bloomfield College
Dr. Steven Levine, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts
Prof. (emeritus) Steven Rose, Neuroscience, The Open University, UK
Prof. Susan Slyomovics, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, specializes in human rights, German Reparations and Israel-Palestine
Dr. Sven-Erik Rose, Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature, chair of the Department of German and Russian, University of California, Davis, specializes in German and German-Jewish literature and thought and Holocaust Studies
Dr. Tal Shuval, Department of History, Philosophy and Judaic studies, The Open University of Israel, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Dr. Tamar Blickstein, Post-doctoral researcher, Affective Societies, The Free University of Berlin
Prof. Tamar Rapoport, The Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. Tamir Sorek, Sociology and Jewish Studies, University of Florida, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Dr. Terri Ginsberg, Assistant Professor, Department of the Arts, The American University in Cairo
Dr. Tom Pessah, Independent scholar and activist
Prof. (emeritus) Tommy Dreyfus, Mathematics Education, School of Education, Tel Aviv University
Udi Aloni, Writer and filmmaker, specializes in Jewish and Zionist thought and in the context of Israel-Palestine
Prof. Uri Hadar, Head of Gerontological Clinical Psychology department, Ruppin Academic Center
Prof. (emerita) Vered Kraus, Department of Sociology, University of Haifa
Prof. Victor Ginsburgh, The European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Prof. Willie van Peer, Intercultural Hermeneutics, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich
Yaara Benger Alaluf, Post-doctoral fellow at The Center for The History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
Dr. Yael Politi, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam
Dr. Yair Wallach, Head of the Centre for Jewish Studies, Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East, SOAS, University of London, specializes in the context of Israel-Palestine
Prof. Yakov Rabkin, The Montreal Centre for International Studies and the Department of History, Université de Montréal, specializes in history of Jewish and Zionist thought
Dr. Yali Hashash, Haifa Feminist Research Center, Women and Gender Studies Program and The Oral History Laboratory: Life-stories under oppression at The Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies, Tel Aviv University
Dr. Yann Guillaud, Lecturer at The Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA), Sciences Po
Prof. (emeritus) Yehoshua Kolodny, Institute of Earth Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, winner of the Israel Prize (2010)
Prof. Yinon Cohen, Yosef H. Yerushalmi Professor of Israel & Jewish Studies, Department of Sociology, Columbia University
Prof. (emeritus) Yonathan (Jon) Anson, Department of Social Work, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Prof. Yosef Grodzinsky, The Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky, Centre for Media Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
Prof. Yuri Pines, Director, The Louis Frieberg Center for East Asian Studies Department of Asian Studies The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Dr. Yuval Eylon, The Department of History, Philosophy and Judaic Studies, The Open University of Israel
Dr. Yuval Yonay, Department of Sociology, University of Haifa
Dr. Zvi Bekerman, The Seymour Fox School of Education, The Melton Centre for Jewish Education and research fellow at The Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializes in intercultural encounters and minority education

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Israeli Academics Condemn the Slaughter and Endless Oppression of the Palestinian People

Israeli Academics Condemn the Slaughter and Endless Oppression of the Palestinian People

July 20, 2014 Public Voices

This protest petition just came to our attention. As a pubic service we are circulating it here. In the coming days, analysis from alternative perspectives will follow, including pieces by Nahed Habiballah, Benoit Challand and yours truly. – Jeff Goldfarb

The signatories to this statement, all academics at Israeli universities, wish it to be known that they utterly deplore the aggressive military strategy being deployed by the Israeli government. The slaughter of large numbers of wholly innocent people, is placing yet more barriers of blood in the way of the negotiated agreement which is the only alternative to the occupation and endless oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel must agree to an immediate cease-fire, and start negotiating in good faith for the end of the occupation and settlements, through a just peace agreement.

If you are an Israeli academic, working in Israel, and would like to sign this statement, please send an email to Prof. Rachel Giora rachel.giora@gmail.com with your name, title and affiliation.

Academics in Israeli universities who have signed the statement above:

Prof. Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Emmanuel Farjoun, Hebrew University
Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Hebrew University
Dr. Kobi Snitz, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Dr. Anat Matar, Tel Aviv University
Dr Efrat Ben-Zeev, Ruppin Academic Center
Prof. As’ad Ghanem, Haifa University
Prof. Anat Biletzki, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Adi Ophir, Tel Aviv University
Dr. Ovadia Ezra, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Zvi Tauber, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Vered Kraus, Haifa University
Dr. Yuval Yonay, Haifa University
Prof. Oded Goldreich, Weizman Institute
Prof. Dana Ron, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Gadi Algazi, Tel Aviv University
Professor Mira Ariel, Tel Aviv University
Professor Idan Landau, Ben Gurion University
Professor As’ad Ghanem, Haifa University
Dr. Ayelet Ben-Yishai, Haifa University
Prof. Micah Leshem, Haifa University
Dr. Ilan Saban, University of Haifa
Dr. Avishai Ehrlich, TAU
Dr. Ivy Sichel, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Prof. Yehuda Shenhav, TAU
Dr. Hannah Safran, The Academic College for Society and the Arts
Dr. Yael Ben-zvi, Ben-Gurion University
Prof. Dudy Tzfati, Hebrew University
Dr. Tikva Honig-Parnass, Jerusalem
Professor David Blanc, University
Dr. Haim Yacobi Bezalel, Ben Gurion University
Elizabeth Ritter, Ben-Gurion University
Paul Wexler, Professor Emeritus, Tel-Aviv University
Prof. Tal Siloni, Tel Aviv University
Prof. Amatzia Weisel, Tel Aviv University (retired)
Prof. Tamar Katriel, Haifa University
Dr. Haim Deuelle Luski, Tel Aviv University & Bezalel Academy of Art
Prof. Matania Ben-Artzi, Hebrew University
Dr. Roy Wagner, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Professor Uri Hadar, Tel Aviv University
Professor Shlomo Sand, Tel Aviv University
Professor Yuri Pines, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Amira Katz, Hebrew University Jerusalem
Prof. Julia Horvath, Tel-Aviv University
Dr. Arie M. Dubnov, University of Haifa
Dr. Raz Chen-Morris, Bar Ilan University
Dr. Amalia Sa’ar, University of Haifa

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Micah Leshem in Italian:

Don’t we set precondition to the negotiations of peace – because they ask for the Palestinian ones?

http://rete-eco.it/2012/approfondimenti/opposizione-israeliana/38483-precondizioni.html

Categoria: Opposizione israelianaPubblicato Giovedì, 18 Luglio 2013 08:22Scritto da Micah Leshem

24/06/2013

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https://web.archive.org/web/20170703113854/http://www.seruv.org.il/universitysupportEng_print.asp

BackOpen Letter from Faculty Members

We, faculty members from a number of Israeli universities, wish to express our appreciation and support for those of our students and lecturers who refuse to serve as soldiers in the occupied territories. Such service too often involves carrying out orders that have no place in a democratic society founded on the sanctity of human life.
For thirty five years an entire people, some three and a half million in number, have been held without basic human rights. The occupation and oppression of another people have brought the State of Israel to where it is today.
Without an Israeli declaration of an end to the occupation, accompanied by appropriate action–unilateral, if necessary–the present war is not being fought for our home but for the settlements beyond the green line and for the continued oppression of another people.
We hereby express our readiness to do our best to help students who encounter academic, administrative or economic difficulties as a result of their refusal to serve in the territories. We call on the University community at large to support them.
Faculty members who wish to join are welcome to contact Anat Biletzki (anatbi@post.tau.ac.il).This letter is being updated. So far, 360 faculty members have signed it.Tel-Aviv UniversityGadi AlgaziBenjamin ArbelMira ArielMordecai ArieliAharon AtzmonIrit AverbuchMichal AviadArnon AvronRon BarkaiOfer BarneaOuti Bat-ElAvner Ben-AmosZiva Ben-PoratSigal Ben-PorathLinda Ben-ZviRuth BermanAnat BiletzkiYigal BronnerJose BrunnerRaya CohenYinon CohenGerald CohenLeo CorryBilha Davidson-HaradDaniel DorTommy DreyfusZohar EitanMiri Eliav-FeldonGuy EvenAharon EviatarOvadia EzraRivka FeldhayAmos FiatMenachem FischGideon FreudenthalAriella FriedmanLyat FriedmanIris FryChaim GansIsrael GershoniRachel GioraSnait GissisEli GlaznerOfra Goldstein-GidoniYuval GorenJoseph GrodzinskyUri HadarAvraham HeffnerTalma HendlerHanna HerzogZe’ev HerzogYoram HirschfeldSylvie HonigmanJulia HorvathEva JablonkaDaphna JoelNaftali KaminskiHaggi KenaanAviad KleinbergNora Korin-LangerJudy KupfermanYehuda KupfermanYitzhak LaorHerardo LeibnerElia LeibovitzDafna LemishShimon LevyOrly LubinRuth ManorUri MaorShmulik MarcoAnat MatarAriel MeiravBen-Zion MunitzHannah NavehJudd Ne’emanJoseph NeumannYehuda NinyAdi OphirRonie ParciackYoav PeledEinat PeledTamar PiterbergDanny RabinowitzZvi RaziRaanan ReinElchanan ReinerTanya ReinhartFreddie RokemDana RonTova RosenSharon RotbardZeev RotemShlomo SandRakefet Sela-SheffyRuben SeroussiAharon ShabtaiRonen ShamirEdna ShavitUzi ShavitLeon SheleffYishayahu ShenYehuda ShenhavElana ShohamyTali SiloniAmy SingerRosalie SitmanZvi TauberShula VolkovPaul WexlerMina WilsonAmnon WolmanEli YassifNeta ZivMoshe ZuckermannHebrew UniversityZach AdamAmotz AgnonDaniel AmitShalom BaerMalachi Beit-ArieMatania Ben-ArtziJochanan BenbassatGershon Ben-ShakharShlomo BentinTzvi BentwichMichel BercovierLouise BethlehemMichael BrandeisMenahem BrinkerVictoria BuchRuth ButlerErik CohenItamar CwikSidra DeKoven EzrahiAvner De-ShalitFanny DoljanskiOtniel DrorDavid EnochYehouda EnzelRuma FalkRaphael FalkEmanuel FarjounMichal FrenkelElizabeth FreundEhud FriedgutDov FriedlanderAvraham GalDaphna Golan-AgnonAmiram GoldblumCharles GreenbaumRuth HaCohenDon HandelmanAlon HarelGalit Hasan-RokemYaacov HasingHannan HeverCarola HilfrichPeter HillmanAriel HirschfeldUdi HrushovskiRonen KadmonMichael KerenOrna KupfermanRaz KupfermanJohn LandauYonata LevyNati LinialJeanette MalkinNina MayorekPaul Mendes-FlohrNilly MorNava MoranStephane MosesUzi MotroGad NathanAnat NinioIlana PardesNurit Peled-ElhananShmuel PelegMotty PerryYuri PinesItamar PitowskyJulia ResnikYaacov RitovIlana RitovMoshe RonZeev RosenhekIdan SegevBenny ShanonGideon ShelachTuvia ShlonskyNita ShochatYinon ShrimDavid ShulmanIvy SichelWilfred SteinZeev SternhellMorris TeubalDudy TzfatiAmiel VardiVered VinitzkyMarcus WasemJoseph WeidenfeldAvital WolmanMenachem YaariJoseph ZeiraAnat ZeiraMoshe ZimmermanBen-Gurion UniversityYael AmitaiArie ArnonDanny Bar-OnNaomi BenbassatShmuel Ben-DorIts`hak DinsteinDalia DraiGerda Elata-AlsterDanny FilcAlon FriedmanOfer GalNeve GordonHaim GordonLev GrinbergYitzhak HenSam KaplanShoshana KeinyHanan KischBecky KookIlana KrauzmanIdan LandauDaphna LevitAmnon MeiselsPnina Mutzafi-HallerIsaac (Yanni) NevoDavid NewmanIris ParushAdi ParushAmit PinchevskiRenee PoznanskiHaggai RamUri RamAmnon Raz-KrakotzkinNomi ShirZvi SolovBarak WeissNitza YanayOren YiftachelJoseph YonahHaifa UniversityAnat ArielUri Bar-JosephYair BaumlBenjamin Beit-HallahmiDevorah BernsteinDavid BlancAmit GazitAvner GiladiIlan Gur-ZeevYossi GuttmanMeir HemoTali ItzhakiDeborah Kalekin-FishmanTamar KatrielAmalia KoriatVered KraussHaggai KupermintzRon KuzarMicah LeshemJoyce LivingstoneJudah MatrasAvraham OzNira PancerKobi Peter (Peterzil)Roni PiskerHenry RosenfeldIlan SabanDalia SachsHannah SafranMichael SaltmanAnna SfardArie ShapiraIlan TorenMichael YogevYuval YonayTechnionColman AltmanErez BraunDavid DeganiMichael FryHaggai GilboaJacob KatrielUri KatzHubert Law-YoneYaakov OshmanDanny RitterShammai SpeiserBronek WajnrybIrad YavnehOfer ZeitouniAcademic College, Tel-Aviv-JaffaOfer FeinHanan FrenkRebecca JacobyMichal ParnasAvraham SchweigerEran ShadakhDorit ShweikiDani SzpruchRoy WagnerWeizman InstituteOfer AharonyOded GoldreichSteve KarlishRon NaamanYossi NirItamar ProcacciaAmitai RegevDaniel RohrlichVered Rom-KedarUzy SmilanskyInterdisciplinary CenterDanny Ben-ShaharMike DahanBezalel AcademyZivia Yair AvigdorYuval BaerEyal Ben-DovMichal Broshi-BenlevyIdo BrunoMaya Cohen LeviAnat DavidTzachi FarberDavid GintonShuka GlotmanDavid GuggenheimLance HunterShmuel KaplanAnat KatsirYaacov KaufmanSharon KerenGil KleinMarylou LevinItzik RennertMiri SegalArie SivanKeren VinerHaim YakovyReuven ZehaviSapir CollegeDaniel DeMalachOrly SokerTel-Hai Academic CollegeAvihu RonenAshkelon Academic CollegeMenashe ShwedOpen UniversityAmira GelblumSimona GinsburgKaye College of EducationDoron NarkissGordon College of Education – HaifaAnat BarneaCollege of ManagementReuven HoreshBar Ilan UniversityHannah KasherRimon KasherBezalel ManekinDavid SeneshAcademic CenterOrly ShenkerBeit Berl CollegeDiana Silberman-KellerLevinsky College of EducationDorit CohenRamat Gan CollegeYael BerdaAbroadJacques Negre

https://web.archive.org/web/20180713025920/http://www.seruv.org.il/UniversitySupportHeb_Print.asp

גילוי דעת של חברי סגל מהאוניברסיטאות והמכללותחזור

אנו חברי סגל מהאוניברסיטאות מביעים בזאת את תמיכתנו והערכתנו לסטודנטים ומרצים המסרבים לשרת כחיילים בשטחים הכבושים. שרות זה כרוך לעתים קרובות מדי בביצוע פקודות שאין להן מקום בחברה דמוקרטית המאמינה כי כל אדם נברא בצלם.
מזה 35 שנה, מוחזק עם שלם של שלשה וחצי מליון איש ללא זכויות אדם בסיסיות. הכיבוש והשליטה על עם אחר הביאו את מדינת ישראל אל המצב בו היא נמצאת היום.
ללא הצהרה ישראלית על סיום הכיבוש המלווה במעשים – ולו גם מעשים חד-צדדיים, אין מלחמה זאת מלחמה על הבית כי אם על המשך הדיכוי והמשך מפעל ההתנחלויות.
אנו מביעים בזאת את נכונותנו לעזור ככל יכולתנו לסטודנטים שכתוצאה מסירובם לשרת בשטחים יתקלו בקשיים לימודיים, כלכליים או מינהליים ואנו קוראים לקהילת האוניברסיטה לתמוך בסרבנים.
סטודנטים מוזמנים ליצור קשר עם כל אחד מהחתומים למעלה.
חברי סגל המעוניינים להצטרף מוזמנים לכתוב ל-anatbi@post.tau.ac.il
רשימה זאת מתעדכנת, עד כה חתמו עליה 360 חברי סגל מהאוניברסיטאות.
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When Activism Replaces Scholarship: The Case of Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

09.04.26

Editorial Note

Later this month, Trinity College Dublin’s School of Religion, Theology, and Peace Studies and the Irish School of Ecumenics will host a webinar titled “Why Wars? Voices of Women” or “Why Wars? The Cry for Just Peace,” on April 23, 2026.

The invitation to the webinar states that “Despite our hopes for abundant life, the business of death has been organized in ways that defy imagination. It has been structured, institutionalized, industrialized, legalized, and even morally justified on a mass scale. As a complex totality, industrial-scale death masquerades as ‘civilization’, presenting its own security to justify violence with lethal weaponry on a global scale. Human rights, democracy, development, women’s rights, and queer rights, often seen as achievements of modern civilization, have themselves been weaponized with promises of peace, prosperity, and security. But for whom? Children and women, those who sustain the continuation of life across generations, are among those most exposed to violence and suffering. Their cry for life is not a cry for any kind of peace, but for just peace, where liveable conditions and the continuation of life are ensured. Their resilience and resistance embody our hopes for life and invite our solidarity in seeking an alternative vision of just peace.”

The webinar will feature four women, including Prof. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, the “internationally renowned scholar and activist whose work examines trauma, state violence, surveillance, gendered harm, and the intersections of law and society.” Formerly of the Hebrew University, she serves as Global Chair in Law at Queen Mary University of London and holds academic affiliations across South Africa, the United States, and Jerusalem. She is the author of Militarization and Violence against Women.

Israel Academia Monitor has been reporting on Shalhoub-Kevorkian numerous times, including earlier this year.

In 2025, Shalhoub-Kevorkian published a paper titled “Five Pillars of Zionist Genocidal Apparatus: A Palestinian Problematization of Genocide Studies,” in the Journal of Genocide Research, Volume 28, 2026 – Issue 3, as part of a Roundtable: Gaza and Genocide Studies. There, she stated, “In this paper, I trouble the ways Genocide Studies has engaged with the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the political power embedded in invoking genocide.” She claims to be theorizing “Palestinian voices and testimonies from the beginning of the Nakba in 1948 through the ongoing genocide today.” She details a Palestinian woman, Fatmeh, a Gazan mother who went to get food for her children and came back to find their scattered body parts – “ashlaa’.” Shalhoub-Kevorkian continues, “I also speak for/from the unheard voices of Gazan newborns, left to decompose in incubators on 9 November 2023, in Al-Nasr hospital’s ICU ward,” referring to a CNN report. Her “analysis of the ongoing genocidal Nakba in Gaza stages the centrality of death and overkill apparent in the ashlaa’ of decomposed babies in incubators and of Fatmeh’s dismembered ashlaa’ of her children.” She looks at how “terror inhabiting the most vulnerable bodies – newborns and children – and most vulnerable spaces: homes, schools, and hospitals.”

Shalhoub-Kevorkian states her analysis “targets the Israeli state that reduces children and newborn bodies into decomposing, dismembered objects to support the larger project of demarcating the ontological boundary between the human and the non-human, the should-be-shredded, decomposed, and killed to disappear. The genocidal brutality of indiscriminate attacks intended to kill, including leaving newborns abandoned in incubators, inscribes in both the flesh and Zionist consciousness that Palestinian bodies can and should always be in a state of death and overkill. Such inscription of power on babies’ flesh, as on the flesh of Palestinian men and women, old and young, ontologically links their slowly dying bodies to the settler colonial state.”

However, contrary to Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s antisemitic blood libel, during the fighting in northern Gaza in November 2023, after the evacuation of Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital, several premature babies were left behind in incubators. When medical staff returned, they found the infants dead. While some reports attributed responsibility to Israeli military actions, the available evidence reflects a chaotic wartime situation, and responsibility for the deaths remains disputed.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian presents the episode as evidence of a “genocidal apparatus” targeting Palestinian infants. Yet the available evidence regarding the deaths of the babies does not support the claim that Israel intentionally caused their deaths.

The tragedy is indisputable, but it was Hamas that started the war and used Palestinian civilians as human shields, including in hospitals and schools.

Worth noting that the Al-Nasr Children’s hospital was also discussed in an article by Robert Satloff, the executive director of The Washington Institute, who noted how an “heartrending story about finding decomposing infants in a Gaza hospital is full of troubling holes, discrepancies, and conflicts of interest that should have raised serious questions.”

Shalhoub-Kevorkian argues that Israeli policies toward Palestinians must be understood through the framework of genocide studies. However, this interpretation is highly contested within the field. Several scholars have argued that the available evidence does not meet the legal or historical criteria for genocide, particularly the requirement of demonstrable intent to destroy a protected group.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian is not new to falsifications and lies. In 2014, she co-authored an article, stating that “The targeting of Palestinian women’s bodies and sexuality, we contend, is structural to the Israeli settler colonial project’s racialized logic of elimination.” The authors referred to a 2009 book by Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian Case-Study, which details how “Rape and other forms of sexual violence against Palestinian women have always been an element of the settler colonial state’s attempts to destroy and eliminate indigenous Palestinians from their land. In addition to rape and other forms of sexual violence, the racialized logic of sexual violence energizes the very imaginary and project of conquering and cultivating Palestinian land, in transforming it into the Jewish polis. Hence, our discussion of sexual violence is embedded not only in the sexualized practices and politics of the Zionist state, but also in the nature of Israeli settler colonial violence itself.”

Contrary to Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s claims, in 2006, a Hebrew University MA thesis by Tal Nitzan, supervised by Profs. Eyal Ben-Ari and Edna Lomsky-Feder, titled “The Borders of Occupation: The Rarity of Military Rape in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” indicated that rape by IDF soldiers was very rare. The study analyzed the reasons for this, examining cultural, social, and military aspects. The study concluded that cases of rape by IDF soldiers were extremely rare compared with patterns observed in many other military conflicts.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian knows full well that Palestinian civilians serve as cannon fodder for Islamist terrorist groups, but she finds ways to avoid it. She says that one of the issues addressed by her 2009 book, Militarization and Violence against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: a Palestinian Case, is the “complex way in which hegemonic economic, political, and patriarchal powers, including the mass media, ostracize Palestinian women and reproduce oppressive gender politics. If someone looks at Um Riad [a Palestinian mother] through the hegemonic lens, he or she might construct an image of this Palestinian woman based upon the popular discourses, such as the US media’s portrayal of Palestinian women as ‘bad’ mothers who ‘couldn’t care less’ for any of their losses, or who encourage ‘terrorism’, support extremism, and generally promote violence. Too often, their suffering, pain, and voices are camouflaged by the physics of the authority of Empire and the politics of representation that are a-historicized and de-contextualized. As an Orientalist perspective, this discourse transforms men and women into faceless, voiceless, and a-historical subjects who lack agency and who are in need of ‘modernization’ to raise them up from their ‘uncivilized’ state.”

Shalhoub-Kevorkian chose to side with Hamas, a terrorist organization that has deliberately put Palestinian civilians in harm’s way to maximize their casualties. By producing scholarship that fits Hamas’s ideology, Shalhoub-Kevorkian is not only betraying women and babies in Palestine but also the scholarship’s search for truth.

The Hebrew University has a responsibility to ensure that its scholarship is not falsified, whether in the hard sciences or the social sciences. It should stop promoting Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s “research” after she has left the university.

Universities that host such speakers have a responsibility to provide their audiences with the relevant scholarly and factual context. Trinity College Dublin should include all this information in its upcoming webinar.

REFERENCES:

https://www.tcd.ie/religion/news-and-events/2026-news/why-wars-voices-of-women/

School of Religion, Theology, and Peace Studies

Why Wars? Voices of Women

01 Apr 2026

ISE Ecumenical Conversation Webinar Series II

Thursday 23 April 12pm-1.30pm, online

In keeping with the vision of the Irish School of Ecumenics, and in partnership with the Peace Culture Research Institute (PCRI), this webinar asks the question: Why Wars? It invites participants to engage in self-reflection from women’s perspectives, as they articulate an explicitly ethical political position.

Featuring:

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
An internationally renowned scholar and activist whose work examines trauma, state violence, surveillance, gendered harm, and the intersections of law and society.

Elizabeth W. Corrie
Professor in the Practice of Youth Education and Peacebuilding at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, where she also directs the MDiv Hybrid Program.

Khaldah Salih
Sudanese community organiser, communications professional, and researcher based in Toronto.

Necta Montes Rocas
Necta Montes Rocas works with feminist movements to amplify the voices and participation of marginalized women and LGBTQI communities in the Global South.

Denise Bradley
Programme Manager for Marginalisation at Corrymeela, working at the intersection of peacebuilding, trauma, and social justice.

Chaired by Jude Lal Fernando
Director, Irish School of Ecumenics, Associate Professor, School of Religion, Theology, and Peace Studies, Trinity College Dublin.

For full details and to book a place click here.

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Overview

ISE Ecumenical Conversation Webinar Series

Why Wars? Voices of Women

ByIrish School of Ecumenics

Online event

Thursday, Apr 23 from 2 pm to 3:30 pm IDT

Free

Thu, Apr 23 • 2 pm IDT

ISE Ecumenical Conversation Webinar Series

Why Wars? The Cry for Just Peace

‘The real tragedy is that most people in the world are trapped between the horror of a putative peace and the terror of war… How do we climb out of this crevasse?’

—– Arundhati Roy.

23 April 2026 – Time 12 PM-1.30 PM (Ireland/UK Time)

Featuring:

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is an internationally renowned scholar and activist whose work examines trauma, state violence, surveillance, gendered harm, and the intersections of law and society. She serves as Global Chair in Law at Queen Mary University of London and holds academic affiliations across South Africa, the United States, and Jerusalem. She is the author of Militarization and Violence against Women.

Elizabeth W. Corrie

Elizabeth W. Corrie is Professor in the Practice of Youth Education and Peacebuilding at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, where she also directs the MDiv Hybrid Program. Her work focuses on youth formation, moral agency, and peace education, particularly how practices of learning and community engagement can interrupt cycles of violence and silence. She is the author of Youth Ministry as Peace Education.

Khaldah Salih

Khaldah Salih is a Sudanese community organiser, communications professional, and researcher based in Toronto. She is a member of the Sudan Solidarity Collective, a diaspora-led initiative formed in response to the war in Sudan, working across advocacy, mutual aid, and community mobilisation. Her research focuses on grassroots responses to war and the role of collective care in sustaining communities under crisis.

Necta Montes Rocas

Necta Montes Rocas works with feminist movements to amplify the voices and participation of marginalized women and LGBTQI communities in the Global South. With a background in student activism in the Philippines, her work engages struggles against authoritarianism, as well as ongoing efforts toward gender justice, social transformation, and inclusive participation.

Denise Bradley

Denise Bradley is Programme Manager for Marginalisation at Corrymeela, working at the intersection of peacebuilding, trauma, and social justice. With over 25 years of experience, she has supported communities affected by conflict, displacement, sectarianism, and gender-based violence, with a focus on creating relational spaces for dialogue, particularly among those experiencing deep marginalisation and structural injustice.

Chaired by Jude Lal Fernando

Director, Irish School of Ecumenics, Associate Professor, School of Religion, Theology, and Peace Studies, Trinity College Dublin

About the Webinar

Despite our hopes for abundant life, the business of death has been organised in ways that defy imagination. It has been structured, institutionalised, industrialised, legalised, and even morally justified on a mass scale. As a complex totality, industrial-scale death masquerades as ‘civilisation’, presenting its own security to justify violence with lethal weaponry on a global scale. Human rights, democracy, development, women’s rights, and queer rights, often seen as achievements of modern civilisation, have themselves been weaponised with promises of peace, prosperity, and security. But for whom? Children and women, those who sustain the continuation of life across generations, are among those most exposed to violence and suffering. Their cry for life is not a cry for any kind of peace, but for just peace, where liveable conditions and the continuation of life are ensured. Their resilience and resistance embody our hopes for life and invite our solidarity in seeking an alternative vision of just peace.

This webinar brings together voices of women from across the world who, in different ways, encounter war while also embodying forms of resilience and resistance that defy death, displacement, and destruction. As Mahmoud Darwish reminds us, “life defined only as the opposite of death is not life.” In keeping with the vision of the Irish School of Ecumenics, and in partnership with the Peace Culture Research Institute (PCRI), this webinar asks the question: Why Wars? It invites participants to engage in self-reflection from women’s perspectives, as they articulate an explicitly ethical political position.

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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14623528.2025.2556589

Journal of Genocide Research Volume 28, 2026 – Issue 3

Roundtable: Gaza and Genocide Studies
Five Pillars of Zionist Genocidal Apparatus: A Palestinian Problematization of Genocide Studies
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
Pages 540-552 | Published online: 19 Sep 2025

Cite this article https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2025.2556589

JOURNAL OF GENOCIDE RESEARCH

2026, VOL. 28, NO. 3, 540–552

https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2025.2556589

ROUNDTABLE: GAZA AND GENOCIDE STUDIES

Five Pillars of Zionist Genocidal Apparatus: A Palestinian Problematization of Genocide Studies

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkianᵃᵇ

ᵃInstitute for Social and Health Sciences, University of South Africa, Cape Town, South Africa;

ᵇGlobal Law, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

In this paper, I trouble the ways Genocide Studies has engaged with the ongoing genocide in Palestine and the political power embedded in invoking genocide. To begin, I must state that what guides my theorization are Palestinian voices and testimonies from the beginning of the Nakba in 1948 through the ongoing genocide today: Palestinian voices, like the voice of Fatmeh, the Gazan mother who went viral in October 2023 when she went to get food for her children, only to come back and find their scattered body parts – ashlaa’. As she said: “My kids died hungry …. I went to get them food and came back to find them ashlaa’, body remains, scattered all over the place, ashlaa’ ….” I also speak for/from the unheard voices of Gazan newborns, left to decompose in incubators on 9 November 2023, in Al-Nasr hospital’s ICU ward. CNN reported: “The tiny bodies of babies, several still attached to wires and tubes that were meant to keep them alive, decomposing in their hospital beds. Milk bottles and spare diapers still next to them on the sheets.”¹

My analysis of the ongoing genocidal Nakba in Gaza stages the centrality of death and overkill apparent in the ashlaa’ of decomposed babies in incubators and of Fatmeh’s dismembered ashlaa’ of her children. It brings to our view the ordinary terror inhabiting the most vulnerable bodies – newborns and children – and most vulnerable spaces: homes, schools, and hospitals.

My analysis targets the Israeli state that reduces children and newborn bodies into decomposing, dismembered objects to support the larger project of demarcating the ontological boundary between the human and the non-human, the should-be-shredded, decomposed, and killed to disappear. The genocidal brutality of indiscriminate attacks intended to kill, including leaving newborns abandoned in incubators, inscribes in both the flesh and Zionist consciousness that Palestinian bodies can and should always be in a state of death and overkill. Such inscription of power on babies’ flesh, as on the flesh of Palestinian men and women, old and young, ontologically links their slowly dying bodies to the settler colonial state. As Fanon has explained, understanding the ontological difference of the colonized involves seeing below the notion of being and even below the notion of nonbeing, hence his insistence on talking about the colonized.

CONTACT

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian — nadera@sh-ke.com — 12 Charlton St., Princeton, NJ 08540

Allegra Goodwin et al., “Infants Found Dead and Decomposing in Evacuated Hospital ICU in Gaza. Here’s What We Know,” CNN, 8 December 2023,https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/08/middleeast/babies-al-nasr-gaza-hospital-what-we-know-intl/index.html

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https://cris.huji.ac.il/en/publications/five-pillars-of-zionist-genocidal-apparatus-a-palestinian-problem/

Five Pillars of Zionist Genocidal Apparatus: A Palestinian Problematization of Genocide Studies

· Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Comment/debate

Original language	English
Journal	Journal of Genocide Research

Access to Document

· 10.1080/14623528.2025.255658

Accepted/In press – 2025 Externally published Yes

Shalhoub-Kevorkian, N. (Accepted/In press). Five Pillars of Zionist Genocidal Apparatus: A Palestinian Problematization of Genocide Studies. Journal of Genocide Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2025.2556589

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https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-we-are-witnessing-genocidal-economy-scale

In Gaza, we are witnessing the genocidal economy at scale

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

23 August 2025 14:28 BST | Last update:5 months 2 weeks ago

Dispossession and death at the hands of Zionists are embedded in a settler-colonial ideology that rejects Palestinian humanity

The following is adapted from a presentation to the Gaza Tribunal in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, earlier this year.

In this talk, I plan to trouble (or unsettle) the ways in which genocide studies has engaged with the ongoing genocide in Palestine, and the political power embedded in invoking genocide.

To begin, I must state that what guides my theorisation are Palestinian voices and testimonies from the beginning of the Nakba in 1948 through the ongoing genocide today.

Palestinian voices, like the voice of Fatmeh, the Gazan mother who went viral in October 2023 when she went to get food for her children, only to come back and find their scattered body parts, ashlaa’, as she said: “My kids died hungry … I went to get them food and came back to find them ashlaa’, body remains, scattered all over the place, ashlaa’… hungry… my kids died hungry.”

I also speak for the unheard voices of Gazan newborns, left to decompose in incubators on 9 November 2023, in Nasser Hospital’s ICU ward. CNN reported: “The tiny bodies of babies, several still attached to wires and tubes that were meant to keep them alive, decomposing in their hospital beds. Milk bottles and spare diapers still next to them on the sheets.”

My analysis of the ongoing genocidal Nakba stages the centrality of death and overkill apparent in the ashlaa’ of decomposed babies in incubators and Fatmeh’s dismembered ashlaa’ of her children. It brings to our view the ordinary terror inhabiting the most vulnerable bodies of newborns and children, and most vulnerable spaces: homes, schools and hospitals.

Reducing children and newborn bodies into decomposed, dismembered objects that can be used to support the larger project of demarcating the ontological boundary between the human and the non-human that should be shredded, decomposed and killed to disappear, is at the centre of my analysis.

The genocidal brutality of indiscriminate attacks to kill, including leaving newborns abandoned in incubators, inscribes both in the flesh and Zionist consciousness that Palestinian bodies can and should always be in a state of death and overkill. It is such an inscription of power on babies’ flesh, as on the Palestinian flesh of men and women, old and young, that I ontologically link their slowly dying bodies to the settler-colonial state.

A colonial prism

As Frantz Fanon has explained, the notion of ontological difference involves seeing below the notion of being, and even below the notion of nonbeing, hence his insistence on talking about the colonised and the tensions that emerge in the flesh/land and, I would say, the cut, scattered, burned flesh and bones. Seen through the prism of the incomprehensible ashlaa’, the racialised being, voided of life, is deprived of their humanity and Palestinian unwholeness is maintained and extended.

The violent horrors we are seeing in Gaza over the past 20 months have made us witnesses to the strangulation of newborn babies, a strangulation that demands their submission to the occupying power. What we have witnessed through these horrors is part of the Israeli necropenological global and local regime.

We witnessed another glimpse just recently this month through the intentional starvation of Palestinian children and their communities by Israeli expansionist greed.

Another blatant example of Israel’s necropenological regime happened on 5 May, when a group of Israeli soldiers filmed themselves blowing up a building in Gaza, while laughing that the blue colour of the smoke represented a “gender reveal” to celebrate the birth of a baby boy.

This horrific act of celebration came as the Israeli army was abandoning newborns in incubators, and bombing entire families while at home or in their tents, in hospitals, while care-taking. The indiscriminate assassinations of doctors, journalists, educators and more reveals the hunger for unending Palestinian death.

The indiscriminate assassinations of doctors, journalists, educators and more reveals the hunger for unending Palestinian death

It is from the silent voices of those shredded newborn babies as ashlaa’, and through the necropolitical brutality of the “gender reveal” using the Palestinian ashlaa’, that I read the brutality of the occupier. It is against this deadly enfleshed ontology, and the centrality of death in this ontology, that I read the scattered body parts – the ashlaa’ – the decomposed babies’ overwhelming presence as a strong voice to guide my analyses.

My ontological analysis is guided through the figurative occupation and possession of the decomposed Palestinian body. It is on this body that we can read the Zionist wanton use of violence to understand the centrality of death, killing and overkilling to the settler-colonial project.

The emotions of pleasure and joy expressed by the Israeli soldiers during the “gender reveal” in May that I just mentioned, expresses the Zionist coloniser’s ideology. This ideology rejoices over Palestinian maiming, death and suffering. As they literally blew up Palestinians’ bodies, the soldiers celebrated by chanting “it is a boy”.

What does this suggest about Zionist ideology, that soldiers can and do celebrate in the exact moments they destroy the colonised’s geography and home? This convergence of violence and pleasure so spectacularly live-streamed, demonstrated through the gender reveal/bombing with its monstrosity, exposes the local and global ontological politics and dilemmas facing genocide studies today.

Commitment to violence

Palestinian dispossession and death as a result of Zionism reveals a genocidal economy – an economy embedded in white supremacy/racism that dispossesses Palestinian humanity, even the newborn babies, with its codes, technologies, aesthetics and visuality. This is what enables the ongoing genocide and/in its ontological consumption.

The genocidal economy is constituted through the enmeshment of ashlaa’ and the viscerality of it, living in such a scale of death and the geopolitics of racism. It is rooted in the colonial state’s commitment to violence, and its exercise of power over the non-human, always killable Palestinian body – an ontological stand that can be detected in all aspects of the settler-colonial genocidal criminalities of the state.

Under such conditions, Palestinian ashlaa’ becomes more visible in the settler state’s infinite desire for expansion, even over shredded or sick bodies, empty stomachs and collective graves. Palestinians are always kept in a state of neither life nor being.

This enduring ontology depends on attacking the wholeness, integrity and continuity of the Palestinian body and land. It has turned Gaza/Palestine into a collective graveyard for slow and fast death, a slaughterhouse of maiming and wounding for the political functioning of the state – and hence the continuous Nakba.

I stand against the settler-colonial assertion of turning the Palestinian body/flesh, geography and economy into a death zone. This stand grounds my analysis as a criminologist and scholar. My imperative is not the legal apparatus, nor the human right conventions, but rather human life, dignity, integrity and futurity of the people. I also do not believe in the system of the state, or the “security of the state”. The people are my centre.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is the Global Chair in Law at Queen Mary University of London. Her primary research focus is state criminality and its effect on human suffering.

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https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/31481

Nov 17, 2014Sexual Violence, Women’s Bodies, and Israeli Settler Colonialism

By : Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Sarah Ihmoud and Suhad Dahir-Nashif

They not only invaded our home, took over our space, and evicted us—they even arrested me and took me to the Maskubya—the police station. I was put in room number four, alone, for a long time. Then, a big and tall man, a police officer, entered the interrogation room. I was alone, and started shivering from fear as he closed the door, started moving things around in the room and examining me from head to toe. I was terrorized, and my heart was beating so fast. His eyes penetrated my body, as he was opening the drawers looking for something. Then, he left the room and came back five minutes later holding a box. He pulled out a pair of blue plastic gloves, and put one on each of his hands, while looking at me and saying “…Come here…” I must tell you that I was terrorized when they invaded the house and evicted us. I was extremely anxious when they arrested my son. But my fears of ‘you know what’…You know…being abused…being raped by his blue big hands and more…were the most terrifying moments of my life.[1]

These were the words of Sama, a thirty-six-year-old Palestinian woman who lost the intimate familial and physical space of her home, only to experience further terror with the threat of sexual abuse. Sama’s narrative is not uncommon, as colonized women living under severe deprivation and dispossession are subject to daily attacks against their sexuality and bodily rights. Sexual violence is central to the larger structure of colonial power, its racialized machinery of domination, and its logic of elimination. This is readily apparent in the history of settler colonial contexts, where the machinery of violence explicitly targets native women’s sexuality and bodily safety as biologized “internal enemies” since they are the producers of the next generation.

Settler colonialism, as a “structure, not an event” operates through a “logic of elimination” that seeks to erase indigenous presence on a specific territory (settler colonialism’s “irreducible element”). Settler colonialism “destroys in order to replace.” The invasion of indigenous land seeks to permanently erase the indigenous presence on the land, in order to replace it with the new settler society and polity. Scholars have argued that settler colonialism’s logic of elimination may culminate in indigenous genocide. In its European formations, both settler colonialism and genocide have “employed the organizing grammar of race.” Since its inception, the Jewish state has been embedded in a racialized colonial logic. This logic constructs the Palestinian as a dangerous other in opposition to the white/Jewish subject and polis. As numerous authors have noted, this racial configuration is articulated through early Zionist thinkers’ Orientalist ideology that framed the Jewish people as bearers of European civilization in the face of a culturally backward region and people. Such a “modernizing” project or “civilizing” mission relied on a Zionist imaginary of exclusively Jewish labor cultivating an empty, uncultivated land, and “making the desert bloom.” Early Zionist leadership attempted to actualize the foundational Zionist myth of a “land without people for a people without land” through systematic ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians in 1948. The Zionist entity continues to evict native Palestinians today. The massacres in Gaza of July- August 2014, and the repressive “iron fist” policies targeting Palestinian Jerusalemites at the time we write this article, are contemporary modes of settler colonial eviction of the Palestinian native.

The targeting of Palestinian women’s bodies and sexuality, we contend, is structural to the Israeli settler colonial project’s racialized logic of elimination. Rape and other forms of sexual violence against Palestinian women have always been an element of the settler colonial state’s attempts to destroy and eliminate indigenous Palestinians from their land. In addition to rape and other forms of sexual violence, the racialized logic of sexual violence energizes the very imaginary and project of conquering and cultivating Palestinian land, in transforming it into the Jewish polis. Hence, our discussion of sexual violence is embedded not only in the sexualized practices and politics of the Zionist state, but also in the nature of Israeli settler colonial violence itself.

As Palestinian feminists, we assert that the Zionist movement’s imaginary of conquering and settling the Palestinian body is inseparable from the project of conquering and settling Palestinian land, and erasing indigenous presence. Here, we build on native scholar Andrea Smith’s assertion that the logic of colonial sexual violence “establishes the ideology that Native bodies are inherently violable—and by extension, that Native lands are also inherently violable.” It is the logic of settler colonial sexual violence that we center in our analysis of the continuous Nakba that targets our people. We trace the logic of sexual violence, in its historical and present context, as machinery, hidden and apparent, of colonial patriarchy against indigenous communities in Palestine. The logic of sexual violence attempts to fragment Palestinian family and communal life, as it severs the connection to the Palestinian homeland. The Zionist project is inherently based on the destruction of Palestinian native bodies and land, which cannot be separated from the colonial logic of elimination. Sexual violence is not simply a byproduct of colonialism, rather “colonialism is itself structured by the logic of sexual violence.”

Sexual Violence and Palestinian Genocide Since the Nakba

Understanding the intensified attacks on Palestinian women’s bodies in times of heightened attacks by the settler colonial regime requires a feminist analysis. Such an analysis takes the Nakba as its analytical point of departure. Israel was built on the ruins of the Palestinian homeland, on its land, pain, and displacement. It was built on the destruction of our communal social ties, the violation and invasion of our homes and bodies.

Rape and killing of Palestinian women was a central aspect of Israeli troops’ systematic massacres and evictions during the destruction of Palestinian villages in 1948. During the Deir Yassin massacre, for instance:

All the inhabitants were ordered into the village square. Here, they were lined up against a wall and shot. One eyewitness said her sister, who was nine months pregnant, was shot in the back of the neck. Her assailants then cut open her stomach with a butcher’s knife and extracted the unborn baby. When an Arab woman tried to take the baby, she was shot…Women were raped before the eyes of their children before being murdered and dumped down the well.

David Ben Gurion, like other Zionist leaders, openly discussed the rape and sexual torture of Palestinian women in his diary entries during 1948. At the same time that he advocated the killing of Palestinian women and children, constructing them as a threat to the Jewish settler polity, he awarded a prize to every Jewish mother on her tenth child. Ben Gurion ensured that the Jewish Agency, not the state, administered such pronatal incentives in order to guarantee the exclusion of Arabs.[2] The fetishization of fertility has made Palestinians, especially women, targets of nationalist rhetoric that deeply politicizes their reproduction. For Zionists, Palestinian women have always been, and continue to be, as we have seen in the latest attacks on Gaza, targets of the Zionist killing machine.

Feminist scholars have also suggested that the Zionist state mobilizes violence against Palestinian women’s bodies and sexuality to strengthen indigenous patriarchal structures and aid in the eviction of Palestinians from their land. Militarized sexual abuse has been rampant under Israeli occupation. The Israeli state and military forces have exploited the threat of sexual violence against Palestinian women, and patriarchal perceptions of sexuality and “honor” to “recruit Palestinians as collaborators” during periods of uprisings and deter attempts at organized resistance. This practice has been so historically prevalent that it gained its own term in the Arabic language as isqat siyassy, meaning the sexual abuse of Palestinians for political reasons. The state’s security apparatus continues to use Palestinians’ sexual identities and Orientalist conceptions of “Arab culture” to recruit collaborators and fragment Palestinian society. Recent revelations by Israel’s secret military intelligence Unit 8200 have revisited this fact. The literal and figurative “rape” of Palestinian women’s bodies, framed as inherently violable by the Zionist entity, is inherently structured by the same logic of sexual violence that energizes the settler colonial project’s violation and continued confiscation of Palestinian natives’ land.

Unmasking the Logic of Sexual Violence

The silence on the Zionist machinery’s use of sexual violence against Palestinian women[3] and their communities has been further revealed since the inception of the state’s most recent military operations. The logic of sexualized violence that structures the Israeli settler colonial project has become more visible during the last period of military invasion. Slogans such as “Death to Arabs” and “Arabs out” have become more usable and tolerable in the Israeli public sphere, exposing the necropolitical drive against Palestinian natives at the core of the so-called Jewish democracy.

On 1 July, just after discovery of the bodies of three Jewish settler youth who had gone missing in the occupied West Bank, Israeli professor Mordechai Kedar of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies remarked on public radio: “the only deterrent for … those who kidnapped the [Israeli] children and killed them, the only way to deter them is their knowledge that either their sister or their mother will be raped if they are caught … this is the culture of the Middle East.” His comments suggested that raping Palestinian women was the only deterrent to Palestinian resistance and “terrorism.”

We as Palestinian feminists were not surprised to hear Kedar advocating rape as an antidote to anti-colonial resistance. Making such comments on public radio, in the open, where it would be heard by a wide Israeli Jewish public, women as well as men, including Israeli Jewish feminists, reflects the settler`s mentality and socialization towards Palestinians. Discussing the rape of Palestinian women as a military strategy by a so-called scholar from one of the prominent universities in Israel reveals the mode in which colonizers portray colonized women. The presentation of a sexualized Orientalist discourse positions Palestinians as culturally “backward,” non-human Others.

Lest the sexualized discourses Kedar mobilized appear an aberration, it is important to note that he was not the only performer in this latest theater of sexualized violence. Israeli soldiers on their way to killing Palestinians in Gaza read slogans of support prepared by their fellow Jewish-Israeli civilians stating: “Go pound their mothers, and come back to your mother.” Israeli Jews gathered on hillsides to watch and cheer as the military dropped bombs on Gaza. One young Jewish woman’s Facebook post summed up the sexualized pleasure they received in spectatorship of our collective lynching: “What an orgasm to see the Israeli Defense Forces bomb buildings in Gaza with children and families at the same time. Boom boom.” Even their Prime Minister Netanyahu received a post, which circulated widely among the Israeli public via social media, showing a veiled woman labeled “Gaza,” naked from the waist down, holding a message: “Bibi, finish inside this time! Signed, citizens in favor of a ground assault.” This is in addition to Knesset member Ayelet Shaked’s public declaration that Palestinian mothers should be killed.

The rape of the land as the rape of women’s bodies has thus come to the fore in Israel’s most recent eliminatory attacks against the Palestinian people. As the massacres of the Palestinian people in Gaza continued, the sexualized nature of Israeli invasion and racial terror against Palestinian natives came to the forefront of nationalist politics and discussion among the public sphere within 1948 Palestine as well. Palestinian women took to the streets with their communities throughout historic Palestine to demonstrate against the continuous massacres in Gaza. Public demonstrations took a sexualized turn, as crowds’ calls for “death to Arabs” quickly turned to chanting “Haneen Zoabi is a whore!” naming a female Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament who stood up for her people’s right to life. Israeli police attacked Palestinian women’s bodies, along with their male counterparts, and dragged them out of protests in Haifa and Nazareth, where they were arrested or beaten by racist crowds. Leading religious and military figures on the state’s payroll issued religious edicts which stated that during times of war it is permissible to bomb Palestinian civilians in order to “exterminate the enemy.” The city council of Or Yehuda, a settlement in Israel’s coastal region, hung a banner supporting Israeli soldiers that suggested the rape of Palestinian women: “Israeli soldiers, the residents of Or Yehuda are with you! Pound their mother and come back home safely to your mother.” [4]

We argue that the logic of sexual violence exhibited during attacks on indigenous Palestinians throughout historic Palestine, both historically and during the Israeli state’s most recent attacks, pervades both the Israeli settler state and settler society. Indeed, the state and settler society are inseparable entities, connected through a visceral psychological and political imaginary that exceeds the commonly framed state/civil society divide. As Lorenzo Veracini notes, settlers “carry their sovereignty with them.” Both the state apparatuses (including public elected officials, academic and military institutions) and settler society (including Israeli publics—situated along the continuum of Zionist ideology) embody the machinery of settler colonial violence. It is no surprise then, that both the official state apparatuses and unofficial settler spheres have exhibited grave attacks on Palestinian women’s sexuality, bodies, and lives in the context of the latest invasions of our people in Gaza, in the daily attacks today in Jerusalem, and throughout historic Palestine.

Israeli officials’ repressive policies and incitement against the Palestinian people work to empower and embolden Israeli settler society to embody the power of the state and viciously attack Palestinians. This is clearly exhibited in the attacks on Palestinian women’s bodies inside Al Aqsa mosque these last weeks in Jerusalem, by both settler publics empowered by the state’s military protection, and members of the state security forces. A recent example of the daily scene of sexual violence is Israeli border police’s violent beating and arrest of Aida, a Palestinian woman from the old city of Jerusalem. When she tried to enter Al-Aqsa mosque, border police attacked and brutally beat Aida. They tore off her hijab and pulled her by her hair, as they continued to beat her through the streets of the old city, and dragged her into the police car. She was then taken to the police station, where she was violently interrogated, further beaten and accused of attacking a police officer. Security forces’ brutalization and violation of Aida’s body, and attempts to mark her as an inherently criminal other, are a form of gendered and sexual violence. The legalization of such forms of violence marks the Israeli legal system itself as deeply embedded in the settler colonial project’s machinery of elimination.

Palestinian women’s brutalization and violation by the settler colonial state also takes on more mundane forms. When Samera was arrested for participating in a demonstration in occupied East Jerusalem, her release by authorities was conditional upon her completing what they termed “community service.” Samera’s “community service” required her to scrub the bathrooms of a facility for Israeli border police and soldiers. As she explained to us:

I could not afford to pay the huge fine, and needed to be released [from prison] to go back to my kids. I had no other choice but to scrub their bathrooms….Just by being there, in men’s bathrooms, in the Israeli men’s toilets felt like rape. I did it to avoid payment, but I can’t avoid feeling that I allowed them to keep me there, in their bathrooms, in a constant state of terror, fearing being sexually abused, then trashed like we trash toilet paper in toilets.

Samera’s words and analysis further illustrate the gendered and sexualized aspects of the complex machinery of settler colonial violence. Yet as Samera concluded: “Sometimes I feel I was their slave, but some other times I tell myself no, this is resistance, this is sumud, this is power…I did what was needed to come back to my children, without being touched or violated sexually….yes hard, complex…our situation is complex.” Even in the face of such violent inscription of settler colonial violence, Palestinian women’s daily acts of resistance and survival demonstrate their power and sumud, or steadfastness.

In sum, sexual and gender violence are not merely a tool of patriarchal control, the byproduct of war or intensified conflict. Colonial relationships are themselves gendered and sexualized. We contend that sexual violence, a logic embedded in the Israeli settler colonial project, follows two contradictory principles that operate simultaneously: invasion/violation/occupation and supremacy/purification/demarcation. That is, the Zionist settler colonial project’s invasion, violation, and occupation of indigenous Palestinians’ bodies, lives, and land is intimately intertwined with its demarcation of racialized geographical and physical boundaries between Jewish citizenry and Palestinian natives as well as attempts to “purify” the Jewish national body of the Palestinian body, which is framed as a biopolitical contaminant. It is thus that the logic of sexual violence, embedded in the Zionist regime, energizes historical and continuous attacks on Palestinian bodies and lives.

Thus our struggle for indigenous sovereignty within anti-colonial activism as feminists is necessarily situated in the protection of Palestinian women’s bodily safety and sexuality, family, and communal right to life. It is a struggle against the hypermasculine Zionist military and settler apparatuses that frame Palestinian women as inherently threatening racialized Others whose bodies must be violated and destroyed as the internal enemy and “reproducers of Palestinians.” This logic is inseparable from the settler colonial logic of elimination.

As Palestinian feminists concerned about the safety of women’s bodies and lives, the continuity of our people and our future generations, we call on local and international feminists to join our struggle, challenge the settler colonial culture of impunity and raise their voices against the ongoing Israeli state crimes.

Endnotes

[1] This quote was taken from a group discussion with Palestinian women in Jerusalem, 2014.

[2] In the 1950s Ben Gurion, as the first prime minister of Israel, turned the issue of women’s fertility into national priority, arguing that “increasing the Jewish birthrate is a vital need for the existence of Israel” and that “a Jewish woman who does not bring at least four children into the world is defrauding the Jewish mission.” See Sharoni, S. (1995). Gender and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: the Politics of Women’s Resistance. Syracuse University Press. Also see Davis, U. & Lehn, W. (1983). “And the Fund Still Lives: The Role of the Jewish International Fund in the Determination of Israel’s Land Policies”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 7 (4), p.3, at pp.4-6(1978).

[3] While centering our analysis on Palestinian women, we also note the Zionist state’s use of sexual violence as a tactic to curb the “demographic threat” over some Jewish women’s bodies, including black women (from the Ethiopian community) and women from impoverished backgrounds. While attempting to curb the birth rates of black and/or poor Jewish women, a practice we analyze as connected to the racialized project of curbing Palestinian reproduction and life, Israel has simultaneously sought to increase European Jewish birth through modernized practices such as buying ovum for human reproductive cloning from poor, Eastern European women. Besides, the Israeli state suggested that the law for preventing human reproductive cloning (1999) had expired and many of Israel’s physicians, politicians and social researchers are embracing this practice as yet another strategy for maintaining a Jewish demographic advantage on the land of Palestine.

[4] In addition to the posts and declarations against Palestinian mothers, Jewish girls and women encouraged men serving in the Israeli Occupation Forces by sending them semi-nude or pornographic pictures as an expression of love and support (see http://www.pitria.com/israeli-girls-support-zahal).

The University of Edinburgh Targeted by Anti-Israel Activists

01.04.26

Editorial Note

Last week, Justice for Palestine Society occupied two key buildings at the University of Edinburgh (UoE) campus as part of a pro-Palestine protest movement in a campaign to pressure the University to divest from Israel-linked companies and universities. The group has been protesting for a number of years. The University has threatened legal action if the protesters do not leave.

The group announced: “Following continued impunity by Balfour University, students have reclaimed the building to reiterate the majority student demand. Divestment is inevitable. Liberation is unconditional. Shame on Balfour university. Meet our demands.”

The University of Edinburgh has been targeted because the famous Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) was the chancellor of the University of Edinburgh from 1891 to 1930, including in 1917, when he issued the Balfour Declaration expressing British support for a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. In 1925, Balfour visited Palestine to inaugurate the Hebrew University, wearing his academic robes from the University of Edinburgh. Balfour presided over the university during his time as Prime Minister (1902–1905) and Foreign Secretary (1916–1919).

Last month, Nicola Perugini, a long-time anti-Israel activist and a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh, featured before by Israel Academia Monitor, co-authored an article titled “Balfour University: Race, Imperial Education, and the Declaration on Palestine” with his UoE colleague, Shaira Vadasaria. The article discusses “the University of Edinburgh’s racial entanglement with the British Empire and settler colonialism in Palestine through the figure of its former chancellor, Arthur James Balfour. It explores two intertwined aspects of Balfour’s legacy: his role as a statesman who advanced racial policies and settler-colonial dispossession in Palestine, and as an academic leader who promoted race thinking and imperial education. The analysis situates the 1917 Balfour Declaration within these overlapping domains, showing how Balfour’s imperial and academic roles were inseparable. It analyzes the declaration as not solely a matter of historical harm, but as a formative moment in the longue durée of the university’s entanglement with imperialism and Zionist settler-colonial violence enacted in Palestine.”

To be more precise, Perugini’s and Vadasaria’s article largely focuses on political activism: “Edinburgh’s student and staff mobilization against the genocide in Gaza exposed this historical nexus, revealing how institutional legacies of colonial and imperial violence remain present even within so-called moments of racial and decolonial redress.”

According to Perugini and Vadasaria, “Balfour Must Fall Everywhere.”

The University of Edinburgh is home to a number of pro-Palestinian activists. These academics frequently deal with themes of displacement, colonial violence, and Palestinian agency: Samer Abdelnour (Senior Lecturer, Business School): Engages with analyses of the Economies of Occupation and Genocide, and has discussed the “University of Edinburgh complicity in the conflict.” Lotte Segal (Senior Lecturer, Social Anthropology): Focuses on the everyday life, violence, and displacement, including work on “Caring for the Ordinary in Palestine – When Ongoing Occupation Becomes Maddening.” Nicola Perugini & Shaira Vadasaria: Academic researchers who have written on the University of Edinburgh’s historical and contemporary complicity in the context of Palestinian rights, published in the Journal of Palestine Studies. Pietro Stefanini (Researcher): Specializes in settler colonialism and humanitarianism, with a focus on Palestine and the Nakba/Naksa. Mona Siddiqui (Professor): Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies, and International Dean for the Middle East.

The activists enjoy the support of UCU Edinburgh, the local branch of the University and College Union, representing academic and academic-related staff at the University of Edinburgh, which usually campaigns against job cuts, pensions, and working conditions. However, on December 6, 2025, it published a petition titled “Suppression of freedom of expression on Palestine at the University of Edinburgh must stop!” Stating, “We the undersigned unions, organizations, networks and individual staff and students write to condemn our institution’s senior managers for their suppression of Palestine-related expression at the University of Edinburgh.”

The petition argued that UoE “senior managers have adopted increasingly intimidatory behavior towards student groups who are supporting Palestine and speaking out against Israel’s ongoing war of annihilation in Gaza and attacks in Lebanon, including threatening members with disciplinary action for social media posts and protests that would not have carried such consequences before. This is part of broader suppression of on-campus manifestations of solidarity with the people in Palestine and Lebanon.” The petition listed all the incidents and was signed by 363 staff, 126 PhD researchers, 70 students, and 6 alumni.

In July 2025, the British Guardian reported that “Edinburgh University could unadapt antisemitism definition after report into its colonial links,” stating that the UoE is “considering whether to unadopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism because critics say it “inhibits freedom of speech on the subject of Israel and Palestine.” UoE is also considering “whether to divest from companies accused of enabling alleged human rights violations by Israel,” the Guardian stated, and that these issues are being “reviewed by university authorities as a report on the legacy of its historical links with the region is published. The report is part of a broader investigation of the university’s involvement in colonialism and slavery. It recommends that the university divest from companies allegedly complicit in Israel’s military actions in Gaza and the West Bank.”

The Guardian notes that the UoE is also considering the establishment of a Palestine Studies Center to “investigate the legacy of the Balfour declaration and offer scholarships to students of Palestinian origin.”

The Guardian discusses that article by Perugini and Vadasaria, who told the Guardian the decision to include Balfour’s legacy in the research was a “direct response” to pressure on the university leadership by campus protests over the Gaza war. The pair, both of whom taught for several years at al-Quds University, a Palestinian institution on the outskirts of occupied East Jerusalem, had already been researching Balfour’s legacy for several years. They have been involved in divestment campaigns on campus, and last year Perugini demanded Mathieson apologize publicly after the principal met the Israeli deputy ambassador to the UK.”

Perugini and Vadasaria’s research on “the legacy of the Balfour declaration was added to the broader study of the university’s links to colonialism a year after the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza,” the Guardian claimed.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism was adopted by the UoE in 2020, “without broad consultation with students and staff,” according to the report of Perugini and Vadasaria. For them, the definition “violates academic freedom and freedom of speech by framing any criticism of Israel’s policies of settler-colonial dispossession driven by state racism as a form of antisemitism.” The IHRA also offers contemporary examples of antisemitism that “critics say are used to protect Israel from legitimate criticism. Supporters of the definition say it is essential in helping to protect Jews from hate crimes and abuse. In 2020, Gavin Williamson, the education secretary in the Conservative government, threatened to cut funding to universities in England that failed to adopt the IHRA definition. The majority have done so,” the Guardian concluded.

According to the Guardian, “The state of Israel was declared within hours of the end of the mandate in May 1948. The subsequent war drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes during what became known as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Many Palestinians still blame Balfour for what they see as an act of perfidy and betrayal.”

Perugini and Vadasaria’s article “points out that the declaration defined Palestinians as ‘non-Jewish communities’ rather than an Indigenous people with national rights to self-determination, and referred only to civil and religious rights rather than political and national rights. In the Nakba, Palestinians were forced into ‘permanent exile that continues into the present.’ Balfour’s legacy was ‘not merely a matter of historical harm,’ it says. According to the Guardian, “Indeed, harm to Palestinians today can be seen as an extension of Balfour’s legacy in the present. While this violence may have begun with Balfour’s declaration, it remains through ongoing policies that continue with the trajectory of imperialism, settler colonialism and the dispossession of Palestinian land and life.”

Israel Academia Monitor has frequently discussed the genre that Perugini and Vadasaria’s article follows: it is full of disinformation and falsifications and totally decontextualized from real-life events. For starters, it fails to mention that the Nakba was a self-inflicted wound by the Palestinians who received the larger part of Mandatory Palestine when the United Nations voted on the Partition Proposal in 1947. The Palestinians were persuaded by their Arab allies to reject the offer and started a war against nascent Israel, which they had lost. In 2000, during the Camp David Summit, Yasser Arafat refused to sign an agreement that would have given the Palestinians virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, he launched the Second Intifada. Iran, which supported Hamas as part of its “Axis of Resistance,” was closely linked to the group that carried out the brutal attacks against civilians on October 7, 2023. Documents recovered from Hamas tunnels indicate that the violence was intended, in part, to disrupt the Abraham Accords—most notably by preventing Saudi Arabia from joining the normalization process.

More to the point, nowhere have Perugini and his peers mentioned Hamas’s extreme violations of a wide range of international humanitarian law during the conflict. To list just a few, the group built its tunnel system under civilian spaces, including hospitals, schools, and mosques. Noncombatants were turned into human shields, causing considerable civilian casualties.

The growing prominence of pro-Palestinian activism in higher education has contributed to the diffusion of highly contested narratives. This development has had several consequences: it has intensified campus polarization, complicated efforts to sustain open scholarly debate, and, in some cases, blurred the line between political advocacy and academic inquiry.

REFERENCES:

https://thetab.com/2026/03/27/pro-palestine-activists-occupy-second-university-of-edinburgh-building-in-divestment-drive

Edinburgh University threatens legal action as pro-Palestine activists occupy second building

Gordon Aikman and Appleton Tower have now been occupied

3 days ago

Jamie Calder | News

Students at the University of Edinburgh have occupied two prominent campus buildings as part of a pro-Palestine protest movement.

Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society (EUJPS) has occupied the Gordon Aikman lecture theatre and Appleton Tower.

The university has threatened legal action if the protesters do not leave.

Gordon Aikman has been locked down by EUJPS since the early hours of Tuesday morning while Appleton Tower appears to have been occupied during the early hours of Friday.

The society has occupied the buildings as part of a long-term campaign to pressure the university to divest from Israel-linked companies.

Gordon Aikman had been occupied since Tuesday

Announcing the Gordon Aikman occupation on Facebook, EUJPS said: “We are reclaiming this building in the name of martyr Adnan Al-Bursh.

“Al-Bursh was a healthcare worker wrongfully taken into custody in December of 2023 per his refusal to evacuate a hospital that was to be targeted by IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] bombs.

“Taken to a detention camp and subsequently tortured by the IOF, he was later moved to the Israeli prison service in April of 2024 where he was martyred shortly after arrival. Adnan Al-Bursh’s death in custody is a result of the IOF’s war crimes unto Palestinian prisoners.

“We name this reclaimed building in his honour. May he resit in power. Glory to the martyrs”.

The statement goes on to say that there is “no business as usual during genocide”, calling for the university to divest from companies that are linked to Israel’s military and occupation of Palestinian territories.

Protesters have set up signs and flags in Appleton Tower

Announcing the Appleton Tower occupation, the group said: “We have reclaimed JAWAD ABU NASSAR TOWER (formerly Appleton Tower), alongside ADNAN AL BURSH BUILDING [Gordon Aikman].

“Following continued impunity by Balfour University, students have reclaimed the building to reiterate the majority student demand.

“Divestment is inevitable. Liberation is unconditional. Shame on Balfour university. Meet our demands.”

The group is campaigning for divestment from firms like Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Leonardo, among others, that have been linked to Israel’s operations in Palestine. The university holds more than £25 million in investments in these companies.

Last year, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, named the University of Edinburgh as one of “the most financially entangled” institutions in the UK to Israel.

The report stated: “The University of Edinburgh holds nearly £25.5 million (2.5 per cent of its endowment) in four tech giants – Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM – central to the Israeli surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction.

“With both direct and indexed investments, the university ranks among the most financially entangled institutions in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

“The university also partners with firms aiding Israeli military operations, including Leonardo S.p.A. and Ben-Gurion University, through the AI and Data Science Lab at Ben Gurion University, sharing research that directly links it with assaults on Palestinians.”

The occupations come after a series of over EUJPS protests, including occupying Gordon Aikman twice in 2024 and encampment at Old College which coincided with a hunger strike.

The society has also blockaded the entrances to various university buildings, disrupted career fairs and spray painted slogans like “Divest Now” on university buildings.

A University of Edinburgh spokesperson told The Tab Edinburgh: “Our students’ education is always our priority. While we respect the right to peaceful and lawful protest, occupying buildings and interfering with teaching and our students’ learning experience is unacceptable.

“Each day our buildings are occupied, thousands of students face their lectures and tutorials being disrupted at short notice – a situation that cannot be tolerated, particularly at such a crucial time in the academic year.

“We have asked those occupying the Gordon Aikman Lecture Theatre and Appleton Tower to leave. If our request is ignored, we will consider all legal action available to us to prevent further disruption.”

Jamie Calder | News

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https://www.facebook.com/reel/1507184594156646

Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society

dsSoopnretl8aht0l0 M f014cam218lglacc759a3c:g4 il58i832ruihg ·

Emergency rally held in support of student occupations and in protest against Balfour University’s complicity in Palestine at reclaimed Jawad Abu Nassar Tower, followed by a March to reclaimed Adnan Al-Bursh Theatre! First time in JPS history that two uni buildings have been occupied at once – POWER TO THE STUDENTS

See previous posts for full statements regarding reasons and demands of each occupation.

Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society ·Follow

Sontesdrpo2ff4l7m302057f2318aufh69a6aa10hrt14 :48 h3atiMc2a ·

We have reclaimed JAWAD ABU NASSAR TOWER (formerly Appleton Tower), alongside ADNAN AL BURSH BUILDING

Following continued impunity by Balfour University, students have reclaimed the building to reiterate the majority student demand.

Divestment is inevitable. Liberation is unconditional. Shame on Balfour university. Meet our demands

Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society

Inn Ann (feat. Shabjdeed & Al Nather) · Daboor ·

We have reclaimed ADNAN AL-BURSH

THEATRE (formerly Gordon Aikman)

Divestment is inevitable — it’s only a matter of time, it’s only a matter of principle.

We will not stop and we will not rest until Balfour university meets our demands.

====================================================================================

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0377919X.2026.2614096#inline_frontnotes

Balfour University: Race, Imperial Education, and the Declaration on Palestine

Nicola Perugini &

Shaira Vadasaria

Pages 26-50 | Received 09 May 2025, Accepted 26 Aug 2025, Published online: 18 Feb 2026

Abstract

This article discusses the University of Edinburgh’s racial entanglement with the British Empire and settler colonialism in Palestine through the figure of its former chancellor, Arthur James Balfour. It explores two intertwined aspects of Balfour’s legacy: his role as a statesman who advanced racial policies and settler-colonial dispossession in Palestine, and as an academic leader who promoted race thinking and imperial education. The analysis situates the 1917 Balfour Declaration within these overlapping domains, showing how Balfour’s imperial and academic roles were inseparable. It analyzes the declaration as not solely a matter of historical harm, but as a formative moment in the longue durée of the university’s entanglement with imperialism and Zionist settler-colonial violence enacted in Palestine. Edinburgh’s student and staff mobilization against the genocide in Gaza exposed this historical nexus, revealing how institutional legacies of colonial and imperial violence remain present even within so-called moments of racial and decolonial redress.

Keywords:

During the spring of 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter (BLM) global protests, a renewed sense of political consciousness emerged in large parts of the Global North across a spectrum of political sensibilities. The killing of Breonna Taylor, a twenty-six-year-old Black woman shot by US police officers in her own home, and the 9 mins., 29 secs. lynching of George Floyd, a forty-six-year-old Black man killed in broad daylight by asphyxiation with a police officer’s knee to his neck, were two cases among many that evidenced the routine constancy in which Black life is rendered disposable and killable.Footnote1 Neoliberal corporate responses immediately capitalized on the momentum by celebrating the BLM movement and promoting so-called decolonizing initiatives, which, in the context of higher education, coalesced with a resurgent wave of student- and faculty-led movements for racial justice. An uncanny constellation began to form, bringing together forces with different political inclinations around anti-racism, from critiques of white supremacy via abolition of policing and prisons, to a surge in equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) initiatives.

At the University of Edinburgh (UoE), this period raised questions around the university’s direct and indirect involvement in the Atlantic slave trade through financial investments in plantations and the exchange of epistemic knowledge. As a leading Western academic institution established firmly in the era of colonial modernity and consolidated under the rise of the British Empire, some of the most notorious racial scientists, physicians, architects of colonial settlements, positivist sociologists, and political philosophers developed their racial views about the world at UoE, working hand in hand with military and imperial administrative servants. This included some of the university’s esteemed alumni and former faculty and students, such as Charles Darwin, David Hume and Patrick Geddes, all of whom introduced ideas that came to justify and naturalize systems of racial hierarchy. These racial views were not simply a matter of individual prejudice or cultural norms of an era, as their apologists like to proclaim. Rather, these viewpoints shaped imperial reason and helped institute and prolong systems of racial and economic domination under modern colonial and imperial rule that have lasting impact in the present. As the racial legacy of such figures began to surface, UoE took some swift actions, including the decision to rename some of its buildings. In September 2020, after a petition was addressed to the university’s senior leadership about Hume’s racist worldviews,Footnote2 the David Hume Tower was renamed 40 George Square. UoE seemed to be on some kind of path toward recognition of its historical wrongs.

By the end of 2020, and amid this political climate of racial redress, we came to notice another one of UoE’s skeletons. Out of curiosity, we opened the university chancellor’s official webpage. As we scrolled through the list, we read: “1891–1930: Earl of Balfour.”Footnote3 Between 1891 and 1930, Arthur James Balfour presided as chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. The timeline around Balfour’s appointment was striking not only because he was the second longest serving chancellor since the inception of the university in 1583. It was also during his appointment at UoE that he decisively contributed to the racialization of the Palestinian people who, through his 1917 declaration, came to cast the Palestinian people outside of the legal parameters of “personhood” by negating their national sovereignty as a people with political rights to self-determination on their land.Footnote4 The strategic wording of his 1917 declaration came to authorize a historical process of race making through dehumanizing Palestinians as a people incapable of self-governance. The final draft of what would come to be known as the Balfour Declaration was adopted almost immediately into the British Mandate for Palestine and, unlike other wartime statements, inscribed verbatim.Footnote5 We asked ourselves: If university leadership would rename a building because of Hume’s irredeemable views on race and slavery, how might they respond when asked to account for the fact that their own chancellor, while in post, issued a “false promissory note”Footnote6 that categorically set into motion a century-long process of imperial expansion, settler-colonial dispossession, and racialization in Palestine by means of forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid, and genocide? So began our research into UoE’s entanglements with the question of Palestine, Zionism, and settler-colonial dispossession.Footnote7

In UK academia, the roles of chancellors and other institutional appointees are often dismissed as simply ceremonial, lacking weight or influence. In our encounters, such claims are especially prominent when institutions are asked to account for their historical records of violence. The past deeds of such figures are exempted from scrutiny or institutional accountability in the present, their erstwhile views excused as signposts of a historical time and culture that normalized racial and colonial sensibilities. But such appointments were made at a time when institutions of higher education were at the fore of advancing imperial knowledge in service of the British Empire, and as a means of governance and domination within its colonies. The ongoing imperial and settler-colonial attempts at annihilating Palestinians as a group reveals the violence of Balfour’s legacy in the present and compels us to reckon seriously with this genealogy. We would be remiss if we ignored this continuity.

During the nomination speech of Balfour to the chancellorship on October 31, 1891, Vice Chancellor Alexander Campbell Fraser defined the role as “the supreme head of the university.”Footnote8 In the speech, Fraser also likened Balfour’s public and intellectual life to English philosophers like John Stuart Mill, and described Balfour as a “remarkable combination of intellectual power and high academic sympathies,” coupled with “practical statesmanship, which was too rare in the annals of our English history.”Footnote9 Today, the chancellor still represents one of the highest positions in the institution and aims to enhance “the profile and reputation of the University on national and global levels.”Footnote10

Balfour’s academic associations and institutional roles were intimately tied to his racial worldviews. Indeed, as evidenced in his domestic and foreign imperial policies, Balfour the imperial statesman and Balfour the university chancellor were hardly separable. The very tenure of his appointment as chancellor coincided with the years in which he played a decisive role in Britain’s imperial foreign policy—at the height of British empire, no less. What connected his various political and academic careers, including his chancellorship at UoE and the University of Cambridge (UoC) from 1919 to 1930, and his role as president of the British Academy (1921–28), was his philosophical commitment to the development of racial thought in support of imperial projects advanced under the British Empire. It was this duality between his political and academic appointments that made him an ideal candidate to serve as chancellor, being at once a scholar and a well-positioned figure of public affairs.Footnote11

This article highlights these two interconnected elements of his biography—namely, Balfour’s racial thinking and policies as a statesman, where he instituted a process of settler-colonial dispossession in Palestine, and second, Balfour as an institutional academic who dedicated himself to the promotion of race thinking and imperial education more widely. In this twofold role, he signed the declaration that would come to be named after him, and which inaugurated a process of dispossessing Palestinians. Critical scholarship on the Balfour Declaration—and on Balfour more generally—has largely overlooked the significance of this twofold role. Scholars and biographers have mostly focused on Balfour the statesman, and when they have addressed Balfour the “man of science,” they have tended to compartmentalize it from his political career.Footnote12 In this article, by contrast, we situate our analysis precisely at the intersection of his dual careers, exploring their encounters, overlaps, and interconnections as a productive space for thinking about institutional accountability.

We read Balfour’s legacy, and student and staff calls for accountability at UoE since the start of the genocide, through an active divestment campaign and a reparative justice process titled “Decolonised Transformations: Confronting the University’s Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism.”Footnote13 Drawing on David Scott’s engagement with reparatory history as a method of genealogical critique, we revisit the Balfour Declaration, the divestment movement, and the Decolonised Transformations Project and its relevance to ongoing struggles for Palestinian reparation, by recomposing the scattered fragments of Balfour’s engagement with governmental policies, scholarship, public intellectual life, and philosophical writing on race and imperialism.Footnote14 By reading the 1917 declaration alongside Balfour’s wider racial career and alongside mobilization in support of Palestinian self-determination at UoE, we consider what is at stake when the academy enters into the arena of reparatory history and racial redress to the question of Palestine.

The article is organized into four parts. First, we contextualize the political terrain upon which both the divestment movement and Decolonised Transformations developed and overlapped, despite emerging from different trajectories and constituents of the university. Next, we analyze the Balfour Declaration and its repercussions in Palestine, historically and to the present day, and reread it as emblematic of Balfour’s wider racial career, including his antisemitic legislation and his academic associations, circles, and appointments. We read these connections alongside the development of Balfour’s racial thinking and policies as a statesman that systematically targeted Palestinians, South Africans, and Jewish immigrants in Britain at the very time that he was serving in the ranks of the British Empire and representing UoE. We then turn to Balfour’s one and only visit to Palestine in 1925, eight years after the signing of the declaration and the military conquest of the country by British General Edmund Allenby, who would likewise be celebrated by UoE. We analyze how, during this visit, Balfour inaugurated the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as part of his broader commitment to the development of imperial education and racist ideas around civilizing the so-called Orient. The fourth and final section describes the imperial afterlife of Balfour at UoE amid the genocide, and student and staff’s protests and demands for divestment.Footnote15 Building from Stuart Hall’s concept of conjuncture, we introduce the Balfour conjuncture as a method for analyzing the multifaceted forces shaping ongoing racial, settler-colonial, and imperial politics around the question of Palestine within higher education, and as a tool for intervening in and challenging them.Footnote16

Divestment and Decolonized Transformations: Reparative Justice in a Time of Genocide

Following Hamas’s armed resistance operation on October 7, 2023, which broke Israel’s seventeen-year siege of Gaza and ushered in its war of annihilation, university campuses across the world became settings of unprecedented community mobilization for Palestine. The surge in student encampments and renewed calls for divestment marked a new era of Palestine solidarity praxis. These movements owe their ethical inheritances and political debts to a century-long Palestinian liberation struggle that drew from preceding anti-colonial movements and echoed throughout the era of third-world internationalism. We must understand present-day student encampments and divestment campaigns as part and parcel of these longer traditions of Global South resistance, refusal, and affirmation of the right to self-determination. Inspired by the longue durée of Palestinian defiance through boycotts, revolt, hunger strikes, uprisings, and other forms of resistance, the student-led encampments following October 7, which were supported by many university staff, deployed a diversity of tactics to hold universities to account for their complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza and their wider investments in the political economy of Israeli settler colonialism. Though varied, university administrative responses to student encampments reproduced the same liberal and at times fascist logic constitutive of decades of Western discourse and reactions to the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Rather than genuinely addressing the global demands for justice for Palestine, academic institutions complicit in Israel’s settler-colonial dispossession reacted through a combination of genocide denial, the frequent adoption of repressive measures in coordination with state apparatuses, and the implementation of bureaucratic processes aimed at managing protests and preventing divestment.

By October 2023, we were three years into active community mobilizations on UoE’s links to Palestine, conducting archival research at the university’s Centre for Research Collections, alongside other Scottish archives. After October 7, our campus became one of the UK’s epicenters of academic protest against the genocide. Students and staff coalesced in a multi-racial and multi-religious alliance that carried out a sustained divestment campaign led first and foremost by the student encampment.Footnote17 As a result of the political pressure of the divestment movement on our institution, UoE finally included Palestine among the questions to be examined in the Decolonised Transformations Project.Footnote18 This initiative, commissioned by UoE’s vice chancellor in 2021 as a “sector-leading” effort aimed at strengthening the university as a global institution,Footnote19 was structured around two main components. The first was a research-focused working group led by “distinguished scholars on issues of race and racism,” which also included student representatives and racialized community members from outside the university.Footnote20 The second component was a community engagement program focusing on reparatory justice both as a participatory process involving racialized communities and as the central goal of the initiative. In addition, a steering group was created to advise the working group on research and community engagement activities. The group was led by the late Sir Geoff Palmer, a former alumnus of UoE and Scotland’s first Black professor, who died shortly before the release of the group’s report in July 2025. The steering committee also involved other alumni, including donors to the university.

Initially, the project opted not to include Palestine in its remit despite our encouragement. Following pressure from the divestment struggle, in which students and staff asked for acknowledgment of the university’s relationship to Balfour and his actions, alongside divestment and reparations from what they renamed as “Balfour University,” senior leadership made a concession. For the first time in history, a Global North academic institution brought Palestine within the remit of a university reparative justice inquiry into historical wrongs committed by the university. This period was marked by an unprecedented conjuncture of events and a powerful assemblage of epistemic and political forces galvanized by the student- and staff-led anti-genocide and divestment movement at UoE. It was this constellation of forces that led to the inclusion of Palestine in the academic review of our institution’s entanglement with slavery and colonialism. Our contribution to this review—which brought into view a section of the report titled “University of Edinburgh and the Question of Palestine: Balfour’s Imperial Legacy and Its Afterlife”Footnote21—was rooted in our involvement in the Palestinian divestment movement and research into Balfour’s imperial practices and racial worldviews.

We entered into this reparative justice inquiry not because we believe that any meaningful or easy repair can be done to redress a century of dehumanization and dispossession of Palestinians. To ameliorate the wreckage, incalculable racial horror, grief, and loss that political Zionism and its colonial and racial supremacist ideology have cast upon Palestine and on its Indigenous people from the river to the sea and beyond, feels an impossible task. There is no sanitizing this institutional record. The litany of horrors remains with us. The reconstitution of Gaza as a death world marks a world of no return—not for the hundreds of thousands who have been martyred, nor for those tortured and maimed, nor for those who might survive this mass slaughter and face the consequences of forced starvation. Those who do survive will inherit an afterlife marked by genocide, in the absence of kin, limbs, homes, and the sanctity of life itself. These unconscionable horrors belong to us all now and we live with them. There is no coming back from this, and certainly no reparative formula to heal this moment or the century of colonial dispossession of Palestine and Palestinians. Nonetheless, justice and accountability for Palestine remain at the core of a just and free world. It is an ethical imperative and a political compass for crafting a different world order entirely, free from imperialism, colonialism, and interconnected forms of domination. Reparation for us is about accountability and building alliances with subjugated peoples, and with all the communities in struggle against hegemony and systems of domination. For this reason, we entered the reparative justice process by way of duty, as a way to mobilize and at the very minimum, ensure the cessation of the university’s ongoing harm through its investments in the genocide and ties to Israel’s settler-colonial economy.

As David Scott’s work on the moral and reparatory history of New World slavery helps us understand, the meaning of reparatory history is not only about reckoning with past evil but also present debts. For Scott, it is about the political repair of moral debt. As he explains, “unrepaired wrong remains wrong and, moreover, that the unrepair of such wrong is itself a grievous wrong requiring redress in conjunction with the repair of the original wrong. Wrong is not static; it compounds.”Footnote22 Yet, as he explains, in the case of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism, wrong can amount to forms of devastation and intergenerational harm that make loss almost “irreversible and irrecoverable.”Footnote23 We entered Decolonised Transformations knowing very well that the very concept of reparation operates within this tension between the aspiration to redress and the irreparability of anti-Palestinian violence. This tension becomes all the more pronounced in a time of genocide. Yet the alternative was to ignore UoE’s past and present complicity in the destruction of Palestine. Hence, we ambivalently and cautiously entered this work with an understanding of reparatory history as a horizon for forging ethical relations that challenge the imperial core and its contribution to the epistemic and material destruction of Palestine. For those of us within the Global North and in particular, Europe and the UK, we view decolonial work as the work of dismantling empire and its violence from within the metropole.

In our engagement with Decolonised Transformations, we conceived of divestment from the Israeli regime as a primary target of the project. We repeatedly made the claim that cessation of harm and guarantee of nonrepetition are the guiding and preliminary principles to any meaningful form of redress. It was a small crack, but an important one. In this ongoing work, we strive to pragmatically undo our institutional complicity while remaining fully conscious that the horizon of reparations is not a horizon of forgiveness and redemption. Rather, reparation is the process: The practice of anti-racist solidarity driven by the possibility of undoing not evil itself, but complicity with it. To achieve this limited but crucial objective, our particular archival research within the institution looked at the unique role that Balfour played during his tenure as chancellor of UoE from 1891 to 1930, as he established and set into motion a century-long process of imperial and settler-colonial dispossession in Palestine. The result of this process has been one of the longest military occupations and apartheid regimes in modern history, and the most protracted refugee crisis in the world today.Footnote24 As we were researching and writing the report on Balfour’s legacy, the very regime that Balfour so decisively contributed to instituting revealed its genocidal tendency, enabled, in part, by our institution’s investments. Confronting our university’s ongoing complicity with genocide and exposing our settler-colonial legacy in Palestine became the same struggle. The past and the present collapsed into one. The political struggle against genocide became the lens for writing about a past that refuses to pass: Balfour University.

The genocide in Gaza constitutes an unprecedented threat to the Palestinian people as an Indigenous people—a threat that introduces new ways of understanding how the past remains present through the convergence of new AI-driven technologies of violence, killing, and mass slaughter for the purpose of capital accumulation and settler land usurpation. In the case of the student- and staff-led movement at UoE, the conjuncture translated into new ways of understanding the relationship between the origins of the Nakba through Balfour’s negation of Palestinian self-determination on behalf of the Zionist movement, and the contemporary moment of Zionist eliminationist violence in which our institution is invested materially and epistemically. Thus, in the struggle against Israel’s genocide and toward divestment from it at our university, among other universities in the UK, the very enunciation of Balfour University became a call for action against the continuity of historical wrongs and ongoing academic financial complicity with genocide. The racial and imperial career of the chancellor statesman at the threshold of empire, government, and academia that we theorize through our research and direct engagement in the encampment, provides a lens through which to better understand this Balfour conjuncture.

Reading the Declaration Through the Imperial Chancellor’s Racial Career

By the time Arthur James Balfour mailed his sixty-seven-word declaration in 1917 to the home address of Lionel Walter Rothschild, the figurehead of the British Jewish community and prominent member of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland in 1917, he was no stranger to race thinking and foreign policy. Indeed, when he entered politics in 1874, he was the second Scot to serve as prime minister and was also the wealthiest man in Great Britain.Footnote25 Besides their personal fortunes, Scottish aristocrats also benefited from university loans. Before becoming chancellor at UoE, Balfour received a £12,000 loan from the university (the equivalent of £1.5 million today), which he repaid immediately after his election in October 1891.Footnote26 Wealth was certainly an important factor in Balfour’s election, but in terms of reputation, UoE was also looking for someone who “united knowledge of the world and world affairs … [a] great public career, high scholarship and philosophic thought.”Footnote27

The first traces of Balfour’s imperial statesmanship appeared before he was elected chancellor. In 1886, when he was secretary for Scotland, Balfour initiated a colonization scheme for the crofters of the Scottish Highlands, encouraging them to settle in Canada.Footnote28 Immediately after this position, Balfour was nominated chief secretary for Ireland and administered Britain’s oldest settler colony until 1891. Like his disregard of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination years later, Balfour also opposed self-determination for the Irish people. He introduced repressive emergency laws and quelled the political agitations caused by economic depression and anti-British sentiments, earning him the epithet “bloody Balfour.”Footnote29

Balfour’s chancellorship coincided with what Jason Tomes has called “the zenith of the British Empire.”Footnote30 This role also coincided with a series of domestic and imperial decisions influenced by Balfour that would come to have a seismic impact on the racial and colonial configurations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries at both national and global scales. In 1902, he became prime minister of the UK, and, in this position, continued to play a decisive role in imperial affairs. He was already directing the Foreign Office during the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), but it was only later that he articulated his vision for the British dominion of South Africa. While the South African apartheid regime was in the making, Balfour viewed racial segregation as a crucial means to preserve the racial purity of white supremacist democracies. As he explained in one of his reflections on imperial political reforms: “Where racial differences are clear cut and profound […] where a [White] race obviously superior is mixed with a race obviously inferior, the superior race may be constituted as a democracy, but into that democracy the inferior race will never be admitted. It may be kept out by law, as in South Africa, or it may be kept out by practice, as in the Southern States of America; but kept out it will be.”Footnote31 The imperial chancellor assumed race to be a social and biological fact, upholding the racial logic that “one European race” had to govern and dominate.Footnote32 He also explicitly claimed that “[a]ll men are, from some points of view, equal; but, to suppose that the races of Africa are in any sense the equals of men of European descent, so far as government, as society, as the higher interests of civilisation are concerned, is really, I think, an absurdity.”Footnote33

In 1907, two years after the end of Balfour’s mandate as prime minister (though still in post as chancellor), the Eugenics Education Society was established in the UK.Footnote34 Its creation was also a response to the social unrest resulting from capitalist development. The focus of the society, which expressed a conservative agenda of social reform and control of the proletariat (while also including socialist members), was predominantly on the prevention of the “degeneration of race” at a national level.Footnote35 In spite of his reluctance to embrace its most radical biological ideas, Balfour endorsed scientific racism. He considered eugenics a “splendid applied science” and directly supported the Eugenics Education Society.Footnote36 In 1912, Balfour as chancellor was the main guest at the Eugenics International Congress in London; and in 1913, he became honorary vice president of the society, reiterating the special place that racial reason played in his understanding of the world.

With this track record, it is no surprise that Balfour had no qualms erasing Palestinian peoplehood in 1917. In his promise to Rothschild, with no legal basis, Balfour endorsed the idea of a territorial-based, Jewish national home inside Palestine while simultaneously denying Palestine’s Indigenous community recognition as a people with national rights to self-determination. While there were several drafts of this declaration, the final version was issued on November 2, 1917, and publicly declared the following: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”Footnote37 Sherene Seikaly has noted that the declaration defined Palestinians “by who they were not,” as non-Jewish communities entitled only to civil and religious rights, but not political or national rights, while rendering Palestine a “national home” for an incoming Jewish settler society.Footnote38 In leaving the status of Palestinian political rights unprotected, the declaration set a precedent for the continued denial of the rights of Palestinian peoplehood and for the installation of a new racial order by means of negation. Though Palestinians immediately and categorically challenged the basis of the declaration, it became juridically enshrined verbatim in the British Mandate for Palestine as a result of Balfour’s political role as representative of Britain at the League of Nations Council.Footnote39

The territorial realization of modern political Zionism as a settler colony inside of Palestine was first instituted through the material, discursive, and military support of the British Empire in the lead-up to and during the British Mandate for Palestine (1922–48), and in coordination with leading figures of the Zionist movement. The transition from the mandate to the declaration of Israeli statehood in May 1948 was accomplished through the Nakba: an aggressive ethnic cleansing campaign of systematic elimination by means of massacre, dispossession, the destruction of 531 villages, and the forced expulsion of approximately 750,000 of Palestine’s Indigenous people by Zionist militias, namely, the Haganah (the future army of the state of Israel) and the Irgun. Over the course of the 1947–48 Nakba, in addition to those who fled to nearby countries, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were internally displacedFootnote40 to different areas of Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Nakba survivors and their descendants have been subjected to an ongoing war of annihilation by Israel since October 2023.

As historians have argued, settler colonialism in Palestine did not begin in 1948 at the time of Israel’s inception, but in 1917 through the signing of the Balfour Declaration.Footnote41 As a British imperial statesman, and in coordination with the Zionist movement, Balfour issued this political statement “of dubious legal standing,” since Britain had no authority over the land of Palestine.Footnote42 However, the juridical framework he architected instigated a process of governance in Palestine based upon naturalized racialized categories that treated Palestinians as political infants unfit for national self-determination. This was evident in Balfour’s other writings. In a 1919 memo to UK Foreign Secretary Lord George Curzon for circulation to cabinet ministers, he wrote: “Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”Footnote43 The casualness with which the fate of a people and the dispossession of an entire nation was declared reveals just how little the people and history of Palestine mattered to British imperial and Zionist leaders alike.

The results of Balfour’s racist logic and policy would come to sow death and destruction in Palestine during and after the British Mandate, both from British forces and Zionist militias, through ethnic cleansing and depopulation. The declaration also set in motion the processes leading up to the UN General Assembly’s Resolution 181 of November 1947, which proposed the partition of Palestine and set a precedent for fragmenting the land in a way that disproportionately favored settler colonists at the expense of an Indigenous people firmly rooted in the land and engaged in an ongoing struggle for sovereignty. The Jewish population, which made up roughly one-third of the total population, was offered close to 56 percent of the land. Conversely, Palestinians who were in the majority were expected to settle for approximately 40 percent.Footnote44 The sixty-seven-word declaration thus triggered what Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi has defined as the one-hundred-year war on Palestine.Footnote45

It should be noted, however, that Balfour’s disdain for Palestinians and his allegiance to Zionism did not mean that he held favorable views toward Jewish people. On the contrary, his domestic policies restricted Jewish immigration into Britain under the 1905 Aliens Act, which passed twelve years before the promulgation of the declaration on Palestine when Balfour was prime minister. This legislation constituted the first modern anti-immigration law in the United Kingdom. Its principal aim was to prevent Jewish immigration from eastern Europe after a surge in anti-Jewish hatred and religious persecution in the Russian Empire, forcing one million Jews to flee to western Europe and the Americas between 1880 and 1905.Footnote46 Within this period of mass Jewish migration, “aliens” meant Jewish people. In Balfour’s racially charged opinion, “It would not be to the advantage of the civilization of this country that there should be an immense body of [Jewish] persons who, however patriotic, able and industrious […] remained a people apart.”Footnote47

These details of his intellectual and public life are neither an aberration from his political views as an imperial statesman, nor a deviation from his involvement in global affairs, such as the question of Palestine. While our research was under review by the steering committee of UoE’s Decolonised Transformations initiative, an alumnus and donor to the university tried to exclude our research and recommendations to the university executive, arguing that our investigation failed to distinguish “between an individual’s principal professional activities and voluntary non-executive roles they might take on.”Footnote48 The argument is certainly representative of a sensibility that would like to set the clock back to an era in which knowledge, political power, and institutional roles were analyzed separately.

But besides displacing the scholarly untenability of this approach, what the examination of Balfour’s multifaceted career through the lens of his race thinking allows us to do is crucial for understanding the continuity between Balfour’s racial reason and the establishment of a settler colony in Palestine. The 1917 Balfour Declaration demonstrates most explicitly the ways in which his forms of race thinking had matured into explicitly racist policy. As Balfour himself commented: “the deep underlying principle of self-determination really points to a Zionist policy” that excluded Palestinians from becoming part of the family of nations.Footnote49 Indeed, as he later admitted, his ultimate goal with the declaration was to create the conditions for a Jewish settler “numerical majority in the future” that was entitled to exclusive national sovereignty in virtue of their alleged superior civilization and capacity to govern themselves.Footnote50 According to Balfour, in the best of cases, Palestinians could aspire to civil and religious rights, but not to national ones.

There are thus two interconnected elements of the Balfour Declaration that mark its contribution to what scholars such as Edward Said have called a settler-colonial order in Palestine. First, as Said succinctly described in The Question of Palestine, Balfour took “for granted the higher right of a colonial power to dispose of a territory as it saw fit.”Footnote51 Second, he gave credence to the rights of an incoming settler society that gradually but forcefully secured their settlement through colonial dispossession, theft, and expulsion. The Balfour Declaration was therefore the sine qua non for the constitution of a settler-colonial order in Palestine that endures into the present.

Balfour in Palestine and Imperial Education

On July 8, 1903, the first Allied Colonial University Conference took place in London. The development of a colonial space for knowledge production through university networks was intended to support British imperial rule.Footnote52 As both prime minister and chancellor, Balfour was one of the main architects of this imperial turn to academia. At the Hotel Cecil, Balfour presided over the conference dinner attended by delegates of colonial universities, heads of colleges, and “men prominent in educational and scientific work.”Footnote53 After the customary toasts, Balfour delivered a speech in which he celebrated the foundation of a new British colonial-academic alliance and explained why this was a remarkable political achievement:

We are here representing what will turn out to be, I believe, a great alliance of the greatest educational instruments in the Empire—an alliance of all the universities that, in an increasing measure, are feeling their responsibilities, not merely for training the youth which is destined to carry on the traditions of the British Empire, but also to further those great interests of knowledge, scientific research, and culture without which no Empire, however materially magnificent, can really say that it is doing its share in the progress of the world.Footnote54

For Balfour, the new colonial-academic alliance was a crucial tool for cementing the same British global domination to which he was contributing as a statesman. But it was also a key instrument for affirming a racial sense of White Anglo-Saxon unity, since, in his own words, “we boast a community of blood, of language, of laws, of literature.”Footnote55

After terminating his mandate as prime minister in 1905, Balfour withdrew for almost a decade from imperial foreign policy, before making his return in 1916 as foreign secretary, one year before the Balfour Declaration. But in those ten years preceding World War I, UoE’s chancellor continued to contribute to the construction of the British imperial academic space. In 1912, perhaps due to his growing interest in the so-called Orient, Balfour was asked to chair a session of the First Congress of the Universities of the Empire on “The Problem of Universities in the East in Regard to their Influence on Character and Moral Ideals.” In his opening speech, he underscored what he saw as the inherent incompatibility between Eastern traditions and Western science. He commented that if there has been “mutual adjustment” between scientific knowledge and sociocultural traditions in Western universities, science and social customs are in a relationship of “collision” in Eastern universities.Footnote56

This idea of incompatibility was grounded in a concept of “natural” racial inequalities that Balfour had articulated a few years earlier in a philosophical essay titled “Decadence.” In this essay, Balfour explained how the history of the “unchanging East” is dominated by a monotony of “Oriental despotism” that pointed toward its inability to self-govern.Footnote57 In his own writing: “I at least find it quite impossible to believe that any attempt to provide widely different races with an identical […] educational [environment] can ever make them alike. They have been different and unequal since history began; different and unequal they are destined to remain.”Footnote58 While Balfour was developing his theories on racial difference, the Zionists were planning the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as a move of high “practical and symbolic significance” toward the consolidation of their colonial settlement in Palestine. To quote its chairman, Chaim Weizmann, who was a leader in the World Zionist Organization and also played a prominent role in convincing Balfour to issue the declaration, the university was conceived as the “fulfilment of [the] particular dream of the early days of the [Zionist] movement.”Footnote59 In 1923, Weizmann invited Patrick Geddes, a former lecturer in zoology at UoE and a renowned Scottish sociologist and urbanist, to assist the British Mandate in replanning Jerusalem and the Zionists in the “design and layout of the university buildings.”Footnote60 The plans for this are preserved at UoE’s Centre for Research Collections.Footnote61 Later, Geddes was asked to help the Zionist movement develop plans for Tel Aviv (the first Zionist urban colony), Tiberias, and Haifa.Footnote62

Figure 1. Balfour inaugurating the Hebrew University in Jerusalem wearing UoE and UoC robes in 1925.

Source: Library of Congress.Footnote63

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Two years later, Balfour visited Palestine for the first and last time. He was invited by the Zionists to inaugurate the Hebrew University and lay the foundation stone for the Balfour-Einstein Institute of Mathematics and Physics on a site selected by Geddes.Footnote64 As Jerusalem’s Palestinian inhabitants took to the streets to protest his visit, Balfour proudly appeared dressed in his UoE and UoC robes, delivering his inauguration speech on Mount Scopus, and celebrating the Hebrew University as an experiment of adapting “Western methods” developed by the “Jewish race” to an Asiatic site and as an institution capable of regenerating a stagnant Palestine.Footnote65 In this way, Balfour espoused the Zionist narrative about the need to develop a backward Palestine. Significantly, following this inauguration in 1925, Hebrew University was included in the network of allied imperial universities to which Balfour had contributed.Footnote66 The land and buildings of the university were registered in the name of the Jewish National Fund, the main organization leading “Jewish colonisation in Palestine” through the acquisition of land under British imperial protection that resulted in the dispossession of Indigenous Palestinian communities.Footnote67 After inaugurating the Hebrew University, Balfour also toured Tel Aviv and the first Jewish settlements established in Palestine. In Balfouria, a colony of mainly US settlers that was dedicated to him by the Zionist movement, Balfour celebrated the “great industrial and agricultural efforts” of the settlers and their colonial enterprise as a “triumph of civilisation.”Footnote68

Figure 2. Balfour visits Jewish settler colonies in Palestine, 1925.

Source: Library of Congress.Footnote69

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Following Balfour’s visit to Palestine, UoE continued to celebrate its colonizers. As the Balfour Declaration was being signed, General Edmund Allenby occupied Gaza in the first days of November 1917, and six weeks later, on December 11, he captured Jerusalem from the Ottomans, marking a turning point in the destructive Palestine campaign. In 1926, UoE presented Allenby with an honorary degree in law,Footnote70 and the dean of the faculty celebrated his contribution to imperial conquest and the dispossession of Palestinians, explaining that the degree was a way for the university “to pay homage to the leader of the latest and most thrilling of the Crusades [and] the capture of Jerusalem out of the infidels’ hands.”Footnote71 In 1935, shortly before his death, Allenby was also made rector of the University of Edinburgh.

Today, in the UK, Palestine’s imperial oppressor and contemporary genocide enabler, universities continue the tradition of honoring Palestine’s violent British colonizers. At least two prominent “Balfour universities” still celebrate Arthur James Balfour: The University of Glasgow lists him among the “individuals who had already achieved or would go on to achieve great things,”Footnote72 while UoE refers to its chancellors as distinguished individuals who enhance “the profile and reputation of the University on national and global levels.”Footnote73 These commemorations deliberately obfuscate the racial careers and the foundational roles of figures like Balfour in creating the conditions for the displacement and elimination of the Palestinian people.

The “Balfour Conjuncture”: Genocide and the Chancellor’s Imperial Afterlife

As we read and explored Balfour’s career as a “man of science”Footnote74 at the intersection of imperial and racial governance, and alongside his commitment to advancing imperial academia while holding prestigious positions, we sought and received support from UoE to investigate our institutional archives and organize initiatives aimed at raising awareness in our community about our historical entanglements with the question of Palestine and Israel’s settler-colonial violence. Some of the preliminary findings of our research were published in Retrospect Journal as part of the special issue “Race in Retrospective,” which explored the university’s entanglements with race and racialization from the eighteenth century to the present.Footnote75 This special issue served as an important tool for raising awareness about the university’s links to racism and undoubtedly helped prepare the ground for the Decolonised Transformations Project.

A year later, in November 2022, despite the exclusion of our Balfour research from the university reparatory justice initiative, we invited Salman Abu Sitta, the founder and president of the Palestine Land Society, to address our former chancellor, Arthur James Balfour. The event, titled “A Palestinian Address to Balfour: In Honour of Truth, Memory, and Justice,” was organized by RACE.ED, an inter-university network focused on race, racialization, and decolonial studies at UoE, and the Kenyon Institute, in collaboration with various university networks and research groups. This event marked a significant milestone in acknowledging UoE and the British academy’s involvement in settler-colonial dispossession in Palestine, and in understanding Balfour’s relevance to ongoing Zionist violence.

Abu Sitta’s address was preceded by an attack against Balfour’s legacy at the UK House of Commons, in which Palestine Action activists squirted ketchup on Balfour’s statue around the anniversary of the 1917 declaration. “Palestine Action won’t stop until British complicity does,” said the activists.Footnote76 Ten days later, in his lecture at Balfour’s academic home in Edinburgh, Abu Sitta traced the chancellor’s racial legacy, including his antisemitic immigration policies. He examined the relationship between the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the Nakba, using maps and memories archived in the Palestine Land Society Centre and his autobiography to illustrate the continuities between British occupation after the declaration, and Zionist settler colonization leading up to 1948. Crucially, through Abu Sitta—a man whose family fought Balfour’s troops in Beersheba in 1917 and who was himself exiled from Palestine as a child in the Nakba—this event created a powerful sense of historical afterlife and reincarnation. Standing before Balfour’s portrait, which UoE owns and once displayed in the gallery of its main building, Abu Sitta spoke as if summoning him: “If you did not die in 1930,” he said, “you would be alive today and would be judged by people during your imagined life, so that we can hear firsthand what they say about your deeds.” Footnote77

Figure 3. Salman Abu Sitta delivers “A Palestinian Address to Balfour: In Honour of Truth, Memory, and Justice,” November 2022.

Source: Salman Abu Sitta.Footnote78

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Balfour’s legacy as the most prominent imperial chancellor of UoE, who triggered a process of settler-colonial dispossession and dehumanization in Palestine, is not merely a matter of historical harm. Harm to Palestinians today must be seen as an extension of Balfour’s legacy. While this violence may have begun with Balfour’s declaration, it remains through ongoing policies that continue the trajectory of imperialism, settler colonialism, and dispossession of Palestinian land and life. Abu Sitta’s dialogue with Balfour was thus a critical moment and a materialization of Balfour’s afterlife in the physical space of the room with the portrait.

But to grasp further the relevance of our research project and community initiatives to the present, and how the sources and materials we explored in different archives—along with the literacy and community awareness activities we organized—have become salient, we build on Stuart Hall’s notion of conjuncture. More precisely, we must understand the contemporary moment since October 7, 2023, as a “condensation of contradictions”Footnote79—an accumulation of historical, political, and epistemic forces that are erupting in the struggle between the global front supporting settler-colonial genocide and the front opposing it. This opposition has found university campuses and student encampments therein to be key spaces for expression and articulation. At UoE, staff and students organizing for Palestine use Balfour and the university’s historical entanglement with the dispossession of Palestinians as tools for understanding and acting in the conjuncture, in the “immediate terrain of struggle”Footnote80 in which our institution is implicated.

Let us analyze the conjuncture further. Following October 7, 2023, unprecedented community mobilization at UoE began to cohere and coordinate. Students and staff investigated the university, revealing how our direct and indirect investments contributed to multiple war crimes carried out as part of Israel’s regime of settler-colonial apartheid—ranging from the arms industry and high-tech surveillance to companies profiting from illegal settlements. As later revealed in a report by Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, our university is among the most heavily invested in the UK in high-tech companies that have intensified their collaboration with the Israeli Ministry of Defense since the beginning of the genocide.Footnote81 After weeks of student and staff protests, which were met with threats in weekly messages from UoE’s senior leadership—without any acknowledgment of the crimes perpetrated by Israel in Gaza—the university decided to make a concession to the anti-genocide front. One of the movement’s key demands since the first weeks was for the university to apologize for the historical harm it caused through the figure of Balfour and the 1917 declaration. In November 2023, for the first time in its history, and for the first time in the history of academic institutions situated in the imperial center, the university publicly acknowledged in a statement that it “has a historical link to this conflict […] in the Middle East” and that “the issue of coloniality will play a factor in any decisions taken” to address our seminal involvement in the process of denial of Palestinian self-determination.Footnote82

The Balfour conjuncture manifested further at UoE, and with global media coverage, in December 2023. In the days following the university’s announcement on the race review, we were tasked by colleagues in charge of the Decolonised Transformations Project to curate the section of the race review on Palestine, focusing on Balfour. While we were beginning to develop our investigation, our research informed “Balfour Reparations 2023–2043,” a performance lecture by Palestinian artist and University of Glasgow scholar Farah Saleh developed in collaboration with us, in which she confronted UoE’s imperial legacy. Dressed like Balfour in his UoE robe during his inauguration of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1925, she distributed a letter of apology that she asked the audience to read as part of the performance. In the fictional letter, printed on UoE letterhead, the university pledged to “disclose and divest from all investments in companies that directly or indirectly profit from the illegal military occupation and colonisation of Palestine.”Footnote83 Fiction somehow became reality. A picture of the letter taken by the audience went viral, framed as “a public apology for Balfour,” shared globally and quoted by the press to such an extent that, after circulating it as official news, Reuters Fact Check had to issue a statement clarifying that the “University of Edinburgh’s apology letter to Palestinians is fictional.”Footnote84

Figure 4. Farah Saleh performing “Balfour Reparations 2023–2043” at UoE in December 2023. Source: Photo taken by Lucas Chih-Peng Kao and used with permission.

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Not long after Saleh’s performance, South Africa initiated proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel for violating the Genocide Convention in Gaza. A month later, in January 2024, the court ruled that South Africa’s claims were credible and that Israel had carried out acts that plausibly amounted to genocide.Footnote85 In the months following the ICJ decision, as we continued our research while mobilizing alongside our campus community, students escalated their direct actions for divestment through multiple occupations of different university buildings. The historical complicity of our university through Balfour and the demand for an official apology for our historical entanglements remained one of the fundamental requests advanced by students in their divestment negotiations with the institution. However, the university’s intransigent approach to campus protests against our financial links with settler-colonial genocide pushed students to organize a vote on divestment. At the end of March 2024, the university’s Student Council overwhelmingly voted in favor of divestment, with a staggering 97 percent majority.Footnote86

In the same month, the relationship between Balfour, British academia, and the ongoing genocide became a focal point of struggle at UoC.Footnote87 A member of Palestine Action entered Trinity College and attacked a portrait of Balfour. The direct action organization released an official statement: “Palestine Action ruined a 1914 painting by Philip Alexius de László inside Trinity College, University of Cambridge, of Lord Arthur James Balfour—the colonial administrator and signatory of the Balfour Declaration.”Footnote88 The slashing of the UoC portrait—what Nicholas Mirzoeff called “slashing the screen”—allowed people to “see in the dark” of genocide and its imperial genealogy through Balfour.Footnote89 The slashing was an act of solidarity with Gaza that revealed the deep financial link between a world-leading university in the imperial center and Israeli arms manufacturers. Two months later, UoC divested from Israeli military companies.Footnote90

The Balfour conjuncture erupted irreversibly at the core of the UK Russell Group, in Edinburgh, a few weeks later, at the beginning of May 2025, when students joined the international student encampment movement spreading across continents, and set up tents at UoE’s Old College, home to the university administration. In their opening message on social media announcing the encampment, they declared: “Students take Lord Balfour University, known internationally as the University of Edinburgh.”Footnote91 They emphasized “the special legacy” of the University of Edinburgh “in the colonization of Palestine” and demanded that it “divest entirely from companies tied to Israel.”Footnote92 Our ongoing research, the community-led forms of truth-telling led by Abu Sitta and Saleh, and the archival materials we retrieved, helped inform both the student movement and the increasing involvement of staff in the anti-genocide and pro-divestment movement at UoE.

While “Balfour University Still Complicit with Genocide” became the official banner of the encampment, it was more than just a slogan. The connection and convergence between past and present—what we call Balfour’s afterlife—became a political conjuncture that took shape through the intersection of various processes and forces, giving the encampment a sense of historical mission. Multiple constituencies began to believe that the trajectory of historical injustice in which our institution has been implicated and that our research revealed in its granular aspects, could be challenged. This process led to the condensation and accumulation of multiple forces and community activism on campus, culminating in the largest mobilization for divestment since the 1970s.Footnote93

Balfour Must Fall Everywhere

This article has demonstrated, though only partially, the historical continuities of Balfour’s violent racial legacy and his imperial afterlife. In reading the breadth of his racial thinking, we showed how his declaration on Palestine was inscribed in his racialized imperial worldviews and quintessentially emblematic of them. We read this genealogy alongside an active movement at UoE calling for Palestinian liberation. Through various forms of political struggle at UoE, including a protracted hunger strike, students managed to mobilize over six hundred members of staff in support of divestment. This was achieved through a letter we drafted with colleagues, which was signed by the entire Decolonised Transformations network—meaning all the scholars engaged in reviewing our institution’s entanglements with colonialism and imperialism. As a network, we collectively signed the call for divestment, expressing full support for the student hunger strike and anti-genocide mobilization. We recognized that colonialism and imperialism are not merely historical legacies, but ongoing realities.

Our collective research on institutional entanglements with different forms and contexts of racial domination in the past became a tool for political struggle in the present. From the Palestine exception and the exclusion of Palestine from the race review, we reached a moment where Balfour and Palestine came to symbolize contemporary anti-colonial struggles. In this conjuncture, as scholars leading the Balfour section of the race review and as organizers of the Divestment Committee representing six hundred signatories, we engaged in the anti-genocide struggle by merging research, activism, and the pursuit of institutional change.

Figure 5. Student and staff mobilization for divestment and against Balfour University at UoE on June 17, 2024.

Source: Photo taken by Nicola Perugini.

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Figure 6. Student and staff mobilization for divestment and against Balfour University at UoE. This was taken at Old College on May 29, 2024. Old College is where Balfour’s portrait once resided and has since been taken down. It is also where Abu Sitta and Saleh staged part of their interventions.

Source: Photo taken by Nicola Perugini.

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Figure 7. Student and staff mobilization for divestment and against Balfour University at UoE. This was taken at Old College on May 19, 2024.

Source: Photo taken by Meher Vepari and used with permission.

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UoE continues to resist divestment when it comes to Palestine. Despite issuing an official statement in response to the anti-genocide protests acknowledging its historical involvement in the dispossession of Palestinians through Balfour, the university remains unwilling to recognize that true reparations and justice can only come by ending the cycle of harm—particularly through financial profiteering from settler-colonial annihilation. Instead, the senior leadership team has deployed what one member of staff termed a “conflict agnostic” approach, refusing to engage with the Nakba and its settler-colonial afterlife. This Nakba denialism delimits the outcomes of the working groups that are informing court decisions on responsible investments and preventing precautionary divestment from companies involved with the Israeli military in Gaza. This approach also means that UoE runs the risk of eluding due diligence and exposing itself to complicity with genocide, crimes against humanity, and an illegal military occupation. Instead of financial disentanglement, the university prefers repetition of the colonial and imperial harms that the Balfour Declaration institutionalized more than a century ago.

In spite of our institution’s resistance to divestment, the collective process of understanding the relationship between past and present through Balfour’s violent legacy has triggered an irreversible political process. For the first time, a Western academic institution was forced, through anti-colonial political mobilization against Israel’s ongoing settler-colonial genocide, to transform Palestine from an exception to one of the core questions at the center of its investigations into the legacies of colonialism and imperialism in academic institutions. This is only the beginning of a much larger and urgently needed process. Our work at the intersection of research, anti-colonial mobilization, and reparatory justice is only a drop in the ocean compared with what remains to be done to delink Western academic institutions from their legacy of dispossession in Palestine. Indeed, this research and analysis of community engagement at UoE should serve as an invitation to colleagues and students in other institutions in the imperial center to look for and follow the traces of Palestinian dispossession in their archives, in their collections, in the names of their buildings, and in the names of their scholarships. Balfour must fall everywhere.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank a number of people who worked with us and provided support toward this project: The UoE’s student-staff divestment movement and in particular the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. The former president of Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society and our research assistant Hajar Ibrahim, who helped us archive the mobilization for divestment, as well as Henry Dee and Tom Cunningham for their research assistance in the Centre for Research Collection (CRC). Our colleagues in CRC, Rachel Hosker and Daryl Green for their support in amassing relevant and helpful materials. Salman Abu Sitta for putting Balfour on trial in his centenary lecture on the British Mandate in Palestine, alongside Toufic Haddad for co-organizing this joint lecture. Farah Saleh for her lecture performance “Balfour’s Afterlife: Balfour Reparations 2025–2045” and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities for providing support around these various events. The Research and Engagement Work Group for their support toward the encampment and divestment movement, and toward our contribution with the reparations project. Nadim Bawalsa and R. R. Abdelnabi for their close and incisive editorial suggestions. This article was prepared with equal contribution by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

SRSF.

Notes on contributors

Nicola Perugini

Nicola Perugini is a senior lecturer in international relations at the University of Edinburgh.

Shaira Vadasaria

Shaira Vadasaria is a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Edinburgh.

Notes

1 See Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s definition of racism as “state-sanctioned and/or extra-legal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerabilities to premature death, in distinct yet densely interconnected political geographies.” Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Race and Globalization,” in Geographies of Global Change: Remapping the World, ed. R. J. Johnston et al. (Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 261.

2 Full petition here: “Rename David Hume Tower at UoE,” Change.org, June 29, 2020, https://www.change.org/p/university-of-edinburgh-rename-david-hume-tower-at-uoe.

3 “The Chancellor,” University of Edinburgh, last accessed December 22, 2025, https://www.ed.ac.uk/about/people/officials/chancellor.

4 Noura Erakat, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019), 15–17.

5 Susan Pedersen, “Writing the Balfour Declaration into the Mandate for Palestine,” International History Review 45, no. 2 (2023): 279-91, https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2022.2123377.

6 Salman Abu Sitta, “A Palestinian Address to Balfour: In Honour of Truth, Memory, and Justice,” Palestine Land Society, November 8, 2022, https://www.plands.org/en/articles-speeches/speeches/2022/A-Palestinian-Address-to-Balfour.

7 We came together on this project having both joined UoE after teaching for several years at Al-Quds Bard College in Abu Dis—an experience that marked our lives and teaching by bringing us into Palestinian spaces of learning shaped by everyday resistance to settler-colonial occupation and dispossession. With Palestinian campuses under siege, students and staff strive to carry out their academic lives while resisting all forms of violence—restrictions on movement, invasive surveillance, arbitrary detention, torture, death, land and resource theft, and dispossession—we carried these memories with us and learned from them. With a deep sense of comradeship, solidarity, responsibility, and love for the communities we lived with during our years at Al-Quds Bard College, and with an unwavering commitment to the Palestinian struggle for liberation, we both joined UoE with a sense of loss and duty to maintain our bond to Palestine by engaging in new epistemic and political battles through which we do our small part. It was from these affective and political trajectories and commitments to Palestine’s liberation struggle that our research into Balfour’s deeds of destruction began.

8 “The Chancellor.” Alexander Campbell Fraser, “Professor Campbell Fraser’s speech on the occasion of the University of Edinburgh’s election of Balfour,” The Scotsman, Edinburgh University General Council, October 31, 1891, as cited in Tommy Curry et al., Decolonised Transformations: Confronting the University of Edinburgh’s History and Legacies of Enslavement and Colonialism (University of Edinburgh, June 2025), 45, https://www.ed.ac.uk/about/race-review/read-the-review.

9 Fraser, “Speech,” as cited in Curry et al., Decolonised Transformations, 48.

10 “The Chancellor.”

11 See Fraser’s speech in The Scotsman (1891). Balfour was succeeded by two other imperial chancellors who similarly spanned the worlds of academia and public affairs: John Buchan, Baron Tweedsmuir of Elsfield, was chancellor from 1937 to 1940, and was a well-known Scottish novelist, governor general of Canada (1935–40), an imperial administrator with Balfour in South Africa, and played a prominent intelligence role in the Middle East; and Victor Alexander John Hope, Marquess of Linlithgow, was chancellor from 1946 to 1952, and was both the general governor in India (1936–43) and a politician.

12 Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt), Lord Balfour in His Relation to Science (Cambridge University Press, 1930); Sydney H. Zebel, Balfour: A Political Biography (Cambridge University Press, 1973); Ruddock F. MacKay, Balfour: Intellectual Statesman (Oxford University Press, 1985); Blanche Elizabeth Campbell Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour: First Earl of Balfour (Hutchinson, 1936).

13 Full project description here: Decolonised Transformations: Confronting the University’s Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism (blog), University of Edinburgh, https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/decolonise/.

14 As David Scott explains, the idea of reparatory history refers to a “dimension of moral history concerned specifically with historical wrongs that remain unrepaired in the present.” David Scott, Irreparable Evil: An Essay in Moral and Reparatory History (Columbia University Press, 2024), 27.

15 The concept of imperial afterlife draws inspiration from the work of Saidiya Hartman who coined the phrase “afterlife of slavery,” which is now a widely used analytic for understanding the ongoing material and psychic conditions of subjugation as instituted under the racial and economic structures of chattel slavery. This historiographical framework draws attention to the relentless and ongoing systems and structures of racial domination that define anti-Black violence, constitutive of Atlantic slavery, and instituted after formal abolition. Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 1997). We pay homage to this concept and its legacy and draw on it as a way to also think about the afterlife of British empire and its lasting legacy in Palestine and on Palestinians, which many Palestinian scholars refer to as the “ongoing Nakba.” As Nasser Abourahme details in his recent work, Nakba, translated to catastrophe, first appears in the work of Constantin Zureiq, in his book, Ma´a al-Nakba, written amid the ethnic cleansing campaign in 1948. Nasser Abourahme, The Time Beneath the Concrete: Palestine Between Camp and Colony (Duke University Press, 2025). The concept of ongoing Nakba is also a historiographical frame that explains how the colonial dispossession of Palestine and Palestinians, and resistance to it, is part of Palestine’s ongoing liberation struggle against settler-colonial and imperial domination.

16 Primary sources include, but are not limited to, the University of Edinburgh’s institutional records (Court, Senatus Academicus, Accounts), student societies journals, and archival records on Arthur James Balfour, Edmund Allenby, and the Patrick Geddes collection. In person and remote research in archives beyond the University of Edinburgh records include the National Records of Scotland, National Library of Scotland, Library of Congress, and British Pathé. The research on contemporary university investments supporting settler-colonial dispossession and genocide in Palestine is based on: International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court records of investigations on events in Gaza after October 7, 2023; media; the United Nations; advocacy and human rights organizations; staff/student reports on companies that are complicit with human rights, international law, and Genocide Convention violations in the occupied Palestinian territories; the University of Edinburgh’s official institutional communications on the process of the reform of responsible investments; as well as the archives of the community mobilization preserved by different groups and divestment campaign participants.

17 Kerr Simeon, “Edinburgh Student Hunger Strikers Demand University Divests over Gaza ‘Complicity,’” Financial Times, May 16, 2024, https://www.ft.com/content/e5ddee87-be2b-4283-8a1f-ecddbd95c368.

18 Curry et al., Decolonial Transformations.

19 University of Edinburgh (UoE), “Statement from the Principal,” news release, January 19, 2021, https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2021/addressing-contemporary-and-historic-racism/statement-from-principal.

20 UoE “Statement.”

21 “Member Bios: Researchers on the UoE and the Question of Palestine,” University of Edinburgh, last accessed December 10, 2025, https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/decolonise/2024/11/07/member-bios-researchers-on-the-uoe-and-the-question-of-palestine/.

22 Scott, Irreparable Evil, 58.

23 Scott, Irreparable Evil, 15.

24 Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel)–Intervention, I.C.J., January 24, 2024, https://www.icj-cij.org/case/192/intervention. Also, see Rosemary Sayigh, The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (Zed Books, 1979); Walid Khalidi, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); Ahmad H. Saʻdi and Lila Abu-Lughod, eds., Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory (Columbia University Press, 2007).

25 Jock Gallagher, Scotland’s Global Empire: A Chronicle of Great Scots (Whittles Publishing, 2014), 140–41. Also, see Zebel, Balfour.

26 Meeting minutes of the University Court Finance Committee, July 9, 1891, as cited in Curry et al., Decolonised Transformations, 48.

27 Fraser, “Speech,” as cited in Curry et al., Decolonise Transformation, 48.

28 Emigration: Secretary of State’s Correspondence, 1885, file AF51/1, National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh.

29 Jason Tomes, Balfour and Foreign Policy: The International Thought of a Conservative Statesman (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 78–81.

30 Tomes, Balfour and Foreign Policy, 2.

31 Arthur James Balfour, “A note on Indian reform,” August 7, 1917, cited in Tomes, Balfour and Foreign Policy, 65.

32 South Africa Bill of Lords, remarks by Arthur James Balfour, August 16, 1909, UK Parliament, House of Commons, Hansard, vol. 9, Column 1002, https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1909-08-16/debates/1a5e419c-77c8-4cbe-aa0e-e24099f46f50/SouthAfricaBillLords.

33 South Africa Bill of Lords, remarks by Arthur James Balfour, August 16, 1909.

34 L. S. Jacyna, “Science and Social Order in the Thought of A. J. Balfour,” Isis 71, no. 1 (March 1980): 31, https://doi.org/10.1086/352406.

35 Stefan Kühl, For the Betterment of the Race: The Rise and Fall of the International Movement for Eugenics and Racial Hygiene (Macmillan, 2013), 12–20.

36 Cited in Kühl, For the Betterment of the Race, 26; Jacyna, “Science and Social Order,” 31.

37 “Balfour Declaration, 2 November 1917: Promising Palestine Away,” Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question, last accessed December 9, 2025, https://www.palquest.org/en/highlight/157/balfour-declaration-2-november-1917.

38 Sherene Seikaly, Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2016), 5–6.

39 Pedersen, “Writing the Balfour Declaration.” Also, see Sahar Huneidi, “Was Balfour Policy Reversible? The Colonial Office and Palestine, 1921–23,” JPS 27, no. 2 (1998): 33, https://doi.org/10.2307/2538282.

40 Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (One World, 2007); Sa’di and Abu-Lughod, Nakba; Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha, eds., An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).

41 As historians Rashid Khalidi and Sherene Seikaly argue, “To begin the story in 1917 is to name the struggle for what it is: settler colonialism. We know that Zionism was a response to centuries of Judeophobia in Europe and, more immediately, the consolidation of state-led anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, Zionism was not the most popular response to the oppression of Jewish people in Europe, nor was it the only one.” Rashid I. Khalidi and Sherene Seikaly, “From the Editors,” JPS 50, no. 3 (2021): 2, https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2021.1947645.

42 Shawan Jabarin and Ralph Wilde, “How Britain Broke International Law to Stop Palestinian Independence 100 Years Ago,” Mondoweiss, September 29, 2023, https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/how-britain-broke-international-law-to-stop-palestinian-independence-100-years-ago/. Also, see John Quigley, “Britain and the League of Nations: Was There Ever a Mandate for Palestine?,” JPS 53, no. 2 (2024): 35–49, https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2024.2366771.

43 United Nations, The International Status of the Palestinian People, 1981, https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-204352/. Also, see Michael Adams, “What Went Wrong in Palestine?,” JPS 18, no. 1 (1988): 71–82, https://doi.org/10.2307/2537595. For the original source, see Letter from Mr. Balfour to Lord Curzon, Foreign & Commonwealth Office’s Public Records Office, August 11, 1919, file FO.371/4183, National Archives, United Kingdom.

44 Pappe, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 52–54.

45 Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 (Metropolitan Books, 2020), 17–54.

46 David Englander, ed., A Documentary History of Jewish Immigrants in Britain, 1840–1920 (Leicester University Press, 1994), 10.

47 Aliens Bill, Remarks by Arthur James Balfour, July 10, 1905, UK Parliament, Hansards, vol. 149, column 155, https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1905/jul/10/aliens-bill.

48 Decolonised Transformations Project, internal correspondence, February 5, 2025.

49 Arthur James Balfour, Speeches on Zionism (Arrowsmith, 1928), 25.

50 Tomes, Balfour and Foreign Policy, 212.

51 Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (Vintage Books, 1979), 16.

52 Tamson Pietsch, Empire of Scholars: Universities, Networks and the British Academic World, 1850–1939 (Manchester University Press, 2013). On Balfour as a white supremacist, see Yousef Munayyer, “It’s Time to Admit That Arthur Balfour Was a White Supremacist—and an Anti-Semite Too,” Institute for Palestine Studies, November 1, 2017, https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/232119.

53 Official Report of the Allied Colonial Universities, in The Empire Review, VI (London, 1904), p. 121, Special Collections, Main Library, University of Edinburgh.

54 Official Report of the Allied Colonial Universities, p. 121.

55 Official Report of the Allied Colonial Universities, p. 122.

56 Report of Proceedings: Congress of the Universities of the Empire (University of London Press and Hodder & Stoughton, 1912), 25.

57 Arthur Balfour, Decadence (Cambridge University Press, 1908), 35.

58 Balfour, Decadence, 46–47.

59 Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: The Autobiography (Hamish Hamilton, 1949), 390.

60 Weizmann, Trial and Error, 391.

61 The University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Research Collections holds the largest existing archival collection on Geddes. Moreover, the university has a Patrick Geddes Hall, which includes a dedicated Geddes plaque at the entrance. “Sir Patrick Geddes,” University of Edinburgh, November 12, 2024, https://www.ed.ac.uk/about/people/plaques/geddes.

62 Nazmi Jubeh, “Patrick Geddes: Luminary or Prophet of Demonic Planning,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 80 (Winter 2019): 26 and 38, https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1649528.

63 Hebrew University and Lord Balfour’s visit. Lord Balfour declaring university open, file LC-M32- B-434 [P&P], April 1, 1925, G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2019697069/.

64 “Hebrew University. Distinguished Visitors to Jerusalem,” The Scotsman, March 18, 1925, 10, as cited in Curry et al., Decolonised Transformation, 53. The Balfour-Einstein Institute of Mathematics and Physics was the initial name given to this institute, which can also be found in the American Jewish Yearbook of 1926 and 1927, vol. 28.

65 Roy Macleod, “Balfour’s Mission to Palestine: Science, Strategy, and the Inauguration of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem,” Minerva 46 (2008): 75, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-008-9087-x. Balfour, Speeches on Zionism, 78 and 83.

66 The Yearbook of the Universities of the Empire (Bell and Sons, 1925), 497.

67 The Yearbook of the Universities of the Empire (Bell and Sons, 1930), 528. Moïse Berenstein, “Jewish Colonisation in Palestine; II,” International Labour Review 30, no. 6 (1934): 797–819, https://researchrepository.ilo.org/esploro/outputs/journalArticle/Jewish-colonisation-in-Palestine-II/995219341902676?institution=41ILO_INST. For a history of the JNF and its role in Palestinian dispossession, see Walter Lehn, “The Jewish National Fund,” JPS 3, no. 4 (1974): 74–96, https://doi.org/10.2307/2535450.

68 Balfour, Speeches on Zionism, 110 and 112.

69 “Balfour at Jewish colonies,” Matson Collection negative numbers 13816-13914, file LC-M32- 13876 [P&P], 1925, G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2019695045/.

70 Senate minutes, University of Edinburgh, July 20, 1926, files 360 and 361, Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh.

71 Senate minutes, University of Edinburgh, July 20, 1926.

72 “Rectors Past and Present,” University of Glasgow, last accessed December 9, 2025, https://www.gla.ac.uk/alumni/ouralumni/rectorspastandpresent/.

73 “The Chancellor.”

74 Robert John Strutt Rayleigh (Lord Rayleigh), Lord Balfour in His Relation to Science (Cambridge University Press, 1930).

75 Shaira Vadasaria and Nicola Perugini, “Arthur James Balfour: The University of Edinburgh’s Imperial Chancellor (1891–1930),” Retrospect Journal, no. 29 (June 2021): 24–27, https://retrospectjournal.com/race-in-retrospective-2/.

76 Katy Prickett, “Police End Balfour Portrait Damage Investigation,” BBC, March 13, 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2xpnx93epo.

77 Salman Abu Sitta, “A Palestinian Address to Balfour: In Honor of Truth, Memory, and Justice,” Mondoweiss, November 30, 2022, https://mondoweiss.net/2022/11/a-palestinian-address-to-balfour-in-honor-of-truth-memory-and-justice/.

78 Abu Sitta, “A Palestinian Address to Balfour.”

79 Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (Verso, 1988), 130.

80 Hall, Hard Road to Renewal, 43.

81 Francesca Albanese, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967, A/HRC/59/23, June 30, 2025, p. 25, https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/59/23.

82 “A University of Sanctuary: Israel and Palestine,” University of Edinburgh, December 4, 2023, https://university-of-sanctuary.ed.ac.uk/israel-and-palestine.

83 “Balfour Reparations (2025–2045),” FarahSaleh.com, last accessed December 9, 2025, https://www.farahsaleh.com/balfour-reparations.

84 “Fact Check: University of Edinburgh’s Apology Letter to Palestinians Is Fictional,” Reuters, December 21, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/university-edinburghs-apology-letter-palestinians-is-fictional-2023-12-21/.

85 Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel).

86 Agenda and papers of the Senatus Academicus, University of Edinburgh, May 22, 2024, https://registryservices.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-07/22%20May%202024%20-%20Agenda%20and%20papers.pdf.

87 “Former Chancellors,” University of Edinburgh, last accessed December 12, 2025, https://www.cam.ac.uk/about-the-university/how-the-university-and-colleges-work/people/chancellor/former-chancellors.

88 Prickett, “Police End Balfour.” Official statement by Palestine Action. Link removed from the internet after Palestine Action was declared a terrorist organization by the UK government.

89 Nicholas Mirzoeff, To See in the Dark: Palestine and Visual Activism Since October 7 (Pluto Press, 2025), 102–3.

90 Imran Mulla, “Cambridge’s Wealthiest College Votes to Divest from Arms Companies,” Middle East Eye, May 12, 2024, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/cambridges-wealthiest-college-divest-arms-companies.

91 Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society (eu_jps), “Gaza Solidarity Camp at the University of Edinburgh,” Instagram, May 5, 2024, https://www.instagram.com/p/C6lcH7VoFxX/?img_index=3&igsh=ang3cWVucm95OHkx.

92 Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society (eu_jps), “Gaza Solidarity Camp at the University of Edinburgh.”

93 The last comparable campaign on campus addressing the university’s complicity with a settler-colonial apartheid regime was the one that ultimately resulted in full divestment from South Africa in 1971.

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https://www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/34npjpr3ns7m75hdmc9mbtm4s8wpl3

6 Dec 2025

Suppression of freedom of expression on Palestine at the University of Edinburgh must stop!

Image of University Old College dome with a Palestinian flag

We the undersigned unions, organisations, networks and individual staff and students write to condemn our institution’s senior managers for their suppression of Palestine-related expression at the University of Edinburgh, as detailed below. We cannot tolerate the contradiction of an institution that claims to uphold freedom of expression, but actively works to shut down certain views and threaten those who continue to insist on speaking. There cannot be a Palestine exception to freedom of expression.

Since the beginning of the academic year, after the insensitive and inappropriate meeting between our Principal and the deputy ambassador of Israel, senior managers have adopted increasingly intimidatory behaviour towards student groups who are supporting Palestine and speaking out against Israel’s ongoing war of annihilation in Gaza and attacks in Lebanon, including threatening members with disciplinary action for social media posts and protests that would not have carried such consequences before. This is part of broader suppression of on-campus manifestations of solidarity with the people in Palestine and Lebanon.

Edinburgh students have been doing essential work in refusing to normalise genocide and carry on with our lives as if the killing of more than 43,000 Palestinians (with more than 10,000 uncounted under the rubble), the complete destruction of the educational and medical sectors, the destruction and damaging of more than 70% of homes, the obliteration of all life-saving and life-sustaining infrastructures, and the starvation of 2.3 million people, were not happening. They have organised events to educate themselves and others on the historical roots of the current extermination, called protests and occupied University spaces, put up posters calling for a ceasefire, set up memorials for the victims, all of which is precisely to oppose the normalisation of what has been going on in Gaza. Since the beginning of 2024, with the opening of the investigation against Israel at the International Court of Justice for the crime of genocide, students have informed our community about the financial entanglements of the University with what the ICJ then ruled as ‘plausible genocide’. As a result, students and staff have come together, unequivocally asking in all available fora (Student Council, Academic Senate, the encampment, public letters) for divestment from genocide, egregious human rights and international law violations, and Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians.

By contrast, the UoE senior leadership and Court have ignored the strong and consistent calls for divestment in our community. The Court’s repeated dithering and postponement of divestment from stocks of companies directly supporting the Israeli military is not only contributing to creating a university environment that normalises genocide, giving the impression that the financial involvement in the crime of crimes is not an urgent matter that requires an immediate cessation, but also implicates our community in its enactment. We cannot accept this.

As we can document below, UoE management has reacted to student mobilisation by arbitrarily cancelling room bookings for events without any prior consultation with student organisers; repeatedly removing posters in staff offices; removing at least four memorials, including throwing materials such as the photographs of students’ family friends and relatives killed in Gaza into the bin as ‘waste’; refusing student requests to be allocated a space for the commemoration of the victims of the violence in Gaza; and sending threats of disciplinary action to members of two student groups. These actions contravene the principles of freedom of thought and speech outlined in the UoE management’s own guidelines on events. Such restrictions on legitimate freedom of expression and association are not only violations of UoE policy, but are also discriminatory in character, in that they single out certain forms of expression and association for suppression. This appears to be a breach of the Public Sector Duty UoE holds under the Equality Act (2010).

We call on the UoE management to immediately cease all intimidation of students mobilising and raising awareness on campus in solidarity with Palestine. UoE management must change how it addresses Israel’s ceaseless assault on Gaza and its implications for students and staff. This means acknowledging the role of this institution as a contributor to the current violence through its refusal to confront its own historical responsibility for the continuing dispossession of the Palestinians and its current institutional financial support to the Israeli military operations. Suppression of Palestine solidarity is part of a pattern of complicity that we insist must end now.

List of incidents:
While we are in the process of compiling a comprehensive list of all incidents since the start of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, the table below outlines the most recent incidents related to solidarity with Palestine on campus:

Poster Removal

Occurrences: Multiple. 8 incidents recorded between September and November, some with repeated instances.
Location: Multiple. SPS staff and PhD student offices, LLC staff offices, Vet School, Geosciences.

There have been multiple reports of incidents involving the removal of posters from various areas of the university. These include UCU ‘Ceasefire Now’ posters and general Palestine solidarity posters that were taken down from the offices of staff and students by either Security or Estates. No clear explanation was given for the removals, other than the claim that the posters were deemed inappropriate and were interfering with the freedom of expression of staff and students.

Intimidation

Occurrences: Multiple. 3 instances of intimidation have been reported so far between April and October.
Location: Multiple. SPS CMB & PhD Offices, Vet School.

There have been incidents of intimidation directed at staff and PhD students, one of which escalated into racial abuse and harassment. These incidents stemmed from the distribution or display of posters and flyers in support of Palestine in public spaces or offices. The intimidation took various forms, including formal communications addressed to staff involved with their line managers copied in, or security and Estates interrogating PhD students in a threatening manner, particularly those from the BAME community, and demanding to see their student IDs. Additionally, one colleague experienced repeated harassment and racial abuse from a fellow staff member since March. Despite a formal complaint to HR, management decided to side with the perpetrator.

Gaza Victims Memorials (Martyrs Memorials) taken down and pictures of killed family members and relatives binned

Occurrences: Multiple. The Gaza Victims Memorials were taken down 4 times (between June and October).
Location: Old College. The Victims Memorial, created by UoE students and staff to honour the victims of the Gaza genocide, has been dismantled four times.

The first incident occurred in June when security disposed of photos belonging to Palestinian students and their relatives. After students complained, the memorial was reinstated, but was removed again in August mere days prior to the meeting of the Deputy Ambassador of Israel with the Principal. The memorial was once again reinstated at the end of August and in September, only to be removed twice again by security. Throughout these events, management refused to allocate space for students and staff to pay tribute to their lost loved ones.

Room Cancellations:

Occurrences: Multiple. At least 2 cancelled room bookings were reported in October (other room bookings made by students and staff had also been reported as cancelled earlier in 2024 – currently gathering information from lead organisers)
Location: Various locations.

It was reported that at least two student room bookings were cancelled by University Timetabling. The first one was made by a non-registered student group for a tutorial reading group scheduled for October 7th. As the activities of this particular student group, including their social media platforms, are closely monitored by the University, the event was flagged and Timetabling cancelled it on the grounds that it was considered a ‘public event’, and that there was not sufficient time for a risk assessment. Additionally, Timetabling indicated that the topic ‘might have been controversial’.
The second room booking, organised by a registered student society, was also cancelled by Timetabling who mistakenly claimed that the event was being organised by the aforementioned non-registered student group. When the lead organiser challenged the false allegation, the UoE Deputy Secretary – Students (whom the case was referred to) provided a different reason for the cancellation, claiming that the event was cancelled due to its ‘public’ nature requiring a risk assessment, hinting also at the topic being ‘controversial’.
In the two instances there was no prior communications with the students, they were only notified about the cancellation of their events via e-mail.

Threatening two student groups with disciplinary action

Occurrences: November, via e-mail

Policing the social platforms of two student groups, management issued a formal letter to the students threatening disciplinary action, following two posts on X calling for divestment. The letter gave the students an ultimatum demanding that the posts be deleted or they would face disciplinary action, emphasising that the University would no longer engage with the two student groups unless their ‘approach changed’.

Organisational signatories:

School of Social and Political Science Palestine Solidarity Network
UCU Edinburgh
Staff Bame Network
Womxn of Colour Collective
CRITIQUE, Centre for Ethics and Critical Thought
Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology (EdCMA)
Staff Pride Network Committee
Staff-Student Solidarity Network
Edinburgh Race Equality Network (EREN) Committee
Decolonised Transformations Research and Engagement Working Group (REWG)
Geographies of Social Justice Research Group
Food Researchers in Edinburgh (FRIED)

To date, the letter is also signed by 363 staff, 126 PhD researchers, 70 students and 6 alumni

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Click to access 2%20April%20EUJPS%20letter.pdf

Professor Colm Harmon BA MA PhD

Vice Principal Students

Professor of Applied Economics

The University of Edinburgh

Old College South Bridge Edinburgh, EH8 9YL

Tel: +44 (0) 131 650 6443

Email: VP.students@ed.ac.uk

Web: www.ed.ac.uk

To: Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society

A safe and respectful campus

We want to underline how seriously we are taking the appalling episode that led to one of our students being assaulted last Friday. We understand how upsetting this is, and urge anyone affected to access the range of support we have available.

While we are assisting Police Scotland in its enquiries, we are also looking to ensure that we learn and improve from experiences, and are meeting with the Students’ Association to discuss this matter.

Edinburgh is a safe city and University to study, work and live in, which makes dreadful incidents such as this all the more shocking. Our hardworking teams are highly experienced in managing security across our city-wide campus, ensuring members of our University can carry out their day confident in their safety.

We are limited in what we can say in the context of an ongoing Police investigation, however we will continue to listen and engage with our community.

Looking ahead, we ask, as always, and like many other organisations supporting peaceful protest, that those organising any events, including protests, engage with our Security team in advance in order that they can support these as effectively as possible. Security have supported very many events, of many kinds, over many years, and these have taken place most effectively when that engagement has been strong. We have not had the benefit of that pre-engagement to date with EU-JPS, which means that we are obliged to plan reactively.

Your social media posts about the incident (e.g. Instagram on 30 March) are incorrect and irresponsible. Our University fully supports the lawful and respectful expression of views and opinions. Members of our Security team are always on duty across campus and attend events including protests as a matter of routine. Team members were present at Friday’s protest and provided immediate support to those affected during and after the incident.

Social media posts

Your recent social media posts (including on Instagram and X/Twitter on 28 March) in reference to ‘platforming’ a member of the Israeli Defence Forces directly refer to a current student. These are discriminatory, disrespectful and, more critically, potentially threaten that student’s safety.

We ask that you immediately remove these posts along with the template email (Google Docs).

We are disappointed by the way that you have chosen to frame what was an important discussion on antisemitism between staff and students, one that your supporters participated in with strength and conviction. The discussion took place in a constructive manner, with the direct purpose of reaching out to all sides towards a bridging of experiences.

The University will not tolerate bullying, intimidation and offensive behaviour, whether online or in person. Actions which target a student and encourage others to do the same have no place in this University. We have been very clear that disciplinary action may be taken should anyone breach the Code of Student Conduct.

As we mentioned in our previous email (6 November 2024), EU-JPS represents a small minority of students – many others will have different perspectives and they should feel safe to voice their views as well. We will continue to engage with our wider student and staff community in this spirit.

Regards,

Professor Colm Harmon BA MA PhD

Vice Principal Students, University of Edinburgh

Lucy Evans

Deputy Secretary Students

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336

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Click to access Letter%20to%20EUJPS%206%20Nov%202024.pdf

Professor Colm Harmon BA MA PhD

Vice Principal Students

Professor of Applied Economics

The University of Edinburgh

Old College South Bridge Edinburgh, EH8 9YL

Tel: +44 (0) 131 650 6443

Email: Colm.Harmon@ed.ac.uk

www.ed.ac.uk

To: Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society

We note your response to our letter of 31 October.

In our most recent letter to you, we reiterated that the University supports the right to lawful, peaceful and respectful protest. You do not, however, have the right to prevent access to our buildings or to disrupt or interfere with events or the choices of our students and staff.

We remind you that your blockade of the entrances to Charles Stewart House on 18 October and your occupation of the Sanderson Building on 30 October, as well as your entry to the Main Library on 2 November when you were asked not to enter, are completely unacceptable and such actions will not be tolerated.

Your most recent social media posts (including 30 October on X and 3 November on X) are offensive and have taken an increasingly threatening tone against us, the Principal and other colleagues. We take these threats against our staff very seriously. You must remove these immediately.

The University will not tolerate bullying, intimidation and offensive behaviour of the type that has been witnessed in recent weeks, both online and in person. We have been very clear that disciplinary action may be taken should anyone breach the Code of Student Conduct. We have now reached that position and will be investigating these breaches with a view to pursuing disciplinary action against individual students thought to be in breach of the Code.

To date, we engaged with the demands you have made, and we have remained open to a dialogue with EU-JPS that is respectful, constructive and held in a spirit of collegiality. However, since your use of offensive language and threatening behaviour has increased, you have left us with no option but to cease all engagement with EU-JPS until your approach to dialogue, including what you post on social media, changes.

EU-JPS represents a small minority of students – many others will have different perspectives and they should feel safe to voice their views as well. We will continue to engage with our wider student and staff community in this spirit. This will not impact our planned approach to review the University’s Responsible Investment Policy.

Regards,

Professor Colm Harmon BA MA PhD

Vice Principal Students, University of Edinburgh

Lucy Evans

Deputy Secretary Students

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336

=================================================================

Click to access Sanderson%20Building%20occupation.pdf

Professor Colm Harmon BA MA PhD

Vice Principal Students

Professor of Applied Economics

The University of Edinburgh

Old College South Bridge Edinburgh, EH8 9YL

Tel: +44 (0) 131 650 6443

Email: Colm.Harmon@ed.ac.uk

www.ed.ac.uk

Occupation of the Sanderson Building, King’s Buildings

Dear Occupiers,

We note that your occupation of the Sanderson Building and the resulting disruption to the Careers in Engineering Fair has now come to an end.

Actions of this kind are completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated.

As we have highlighted many times over the last few months, the University supports the right to lawful, peaceful and respectful protest but we do not condone preventing access to our buildings. You do not, however, have the right to disrupt or interfere with events or the choices of our students and staff, and the University has been very clear that disciplinary action may be taken should anyone breach its Code of Student Conduct.

The Careers Service offers impartial support to all of our students, helping them make informed choices about their future by providing information and access to a range of industries and professional networks. It is the right of students to engage with these companies without disruption.

This action today is consistent with the ongoing inappropriate, aggressive and personal attacks on University colleagues that you have been posting on your social media channels. This must stop.

We remain open to a dialogue with EU-JPS that is respectful, constructive and held in a spirit of collegiality. That is far from where we are at the moment.

Regards,

Professor Colm Harmon BA MA PhD

Vice Principal Students, University of Edinburgh

Lucy Evans

Deputy Secretary Students

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336

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Click to access _0.pdf

Dear Edinburgh University Justice for Palestine Society,

I refer to my previous letter from 29 August.

In that email I asked for care and caution in relation to social media postings and respect for the community of the University.

Your latest social media posting makes explicit reference to the events of October 7th. We view these comments as grossly offensive, not just to the Jewish community at large, but to the wider public. The abhorrence of the violence in Gaza does not mean that those in our community and beyond cannot feel abhorrence of the events which took place in Israel on that day.

While we respect your lens on events, we have been clear that protests including social media postings which negate in any way the feelings of the wider community are unacceptable. In this instance, the wording goes further, and portrays a terrorist act in a manner that is offensive.

We ask that you remove this posting (see here).

I support your right to freedom of expression, but this right is not without responsibility. I again ask for you to reflect on that, and ask always where and how your actions will intimidate or offend. In not doing so, we view you, as students of our University, to be potentially in breach of our code of conduct and subject to appropriate disciplinary considerations.

Yours sincerely,

Colm

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https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jul/27/edinburgh-university-could-unadopt-antisemitism-definition-after-report-into-its-colonial-links

Edinburgh University could unadopt antisemitism definition after report into its colonial links

This article is more than 7 months old

One of Britain’s oldest and most prestigious universities is reviewing whether to launch divestment drive and drop antisemitism definition

Harriet Sherwood and Severin Carrell

Sun 27 Jul 2025 09.59 BST

The University of Edinburgh is considering whether to unadopt an internationally recognised definition of antisemitism that critics say inhibits freedom of speech on the subject of Israel and Palestine.

Edinburgh, one of Britain’s oldest and most prestigious universities, is also considering whether to divest from companies accused of enabling alleged human rights violations by Israel.

Both issues are being reviewed by university authorities as a report on the legacy of its historical links with the region is published. The report is part of a broader investigation of the university’s involvement in colonialism and slavery.

It recommends that the university divest from companies allegedly complicit in Israel’s military actions in Gaza and the West Bank, supports the reversal of its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, and establish a Palestine Studies Centre to investigate the legacy of the Balfour declaration and offer scholarships to students of Palestinian origin.

The report focuses on the repercussions over the past century of the Balfour declaration, a 1917 statement by the British government in favour of “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

Edinburgh students protest in the Old College quad View image in fullscreen

Edinburgh students protest in the Old College quad, asking for the university to divest from companies complicit in the war on Gaza . Photograph: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert

As well as being British foreign secretary at the time, Arthur James Balfour was the University of Edinburgh’s chancellor – a ceremonial and ambassadorial role – between 1891 and 1930. He had been prime minister from 1902 to 1905.

Balfour played a “unique role” in “establishing and maintaining a century-long process of imperial and settler-colonial rule in Palestine, resulting today in one of the longest-standing colonial occupations and apartheid regimes in modern history”, the report says.

The IHRA definition and the university’s investments were already under review, Sir Peter Mathieson, the university’s principal, told the Guardian. The definition was a “hot topic” and “contentious”, he said. “There is not a unanimity of view. There are some Jewish people who think IHRA is a helpful definition, there are some people who think it’s unhelpful, and so those discussions are ongoing and we haven’t come to a conclusion.”

This year’s graduation ceremonies have been hit by a series of protests and walkouts by graduates, with about 200 students staging protests at 24 ceremonies; some directly accused Mathieson of complicity in the Gaza crisis. Last year, students occupied the quad in Old College, where Mathieson has his office.

The university was setting up a “responsible investment group” to examine its financial holdings, he added. Its remit included reviewing “investments in relation to companies which are allegedly supporting Israel”.

Research on the legacy of the Balfour declaration was added to the broader study of the university’s links to colonialism a year after the Hamas atrocities of 7 October 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza.

The report’s authors, Nicola Perugini and Shaira Vadasaria, both academics at Edinburgh, told the Guardian the decision to include Balfour’s legacy in the research was a “direct response” to pressure on the university leadership by campus protests over the Gaza war.

The pair, both of whom taught for several years at al-Quds University, a Palestinian institution on the outskirts of occupied East Jerusalem, had already been researching Balfour’s legacy for several years. They have been involved in divestment campaigns on campus, and last year Perugini demanded Mathieson apologise publicly after the principal met the Israeli deputy ambassador to the UK.

Balfour’s 67-word declaration said: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

During and after the first world war, Britain and other imperial powers were intent on dividing up the Middle East. Britain controlled Palestine under a League of Nations mandate between 1922 and 1948, during which its forces brutally suppressed Palestinian resistance to increased Jewish immigration in the wake of the Balfour declaration.

Palestinian refugees during the Arab Israeli war of 1948 View image in fullscreen

Palestinian refugees during the Arab Israeli war of 1948. Photograph: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

The state of Israel was declared within hours of the end of the mandate in May 1948. The subsequent war drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes during what became known as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Many Palestinians still blame Balfour for what they see as an act of perfidy and betrayal.

The report’s authors argue Balfour espoused openly racist views that explained his attitudes towards the Middle East, and had a record of supporting settler colonialism in Ireland, South Africa and Canada. In 1913, he became honorary vice-president of the British Eugenics Education Society. Some historians also say he was an antisemite who had backed the 1905 Aliens Act, which severely restricted Jewish immigration to Britain.

The main university report said this legislation constituted the first modern UK anti-immigration law that was designed to prevent Jews fleeing to the UK after an explosion of anti-Jewish hatred and religious persecution in Russia.

The academics who oversaw the university review believe Balfour’s views can be traced back to racist sciences that they say Edinburgh helped to formulate in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Although there is no evidence the university was involved in drafting the 1917 declaration, the report’s authors maintain it was closely aligned with Balfour’s career. It loaned him £12,000 – equivalent to more than £1.8m today – before he became its chancellor, and in 1925 Balfour wore his official university robes when he laid the foundation stone for the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Vadasaria told the Guardian: “Balfour signed a declaration that put in place an imperial and settler-colonial structure of racial domination inside Palestine, which has been sustained by military occupation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide.”

The report points out that the declaration defined Palestinians as “non-Jewish communities” rather than an Indigenous people with national rights to self-determination, and referred only to civil and religious rights rather than political and national rights. In the Nakba, Palestinians were forced into “permanent exile that continues into the present”.

Balfour’s legacy was “not merely a matter of historical harm,” it says. “Indeed, harm to Palestinians today can be seen as an extension of Balfour’s legacy in the present. While this violence may have begun with Balfour’s declaration, it remains through ongoing policies that continue with the trajectory of imperialism, settler colonialism and the dispossession of Palestinian land and life.”

The Balfour declaration was given an effusive welcome by the Guardian in 1917. Its then editor, CP Scott, had facilitated key introductions between prominent Zionists and members of the government.

The report’s forthright language and recommendations, plus the absence of any reference to centuries of Jewish persecution and dispossession that led to the development of Zionism, or the horrific nature of the Hamas atrocities committed on 7 October 2023, are likely to be controversial in a climate of bitter divisions over the war in Gaza.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism was adopted by the university in 2020, “without broad consultation with students and staff”, according to the report. The definition “violates academic freedom and freedom of speech by framing any criticism of Israel’s policies of settler-colonial dispossession driven by state racism as a form of antisemitism”, it adds.

Alongside the definition, the IHRA offers what it describes as contemporary examples of antisemitism that critics say are used to protect Israel from legitimate criticism. Supporters of the definition say it is essential in helping to protect Jews from hate crimes and abuse.

In 2020, Gavin Williamson, the education secretary in the Conservative government, threatened to cut funding to universities in England that failed to adopt the IHRA definition. The majority have done so.

On the issue of divestment, the authors say the university authorities have “adopted a ‘conflict agnostic’ approach, a term that denies the Nakba and its settler-colonial afterlife”.

This month, a UN report highlighted the involvement of companies from around the world in supporting Israel during its war in Gaza. It noted that the University of Edinburgh was one of the “UK’s most financially entangled institutions”, with nearly £25.5m invested in four tech corporations – Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM – that were “central to Israel’s surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction”.

According to Perugini and Vadasaria’s report, the investments have left the university exposed to “complicity with genocide, crimes against humanity and illegal occupation”. A failure to divest would risk reputational damage and lead to further campus protests, the authors told the Guardian.

This article was amended on 29 July 2025 to correct a misquote in the opening line of the Balfour declaration. The British monarch in 1917 was George V, and the text referred to His Majesty’s government, not “Her Majesty’s government.”

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https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/university-edinburghs-apology-letter-palestinians-is-fictional-2023-12-21/https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/university-edinburghs-apology-letter-palestinians-is-fictional-2023-12-21/

Fact Check: University of Edinburgh’s apology letter to Palestinians is fictional

By Reuters Fact Check

December 21, 2023 3:35 PM GMT+2Updated December 21, 2023

A fictional letter written by a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh for a performance lecture this month exploring the university’s colonial legacy and potential reparations for Palestinians has been falsely claimed online to be an official letter from the institution.

The letter is headed with the University of Edinburgh’s logo and is date stamped Dec. 14, 2023.

It apologises to Palestinian people for the Balfour Declaration, an authentic 1917 policy statement by Arthur Balfour – then Britain’s foreign minister and Edinburgh University’s chancellor – that said Britain favoured the establishment of a national home for Jewish people in Palestine.

Palestinians have long condemned the 1917 declaration, opens new tab as a promise by Britain to hand over land that it did not own.

On X, opens new tab (archived, opens new tab) and Facebook, opens new tab (archived, opens new tab), posts sharing an image of the university-headed apology suggested it was a bona fide statement by the University of Edinburgh.

But Palestinian dance artist and scholar Farah Saleh said in Dec. 17 posts on X, opens new tab (archived, opens new tab) and Facebook, opens new tab (archived, opens new tab) that the letter is fictional and is part of her performance lecture, “Balfour Reparations (2023-2043)”, opens new tab (archived, opens new tab), which was developed during her postdoctoral fellowship.

An Edinburgh University spokesperson said in an email: “This is not an official statement from the University of Edinburgh. It is a fictional text that was created for a private theatre event.”

VERDICT

Missing context. The image shows a fictive letter created for a performance lecture.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work.

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RACE.ED is a University of Edinburgh network concerned with race, racialization and decolonial studies from a multidisciplinary perspective,

https://www.race.ed.ac.uk/blog/2022/chancellor-balfour-declaration-our-university-imperial-knowledge-and-racialised-global

The Chancellor Balfour Declaration: our university, imperial knowledge and the racialised global order

Author

RACE.ED

11 February 2022

Lord Balfour declaring a Hebrew University open

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Blog post by Nicola Perugini, University of Edinburgh

On July 8 1903, the first Allied Colonial University Conference took place at the Hotel Cecil on the Thames Embankment in London. The development of knowledge production and university networks was meant to foster British imperial rule. One of the main architects of this imperial turn to academe was Arthur James Balfour, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at that time, and also Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. Balfour had been appointed to the Edinburgh post in 1891 and ultimately held the position until 1930 – the longest chancellorship in the history of Scotland’s most prominent university.

At Hotel Cecil, Balfour presided the conference dinner attended by universities delegates, heads of colleges, and “men prominent in educational and scientific work.” After the customary toasts, Balfour delivered a speech in which he celebrated the foundation of the new British-colonial academic alliance and explained why this was a remarkable political achievement: “It is not merely, or simply, or chiefly that there are here in this room representatives of scholarship, of science, of all the great spheres of activity in which modern thought is indulging itself. It is that we are here representing what will turn out to be, I believe, a great alliance of the greatest educational instruments in the Empire – an alliance of all the universities that, in an increasing measure, are feeling their responsibilities, not merely for training the youth which is destined to carry on the traditions of the British Empire, but also to further those great interests of knowledge, scientific research, and culture without which no Empire, however materially magnificent, can really say that it is doing to share in the progress of the world.”

In Balfour’s mind, the new academic alliance was a crucial tool for cementing Britain’s global dominance. But it was also a key instrument for affirming a sense of a racialised Anglo-Saxon unity: “We boast a community of blood, of language, of laws, of literature,” the ecstatic Chancellor-PM exclaimed at the conference dinner.

After ending his tenure as Prime Minister in 1905, Balfour withdrew for almost a decade from the centre-stage of imperial foreign policy, before making his return in 1916 as Foreign Secretary. But in those ten years, the Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh continued to construct British academic space as an imperial project.

In 1912, perhaps also due to his growing interest in “the Orient,” Balfour was asked to chair a session of the Second Congress of the Universities of the Empire on The Problem of Universities in the East in Regard to their Influence on Character and Moral Ideals. In his opening speech, he underscored how in Western universities there has been “mutual adjustment” between scientific knowledge and socio-cultural traditions, while in Eastern universities science and social customs were on course for “collision.” This idea of an inherent incompatibility between Eastern traditions and science was grounded in a concept of natural racial inequalities that Balfour had articulated quite clearly a few years earlier, in his book On Decadence. In this book, Balfour theorised that Oriental history was dominated by a monotony of despotism and an incapacity of self-government, and how “any attempt to provide widely different races with an identical […] educational [environment] can never make them alike. They have been different and unequal since history began; different and unequal they are destined to remain.”

This kind of racial thinking shaped Balfour’s imperial world-making both as a statesman and a man of science and academia. This racialised understanding of global order constituted the backbone of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which created a new imperial legal framework in the Middle East. The Declaration, issued on the 2 of November, endorsed the creation of a territorial based settler national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, while denying Palestinians their national rights and offering them only civil and religious rights. Ultimately, and in line with his writings, Palestinians were Orientals incapable of governing themselves or achieving self-determination.

Balfour wrote and signed the Declaration before visiting Palestine. In fact, his first visit took place in 1925, when he inaugurated the Hebrew University of Jerusalem dressed in the robes of Edinburgh and Cambridge (where he had become Chancellor in 1919). As a guest of the Zionist movement, he toured the first “Jewish colonies” established in Palestine, including Balfouria, a settlement dedicated to him by the Zionist leadership.

In his inauguration speech on Mount Scopus, Balfour celebrated the Hebrew University as an experiment of adapting “Western methods” (“Jewish science and theories”) to an Asiatic site and as an institution capable of regenerating a “stagnant Palestine.” Balfour-the-statesman espoused the Zionist narrative about the need to regenerate the arid Palestine also when he wore the clothes of Balfour-the-Edinburgh-Chancellor. As Chaim Weizmann – who played a decisive role in convincing Balfour to issue the 1917 Declaration and invited him to give the inauguration speech in 1925 – made clear in his Trial and Error, the Hebrew University was “the fulfilment of my particular dream of the early days of the movement” and a crucial tool for Zionist affirmation in Palestine. Significantly, after the inauguration, Hebrew University was included in the network of allied imperial universities Balfour had helped constitute in the beginning of the century.

The link between Balfour’s contribution to imperial governance and his contribution to the development of British imperial academia have for some reason been completely erased and does not appear in the vast amount of literature and the contemporary debates on his involvement in global imperial affairs and his infamous Declaration on Palestine.

That is why this year we might use the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration to rediscover this link and raise some fundamental questions on the imperial history of the University of Edinburgh, as well as Scottish and British academia, and its relevance to the present. As universities that formally and publicly embrace the decolonial agenda and try to decolonise curricula and academic spaces: how could we decolonise our historical imbrication with the injustice to which Palestinians have been subjected as a result of the imperial declaration issued by one of our chancellors? Why don’t we publicly acknowledge that the man that has been appointed to enhance our global academic reputation for forty years, was also a key political-intellectual actor in the production of a racialised imperial order that has dispossessed so many peoples? What would be the implications of such a recognition? And since the question of Palestine is still alive as a colonial question that continues to generate violence and dispossession, as we have seen also recently: how could we contribute, with concrete and tangible institutional actions, to decolonise Palestine and repair our institutional entanglement with a settler colonial project that continues to deny Palestinians the right to self-determination and uproot them from their land?

After all, the Balfour Declaration was also our Chancellor’s declaration.

This article is based on a research project on the imperial legacy of the University of Edinburgh in collaboration with the Centre for Research Collections and with the support of SPS and CAHSS.

Image credit: Balfour inaugurates the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1925 Source: Library of Congress.

Jürgen Habermas’s Passing Triggered Anti-Israel Sentiments Among Scholars

25.03.26

Editorial Note

Jürgen Habermas, widely regarded as one of the most important social thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century, passed away at the age of 96 on March 14, 2026.

Habermas was the last surviving member of the Frankfurt School, a group of largely Jewish, neo-Marxist intellectuals who fled Nazi Germany and found home in The New School in New York (NSNY). The New School hosted other Frankfurt School luminaries, including Max Horkheimer, the Director of the Institute of Social Research, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse. Unlike his much older Jewish peers, Habermas, a Protestant, did not settle in the United States and spent most of his academic career at the University of Frankfurt. His major opus, the Theory of Communicative Action, postulated that to sustain a democracy, the public discourse needed to be characterized by honesty, reason-driven, and openness to criticism. He occasionally delivered lectures at the New School and had contacts with the new generation of scholars there.

The German philosopher’s iconic status among critical theorists and the New Left lasted until the Hamas attack in Gaza on October 7, 2023. Five days later, he and three other German scholars published a Statement on the online publication Normative Orders of the University of Frankfurt.

The “Principles of Solidarity” expressed solidarity with Israel and Jews in Germany. The statement reads: “ The current situation created by Hamas’ unparalleled atrocity and Israel’s response to it has led to a cascade of moral and political statements and demonstrations. We believe that for all the conflicting views being expressed, there are some principles that should not be disputed. They form the basis of a rightly understood solidarity with Israel and Jews in Germany. The Hamas massacre with the declared intention of destroying Jewish life in general has prompted Israel to retaliate. How this principally justified counter-strike is carried out is the subject of controversial debate; principles of proportionality, the avoidance of civilian casualties and the waging of a war with the prospect of future peace must be the guiding principles. Despite all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population, however, the standards of judgment slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israeli action. In particular, Israel’s actions in no way justify anti-Semitic reactions, especially not in Germany. It is intolerable that Jews in Germany are once again exposed to threats to life and limb and have to fear physical violence on the streets. The democratic self-image of the Federal Republic of Germany, which is based on the obligation to respect human dignity, is linked to a political culture for which Jewish life and Israel’s right to exist are central elements worthy of special protection in light of the mass crimes of the Nazi era. The commitment to this is fundamental to our political coexistence. The elementary rights to freedom and physical integrity as well as to protection from racist defamation are indivisible and apply equally to all. This must also apply to those in our country who have cultivated anti-Semitic affects and convictions behind all kinds of pretexts and now see a welcome opportunity to express them uninhibitedly.”

This statement infuriated some in the New School. James Miller, a Professor of Politics and Liberal Studies there, and an executive editor of the New School’s journal Public Seminar, published an editorial on November 27, 2023. He stated that “Because the resulting open letter is a significant intervention in a fraught public debate, prominently involving members of the philosophy department at The New School, we have decided to bring it to the attention of our readers, and publish as well the full list of signatories. As executive editor of Public Seminar, I also think it crucial to facilitate an informed debate over the very complex questions surrounding how to interpret, and uphold, international laws that both prohibit war crimes and genocide—but also entitle nations to act in self-defense when they are attacked. Read the open letter to the Principles of Solidarity statement, signed by over 100 academics from around the world.”

The academic controversy surrounding Habermas’s statement quickly spread to various media outlets.

The London-based anti-Israel media, the New Arab (Al-Araby Al-Jadeed), founded and funded by Qatar (and run by Azmi Bishara, an ex-member of the Israeli Knesset, wanted in Israel for treason and espionage for Hezbollah), summarized the scholars’ critique: “The passing of Jürgen Habermas, the last titan of the Frankfurt School, marks the end of an era for modern philosophy. While his legacy of ‘Communicative Action’ and ‘Deliberative Democracy’ shaped the late 20th century, his final months were overshadowed by a profound ‘ethical lapse’ that sparked unprecedented division in the global academic community.”

For the New Arab, Habermas et al. were “expressing unconditional support for Israel as a ‘national interest’ of Germany, rooted in the historical responsibility for the Holocaust. This stance triggered a fierce backlash, culminating in a global academic petition signed by hundreds of prominent scholars. They accused him of ‘double standards’ and ‘moral blindness.’ The petitioners dismantled Habermas’s logic, questioning how the philosopher of ‘Universalism’ could ignore decades of occupation and the immense suffering in Gaza. The critique argued that Habermas applied a ‘selective morality,’ categorizing victims based on political leanings rather than universal human dignity. For many in the ‘Global South,’ this was seen as a collapse of Western philosophy into ‘Eurocentrism,’ where the ideals of freedom and dialogue seemingly stop at the borders of the Western world. What do you think of Habermas’s stance on the genocide in Gaza? Share your thoughts in the comments.”

No doubt that Qatar is the culprit here, as Doha has extensive ties to the New School. Qatar’s anti-Israel sentiments have persisted for decades, and Qatar is the largest donor to US campuses. Evidently, social sciences and some law schools in the West, primarily the United States and Great Britain, have adopted a key principle of antisemitism, namely that Jews should be judged by a different standard than others.

It should be seen within a wider picture that the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood and the Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran cultivated a campaign known as “civilizational jihad.” The end goal of this plan is to influence the academy and the civil society, most notably civil rights and humanitarian groups, including the United Nations, to perpetuate the view that Jews and their collective embodiment, Israel, is a bloodthirsty, genocidal society.

At the same time, the “civilizational jihad” makes every effort possible to hide the true nature of the Islamists, be it Hamas or Iran, where recently some thirty thousand civilians were massacred as a result of public protest. To make the point, most of the academy was conspicuously silent about these events.

Habermas advocated for a free, rational, and unfettered discourse, which hardly exists in many Muslim societies, especially in the brutal Islamist theocracy in Iran, where peaceful protest has been brutally suppressed. Those who buy into the “civilizational jihad” against the Jews or keep silent about the wave of antisemitism not seen in the West since the 1930s in Europe should be reminded that Jews have been the proverbial canary in the coalmine. The civilizational jihad’s ultimate goal is to spread many of the Islamist standards within the West to remedy it from perceived moral corruption.

The New School scholars need to be aware of two things: First, both Qatar and Iran have sponsored, trained, and facilitated Hamas’s terrorism infrastructure in Gaza for two decades, culminating in the October 2023 massacre. Second, the accusations against Israel of genocide do not fit the definition of genocide in International Law. Repetition of an accusation does not transform it into a legal fact.

REFERENCES:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17Z7Dfd7zb/

The New Arab

15 March at 12:30

The passing of Jürgen Habermas, the last titan of the Frankfurt School, marks the end of an era for modern philosophy. While his legacy of “Communicative Action” and “Deliberative Democracy” shaped the late 20th century, his final months were overshadowed by a profound “ethical lapse” that sparked unprecedented division in the global academic community.

In November 2023, Habermas co-authored a statement titled “Principles of Solidarity,” expressing unconditional support for Israel as a “national interest” of Germany, rooted in the historical responsibility for the Holocaust. This stance triggered a fierce backlash, culminating in a global academic petition signed by hundreds of prominent scholars. They accused him of “double standards” and “moral blindness.”

The petitioners dismantled Habermas’s logic, questioning how the philosopher of “Universalism” could ignore decades of occupation and the immense suffering in Gaza. The critique argued that Habermas applied a “selective morality,” categorising victims based on political leanings rather than universal human dignity. For many in the “Global South,” this was seen as a collapse of Western philosophy into “Eurocentrism,” where the ideals of freedom and dialogue seemingly stop at the borders of the Western world.

What do you think of Habermas’s stance on the genocide in Gaza? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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https://www.newarab.com/opinion/when-jurgen-habermas-failed-palestine-test

Jürgen Habermas: Humanist except for the suffering of Palestine

Habermas championed Western rationality but ignored Palestinian suffering, exposing limits of his universalist principles, argues Professor Emad Abdel-Latif

By Emad Abdul-Latif

21 Mar, 2026

One of the most prominent philosophers of recent decades, German thinker Jürgen Habermas (1929–2026), passed away recently. He made significant contributions to philosophy, sociology, communication studies, and political science. He was widely known for his role in developing the German critical school, also known as the Frankfurt School, for founding the Theory of Communicative Action and for advocating rational and free dialogue.

For decades, Habermas was seen as an icon of rationality and enlightenment in the contemporary world. But after his death, debates emerged among Arab intellectuals and academics, particularly regarding his political biases. Central to these discussions was Habermas’s continued support for the occupation of Palestine and his unconditional backing of the Zionist settler war against the Palestinian people, the indigenous population of the land.

His position on the past two years of Gaza’s devastation and siege drew criticism and scrutiny from many thinkers worldwide.

The fundamental question is why a philosopher who dedicated his life to defending democracy, rationality, and free communication would support a settler-colonial occupation founded on historical fabrications and religious myths. Indeed, Israel’s occupation directly contradicts the intellectual project Habermas championed.

It also clashes with other instances in which he adhered to his “principles,” such as his 2021 rejection of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award. After an article in the German magazine Der Spiegel highlighted repression, the denial of freedoms, and the lack of justice in the United Arab Emirates, he refused the award. This stance was seen as evidence of Habermas’s consistency in defending democracy and freedom.

In the case of the Israeli occupation, however, Habermas denied that the war on the people of Gaza constituted genocide, despite the unprecedented scale of the killings, accompanying massacres, war crimes, forced displacement, and starvation. Over 10% of Gaza’s population was killed or injured, and the death toll exceeded 72,000, mostly children, women, and the elderly, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (16 March 2026).

Some analysts explain this contradiction between Habermas’s stated principles and his political alignment with the settler-colonial occupation of Palestine as a product of the local context of the German elite. For decades, this elite has carried a profound sense of guilt stemming from the Nazi legacy and its crimes against Jews.

Part of contemporary Germany’s attempt to atone for Hitler’s crimes has been unconditional support for the Israeli state, which positioned itself as the official representative of Holocaust victims and their reparations.

Others attribute this stance to the influence of the German pro-Israel lobby over state institutions, to the point where some describe Germany as effectively under a combined U.S.-Israeli tutelage, limiting its autonomy.

This explanation is reinforced by the positions and rhetoric of current German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, which some see as echoing that of convicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as by the German government’s repressive policies against Germans opposing the Gaza killings. These policies, in many cases, rival the brutality of authoritarian regimes in what they call the “Third World”.

Beyond these explanations, another interpretation sheds light on the gap between Habermas’s principles and his actions regarding Palestine. This view considers the contradiction not as unique to Habermas or to German thinkers and politicians but as pervasive throughout Western thought historically, with few exceptions.

The reason for this inconsistency is what the author calls “exclusive humanist principles”, where a group adopts values and ethics for its own members but abandons them when dealing with people outside the group. In other words, Western ethics and principles remain universal in discourse only; in practice, they are applied selectively to those recognised as belonging to the in-group and ignored entirely for the “Others”.

The brutal history of colonialism offers stark evidence.

While the French professed fraternity, justice, and equality among citizens in France, they simultaneously annihilated entire populations in the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

Britain portrayed itself as a defender of human rights and minority freedoms while killing millions worldwide to seize wealth, without seeing a contradiction with human rights principles.

This model extends to the modern U.S. empire, which justifies resource plundering under the banner of spreading democracy and free-world values, sending armies to kill and destroy.

Western philosophers, thinkers, and reformers produced tens of thousands of texts on European humanist principles over centuries of colonialism, largely ignoring their application in occupied countries, and those few who noticed faced harsh local criticism.

The concept of exclusive humanist principles applies to all “non-Western” peoples, including non-European residents of Western countries. Even those with citizenship face forms of discrimination and racism contrary to Western humanist ideals.

Right-wing ideologies express this bias overtly, and the U.S. administration’s rhetoric against immigrants exemplifies these selective humanist principles, often justified by myths of European white supremacy and calls for globalising Western culture.

As such, Habermas did not betray his principles by supporting the killing of Palestinians. Rather, he remained faithful to the Western exclusive humanist principles, which only recognise humanity when reflected in the in-group.

Habermas did not advocate for global rationality and democracy or defend free communication worldwide. His defence of these values was limited to the Western sphere; outside it, Western principles do not exist.

Emad Abdul-Latif is Professor of Rhetoric and Discourse Analysis at Qatar University

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https://www.alquds.com/en/posts/101708

Habermas’s blind loyalty to Zionism.. How did Oct. 7th expose Western political and moral system?

Translation for “Al-Quds” dot com
Opinion Writer
By Alsahabi Al-Majri

The French philosopher and sociologist Raymond Aron says: Many left-wing intellectuals did the same thing as my experience: “They forget for a while imperialism and the colonial reality, remember their origins, and find themselves, to their astonishment, Jews.” This matter was revealed unequivocally in the statement issued by the most important philosophers today, Jurgen Habermas, the philosopher of critical theory and one of the most important philosophers of communicative theory and dialogue ethics, and one of the most influential philosophers currently on the philosophical debate about public space and post-secularism, and one of the symbols of post-modernism.

Today, Habermas reveals that talk about universal values, humanity, and coexistence are nothing but empty slogans when it comes to protecting Israel in the face of what Habermas considered in his statement the brutality of the unprecedented attack launched by Hamas, and that everything that is happening now in Gaza is borne by the resistance alone, and that the Israeli occupation does not bears the burden of the genocide in Gaza while expressing some concern for the fate of the Palestinian population.

Rather, he went further than that, as he considered the democratic spirit of the Federal Republic of Germany to be linked to a political culture that considers Jewish life and the right of the Israeli occupation to exist as two basic elements that deserve special protection, and that adherence to them is essential to our common political life, such that political life cannot be sustained without it, and this approach will continue. When former Chancellor Merkel said that Israel’s security is a “national interest”; she considered that the reason for Germany’s existence was Israel and not the other way around.

It is blind loyalty to Zionism that does not befit someone of Habermas’ stature. We do not find in the statement signed with a German elite of global stature any reference to the genocide in Gaza, but we find in it all possible justifications for this genocide, and all possible legislation in the name of self-defense to kill children, which is fundamentally inconsistent with philosophical thinking.

The guilt complex from the Nazi period is what moved the German political mind towards the Zionist movement, which called for the establishment of a state for the Jews on usurped land. Today, it is once again allied and colluding with a fascist occupation that commits massacres in Gaza to push the Palestinians there to emigrate outside it, and the more the people of the land cling to their land, the more the machine abuses them. The Israeli war, while defending its crimes against civilians in Gaza, are defended by politicians, philosophers, thinkers and intellectuals in the West, ignoring all the human values that they defended in their speeches.

We will discover in the end that this speech is directed only to Western people and that it does not look at the rest, especially the people of the Middle East. However, they are part of that human being. Just as they defended genocide in Fallujah, Iraq, they today defend genocide in Palestine, claiming that Israel’s goal is to achieve peace in the future, since it is a war, as Habermas says in his statement, accompanied by the possibility (not certain) of peace in the future. When was peace achieved under the fire of genocidal cannons?!

The absolute war practiced by the occupation cannot achieve peace, given that it is a brutal war whose goal is to completely crush the other in order to completely nullify his resistance. While realistic war aims to push the other to accept peace and ward off harm. The statement legislates for the first and contradicts the second, and thus it becomes a philosophical discourse that opposes philosophy itself, considering that it is a speech for peace and not for war, whether absolute or realistic. The goal of philosophy is to liberate man from the state of nature, where war of all against all prevails, to the civil state, where peace prevails, which can only be achieved by rejecting hatred. The absolute war practiced by the Israeli occupation is based on absolute hatred for the enemy, while realistic war whose goal is peace ends with hatred, and just as peace replaces war, love replaces hatred. The genocide practiced by the occupation cannot in any way achieve the desired peace, but rather makes exiting from the natural state impossible.

The attack on October 7th on the occupation settlement outposts in the occupied land of Palestine is considered a landmark event that will have major repercussions on the region as a whole and will change the face of future alliances in the world. This event, which represented a huge shock from a military and political perspective, revealed the truth about the positions of the Western powers, led by the United States and the old colonial countries, in absolute support of the Israeli occupation that has occupied Palestine for nearly a hundred years, and the background of this support, which is based on some religious foundations, no matter how some try to deny it. The absolute Western support can be understood from Bush Jr.’s slip of the tongue after the events of September 11 when he spoke of a crusade, and Western support is part of that war and is the motivation for all positions of Western countries. Today we see how the Zionist movement is allied with the extreme right, which dominates most Western governments and controls the Western media, which adopts the Israeli vision of what is happening in Palestine.

What happened in Palestine changed the face of the world and revealed everyone’s true positions, and confirmed that freedom cannot be guided, but rather taken away by force, and that the only option to liberate Palestine is armed resistance inside it and peaceful resistance outside it to liberate the Arab peoples from the internal colonialism crushed by the occupation.

Peaceful popular resistance is the only way for people to liberate themselves from that colonialism. It is not in the interest of the people to engage in armed resistance from which only those with interests can benefit. Perhaps what happened in Syria, Yemen and Libya is evidence of that. Only those loyal to tyranny and neo-colonialism benefited from the movement for liberation from tyranny. It is also not in the interest of the people to destroy the infrastructure of the state, which is in fact the property of the people and not the property of the ruler, no matter who that ruler is. Peaceful resistance, as the spring of 2011 proved, is capable of achieving what is required, but only that the people must not hand over their revolution except to those who deserve it, so that the forces of the counter-revolution do not infiltrate it and contribute to its destruction from within, as happened with the Egyptian revolution and after it the Tunisian revolution. It is a lesson that must be remembered in the upcoming wave of revolutions that are approaching.

The liberation of Palestine inevitably comes with the liberation of the Arab and Islamic peoples from the agents of neocolonialism and from the intellectual elites affiliated with them, who are trying in every way to direct public opinion towards burying the Palestinian issue, and seducing it with imaginary economic gains from normalization with the Israeli occupation, which violates the sanctity of Palestine, while the reality reveals those countries will only turn into a vast market for goods for Israel, as it will remain the sole beneficiary, while the normalizers’ sole goal is to possess more tools for monitoring and abusing their people and to obtain complete American satisfaction, even if their practice is completely inconsistent with all the values that the West defends.

When the interests of the peoples of the region conflict with the interests of Washington, it becomes the greatest supporter of the most repressive regimes in the world, and perhaps recent history bears witness to this in Africa, South America, and the Middle East. How many democratic governments and projects to build a democratic state were aborted with the full blessing of the United States and the Western powers, which falsely claim defending the values of freedom, dignity, and the right of peoples to self-determination, and defending the great lie about the right of peoples to rational and just democratic rule that achieves dignity for peoples and equality before the law, whereby people are transformed from subjects to citizens.

Since the overthrow of the Mosaddegh government in Iran until today, Western powers have been the largest supporter of repressive regimes and tyranny, because this serves their interests in plundering people’s wealth through their local agents. Perhaps the example of France in Niger is the greatest evidence of this, as it was plundering its natural wealth while fully supporting an oppressive rule that impoverished the people and filled the coffers of Paris.

Africa has begun to be liberated from neo-colonialism and liberated from Western hegemony, and the next turn is for the Arab and Islamic countries, whose time has come for their liberation. What happened in Palestine marked the beginning of the liberation of those peoples. The new generation that blessed and supported the resistance is not governed by the ideologies of the dominant regimes and elites. Rather, it does not believe in those elites at all and disbelieves in them and all their imaginary projects for a better future. Rather, they believe that they are an obstacle whose time has come to disappear and set so that a new sun can rise that will pave the way for liberation. Saladin would not have liberated Jerusalem if he had not liberated the surroundings of Palestine from all the rulers who had ties with the Crusaders.

Seven years ago today, Ari Shavit wrote an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in which he pointed out that Israel is breathing its last, despite all the propaganda machine and military arrogance. We add that the decline of Israel will be accompanied by the decline of the Orientalist elites and pro-colonial regimes. The time has come when these people die. Their last breath, they have no future, just as they have no present, because normalization does not come from the vision of the people, and the normalized elites use all tools of oppression and arrogance to prevent their people from expressing their position rejecting normalization, but for how long?

The lesson of Palestine revealed that there is no invincible enemy.

The resistance attack revealed the fragility of the occupation, despite all the arrogance with which it deals with the Palestinians and peoples in the region every day. Perhaps the massive support of the Western powers for the occupation is due to the fact that what happened sent them a warning of an existential threat to the occupation and its interests in the region. If only a thousand fighters caused all this, what if that force was in the tens of thousands, ending colonialism from its roots in one day?

The Western support we see today may postpone the inevitable, but it will happen in the end. No matter how much Western countries try to protect the occupation, in the end it will breathe its last, with all the tyrannical regimes in the region. There is no future except for the forces of freedom and dignity.

Source:Arabic Post

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https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AkoDGqthj/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Luis Fleischman

15 March at 15:38

The publication The New Arab condemned the great thinker Jurgen Habermas , who passed away on Saturday for his “unconditional support “ of Israel . The New Arab is seeking signatures to condemn Habermas . This shows the barbaric and uncivilized nature of the Palestinian and Arab propaganda . It is to this propaganda that a large sector of our academia subscribes, including professors at the New School for Social Research , where Habermas has had tremendous influence . The New School is also my alma matter . I am not proud of the current Academic status of the New School . In fact, I am not proud of Western academia in general . Habermas was an outstanding exception . May his memory be blessed !

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https://normativeorders.net/en/news/principles-of-solidarity-a-statement

13.11.2023

Principles of solidarity. A statement

The current situation created by Hamas’ unparalleled atrocity and Israel’s response to it has led to a cascade of moral and political statements and demonstrations. We believe that for all the conflicting views being expressed, there are some principles that should not be disputed. They form the basis of a rightly understood solidarity with Israel and Jews in Germany.

The Hamas massacre with the declared intention of destroying Jewish life in general has prompted Israel to retaliate. How this principally justified counter-strike is carried out is the subject of controversial debate; principles of proportionality, the avoidance of civilian casualties and the waging of a war with the prospect of future peace must be the guiding principles. Despite all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population, however, the standards of judgment slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israeli action.

In particular, Israel’s actions in no way justify anti-Semitic reactions, especially not in Germany. It is intolerable that Jews in Germany are once again exposed to threats to life and limb and have to fear physical violence on the streets. The democratic self-image of the Federal Republic of Germany, which is based on the obligation to respect human dignity, is linked to a political culture for which Jewish life and Israel’s right to exist are central elements worthy of special protection in light of the mass crimes of the Nazi era. The commitment to this is fundamental to our political coexistence. The elementary rights to freedom and physical integrity as well as to protection from racist defamation are indivisible and apply equally to all. This must also apply to those in our country who have cultivated anti-Semitic affects and convictions behind all kinds of pretexts and now see a welcome opportunity to express them uninhibitedly.

Nicole Deitelhoff, Rainer Forst, Klaus Günther and Jürgen Habermas

Principles of solidarity. A statement

The current situation created by Hamas’ extreme atrocity and Israel’s response to it has led to a cascade of moral and political statements and protests. We believe that amidst all the conflicting views being expressed, there are some principles that should not be disputed. They are the basis of a rightly understood solidarity with Israel and Jews in Germany.

The Hamas massacre with the declared intention of eliminating Jewish life in general has prompted Israel to strike back. How this retaliation, which is justified in principle, is carried out is the subject of controversial debate; principles of proportionality, the prevention of civilian casualties and the waging of a war with the prospect of future peace must be the guiding principles. Despite all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population, however, the standards of judgement slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions.

In particular, Israel’s actions in no way justify anti-Semitic reactions, especially not in Germany. It is intolerable that Jews in Germany are once again exposed to threats to life and limb and have to fear physical violence on the streets. The democratic ethos of the Federal Republic of Germany, which is oriented towards the obligation to respect human dignity, is linked to a political culture for which Jewish life and Israel’s right to exist are central elements worthy of special protection in light of the mass crimes of the Nazi era. The commitment to this is fundamental to our political life. The elementary rights to freedom and physical integrity as well as to protection from racist defamation are indivisible and apply equally to all. All those in our country who have cultivated anti-Semitic sentiments and convictions behind all kinds of pretexts and now see a welcome opportunity to express them uninhibitedly must also abide by this.

Nicole Deitelhoff, Rainer Forst, Klaus Günther and Jürgen Habermas

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We Need to Facilitate Informed Debate about Israel-Palestine

We Need to Facilitate Informed Debate about Israel-Palestine

A preface to the open letter in response to “Principles of Solidarity”

November 27, 2023 James Miller

Image Credit: Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, October 1914/UAF Abt. 850 Nr. 40

On November 13, the online publication of the Normative Orders research center at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main posted a statement outlining “Principles of solidarity” with Israel and Jews in Germany. This statement—and particularly a key paragraph—caught the attention of a great many philosophers and friends of critical theory around the world, coming as it did from the Frankfurt School, the home of critical theory, and signed as it was by Jürgen Habermas, long regarded as Europe’s leading public intellectual, as well as by Nicole Deitelhoff, Rainer Forst, and Klaus Günther, all currently affiliated with the Frankfurt School:

The Hamas massacre with the declared intention of eliminating Jewish life in general has prompted Israel to strike back. How this retaliation, which is justified in principle, is carried out is the subject of controversial debate; principles of proportionality, the prevention of civilian casualties and the waging of a war with the prospect of future peace must be the guiding principles. Despite all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population, however, the standards of judgement slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions. [Emphasis added.]

A number of philosophers were also concerned about an absence: while key principles of international law are alluded to in this paragraph, the authority of international law—so often contested—is not explicitly affirmed.

Because the resulting open letter is a significant intervention in a fraught public debate, prominently involving members of the philosophy department at The New School, we have decided to bring it to the attention of our readers, and publish as well the full list of signatories.

As executive editor of Public Seminar, I also think it crucial to facilitate an informed debate over the very complex questions surrounding how to interpret, and uphold, international laws that both prohibit war crimes and genocide—but also entitle nations to act in self-defense when they are attacked.

November 22, 2023

Read the open letter to the Principles of Solidarity statement, signed by over 100 academics from around the world.

James Miller is Professor of Politics and Liberal Studies and Faculty Director of the MA in Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism at The New School for Social Research.

James Miller

Professor of Politics and Liberal Studies and Faculty Director of the MA in Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism, New School for Social Research

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A Response to “Principles of Solidarity. A Statement”

A Response to “Principles of Solidarity. A Statement”

Human dignity for all

November 22, 2023 Public Seminar

We the undersigned are deeply concerned by the statement “Principles of solidarity” published on the website of the Normative Orders research center at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt on 13th November 2023, signed by Nicole Deitelhoff, Rainer Forst, Klaus Günther and Jürgen Habermas.

We join the authors in condemning the killing and taking hostage of Israeli civilians by Hamas on 7th October 2023 and we fully agree with the vital need to protect Jewish life in Germany in the face of rising antisemitism. We also agree with the statement’s grounding of these positions in the respect for human dignity for all people as a central part of the “democratic ethos of the Federal Republic of Germany”.

However, we are deeply troubled by the apparent limits of the solidarity expressed by the authors. The statement’s concern for human dignity is not adequately extended to Palestinian civilians in Gaza who are facing death and destruction. Nor is it applied or extended to Muslims in Germany experiencing rising Islamophobia. Solidarity means that the principle of human dignity must apply to all people. This requires us to recognize and address the suffering of all those affected by an armed conflict.

The statement claims that, “the standards of judgement slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions”. There is ongoing discussion among genocide scholars and legal experts whether the legal standard for genocide has been met. Human rights groups have filed lawsuits alleging genocide at the International Criminal Court and a federal court in the US. Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies at Brown University, has recently reminded us: “We know from history that it is crucial to warn of the potential for genocide before it occurs, rather than belatedly condemn it after it has taken place. I think we still have that time.” Showing solidarity and respecting human dignity means that we must heed this warning and not close down the space for debate and reflection about the possibility of genocide. Not all signatories believe that the legal standards for genocide have been met, nevertheless, all agree this is a matter of legitimate debate.

The statement mentions three “guiding principles” for military action: “principles of proportionality, the prevention of civilian casualties and the waging of a war with the prospect for future peace”. We are concerned that there is no mention of upholding international law, which also prohibits war crimes and crimes against humanity such as collective punishment, persecution, and the destruction of civilian infrastructure including schools, hospitals and places of worship. Being guided by principles of international legal standards, solidarity and human dignity compels us to hold all participants in the conflict to this higher standard.

We cannot allow the atrocities to force us to abandon these principles.

Adam Tooze (Professor of History, Columbia University)
Samuel Moyn (Professor, Yale University)
Amia Srinivasan (Professor of Social and Political Theory, University of Oxford)
Nancy Fraser (Professor of Political and Social Science, New School for Social Research)
Jay Bernstein (Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research)
Alice Crary (Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Reserach)
Juliane Rebentisch (Universität Offenbach/University of Princeton)
Chandra Talpade Mohanti (Distinguished Professor, Syracuse University)
Diedrich Diederichsen (Professor for Theory of Contemporary Art, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna)
Beate Roessler (Professor of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam)
Quinn Slobodian (Professor of History, Wellesley College)
Michael Hardt (Professor, Duke)
Franco Bifo Berardi (Philosopher, Napoli)
Frederick Neuhouser (Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University)
Linda Zerilli (Charles E. Merriam Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science University of Chicago)
Paul Preciado (Philosopher, Paris)
Nikhil Pal Singh (Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and History, Chair of the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University)
Dr Scilla Elworthy (Founder, The Business Plan for Peace)
Rosalind Morris (Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University)
Albena Azmanova (Professor, University of Kent)
W. J. T. Mitchell (Professor, University of Chicago)
Daniel Loick (Associate Professor of Political and Social Philosophy, Universität Amsterdam)
Steven Klein (Senior Lecturer in Political Theory, King’s College London)
Robin Celikates (Professor of Philosophy, Freie Universität Berlin
Esra Özyürek (Professor, University of Cambridge)
Jeanne Morefield (Associate Professor of Political Theory, University of Oxford)
Katrin Flikschuh (Professor, London School of Economics and Political Science)
Melissa Williams (Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto)
Alison M Jaggar (Emerita Professor of Distinction, University of Colorado Boulder)
Fumi Okiji (Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley)
Eli Zaretzky (Professor of History, New School for Social Research)
Zeynep Gambetti (Associate Professor, Istanbul)
Bruno Leipold (Fellow, The New Institute)
Anselm Franke (Professor, University of the Arts Zurich)
Tobias Müller (Fellow, The New Institute)
Akwugo Emejulu (Professor, University of Warwick)
Eva von Redecker (Berlin)
Maeve McKeown (Assistant Professor of Political Theory, University of Groningen)
Manuela Bojadžijev (Professor, Humboldt-University)
Dirk Moses (Spitzer Professor of International Relations, City College of New York)
William Clare Roberts (Associate Professor of Political Science , McGill University)
Erin R. Pineda (Phyllis C. Rappaport ’68 New Century Term Assistant Professor of Government, Smith College)
Alasia Nuti (Senior Lecturer in Political Theory, University of York)
Henrike Kohpeiß (Postdoc, Free University, Berlin)
Matthias Lievens (Assistant Professor, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven)
John Smith (Professor Emeritus of Fine Art, University of East London)
Oreet Ashery (Artist)
Mason Leaver-Yap (Postgraduate Studies, Glasgow School of Art)
Eyal Weizman (Professor)
Angela Dimitrakaki (Art historian and novelist)
Yaiza Hernández Velázquez (Lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of London)
Marina Vishmidt (Professor of Art Theory, University of Applied Arts, Vienna)
Cecile Malaspina (Directrice de programme, College international de philosophie, France)
Gabriëlle Schleijpen (Artistic director | head of program DAI Roaming Academy)
Larne Abse Gogarty (Head of History and Theory of Art, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL)
Peter Osborne (Professor of Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University London)
Mirjam Müller (Jun.- Professor of Feminist Philosophy, Humboldt University of Berlin
Charles Esche (Professor, University of the Arts, London)
Marion Detjen (Bard College Berlin)
Sultan Doughan (Lecturer, Goldsmiths)
Claire Bishop (Professor, CUNY Graduate Center)
David Lloyd (Distinguished Professor of English , University of California, Riverside)
Alice von Bieberstein (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin)
Paul Apostolidis (Professor, LSE)
Aurelia Kalisky (Berlin)
Maurizio Lazzarato (Philosopher, Paris)
Alberto Toscano (Professor of Critical Theory, Goldsmiths, University of London / Simon Fraser University)
Ana Teixeira Pinto (Professor HBK/Dutch Art Institute)
William Callison (Postdoc, Uppsala University)
Nadim Khoury (Associate Professor, Inland Norway University of Applied Science)
Natasha Lennard (Associate Director Critical Journalism, The New School, New York)
Volkan Çidam (Assist. Prof, Boğaziçi University, İstanbul)
Jacob Blumenfeld (Fellow, Centre for Social Critique, HU Berlin)
Anya Topolski (Associate Professor in Political Philosophy, Radboud University)
Antke Engel (Institute for Queer Theory, Berlin)
Thomas Locher (Artist)
Denise Ferreira da Silva (Professor, University of British Columbia)
Paula Chakravarttu (James Weldon Johnson Associate Professor of Media Studies, New York University)
Alexi Kukuljevic (Assistant Professor, University of Applied Arts Vienna)
Giovanna Zapperi (Professor, University of Geneva)
Frieder Vogelmann (Professor for Epistemology and Theory of Science, University of Freiburg)
James Cochrane (Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town)
Enzo Rossi (Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam)
Siddharth Soni (Research Fellow, University of Cambridge)
Franz Knappik (Professor of Philosophy, University of Bergen)
Daniel James (Postdoc, Technische Universität Dresden)
Eyja Brynjarsdottir (Professor of Philosophy, University of Iceland)
Hanna Meißner (Professor, Technische Universität Berlin)
Su Ming Khoo (Associate Professor, University of Galway)
Timothy Waligore (Associate Professor Political Science, Pace University)
David Welch (Professor of Political Science, University of Waterloo)
Giovanni Mascaretti (Postdoc, University of Bergamo)
Peter J. Verovšek (Assistant Professor, History and Theory of European Integration, University of Groningen)
Amy Reed-Sandoval (Associate Professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas)
John Pringle (Independent Researcher)
Assel Tutumlu (Associate Professor in Political Science, Near East University)
Tirdad Zolghadr (Guest professor, University of the Arts Berlin)
Mathelinda Nabugodi (Lecturer, University College London)
Doriane Zerka (Assistant Professor, University of Cambridge)
Sina Kramer (Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Loyola Marymount University)
Chady Seubert (Actress)
Diana Abbani (Researcher, Forum Transregionale Studien)
Eddie Bruce-Jones (Professor of Law, SOAS, University of London)
Vanessa E. Thompson (Assistant Professor, Queen’s University, Canada)
Thandeka Cochrane (Research Associate, King’s College London)
Christine Schwöbel-Patel (Professor, Warwick Law School, University of Warwick)
Lily Crawford (Graduate student, University of Oslo)
Gerard Delanty (Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Sussex, UK)
Joel Whitebook (The Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research,
Columbia University)

Read a preface to this open letter by James E. Miller, executive editor at Public Seminar

Israeli Apartheid Week at Our Doorstep

18.03.26

Editorial Note

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement scheduled this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) for March 21 to 28, 2026, continuing a global campaign active for over two decades.

As stated by the BDS movement, the IAW “is a tool for mobilizing grassroots support on the global level for the Palestinian liberation struggle against Israel’s decades-long regime of settler colonialism and apartheid.” And that IAW “is a grassroots solidarity mechanism to raise awareness about Israeli apartheid and to mobilize support for strategic BDS campaigns to end international complicity in this system of oppression as a meaningful contribution to dismantling it.”

The BDS movement is planning an IAW intersectional grassroots campaign “to dismantle Israel’s regime of settler colonialism and apartheid.” The group intends “to escalate boycott and divestment campaigns and push harder for lawful sanctions against apartheid Israel, primarily a comprehensive military embargo and expulsion from the UNGA and international forums.”

In the United Kingdom, during the upcoming IAW, a Palestinian organization named Makan, dedicated to “Situating Palestine within the context of other human rights, social justice and global liberation movements,” is hosting an online workshop titled “Framing Israeli Apartheid: Uses and Limitations for Palestine Advocacy.” It is scheduled for Tuesday, March 24, 2026, offering a “comprehensive understanding of apartheid, illustrating how Israel’s policies meet the legal definition of apartheid under international law. This workshop also aims to help activists develop a critical understanding of some of the limitations of the apartheid framework, and how to utilize it strategically alongside frameworks of settler colonialism and occupation in advocacy. ‘Framing Israeli Apartheid’ prioritizes lecturing, with opportunities for light interactivity and questions to the facilitators interspersed… This workshop is suitable for people who would like to build their core, foundational knowledge about Palestinian history and the Palestinian struggle, and to learn how to utilize this foundational knowledge to communicate effectively about Palestine to others.” Makan invites “student activists, trade unionists, social justice campaigners and journalists based in Britain & Ireland,” and supports advocates who are “passionately committed to cultivating a future for Palestinians built on freedom, justice, and dignity.”

So far, several events have already taken place. For example, at Canada’s Carleton University, the group Carleton SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) invited students to join a teach-in with Dr. Nahla Abdo on the “so-called ‘ceasefire,’ and its impact on the momentum of the movement. While media coverage has slowed, the violence and displacement have not. This teach-in will break down what’s really happening beyond the news cycle, and reflect on how global momentum for justice has shifted.” The event took place on Wednesday, March 4, 2026, in Richcraft RM 1200 at Carleton University.

Carleton SJP will soon host a book club: “Books Against Apartheid!” on Tuesday, March 24, 2026, inviting students to “Join us in taking a deep dive into the Palestinian struggle so that we can be better equipped in the actions we take for Palestinian liberation.” They will be reading chapters 1-3 of the book, Zionist Colonialism in Palestine by Fayez A. Sayegh, published by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965. The book presents Zionism within the framework of Western imperial expansion.

As noted by the BDS movement, the IAW began operating in Canada in February 2005, by the Arab Students’ Collective at the University of Toronto. One month earlier, on January 21, 2005, Jewish media reported that the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (CCD), a group advocating support for Israel, India, and minority rights within the Muslim world, protested plans by a coalition of Arab groups to hold Israeli Apartheid Week on the University of Toronto campus for a week starting on January 31, 2004. The CCD urged university donors and others to file complaints with the school’s governing council, albeit without success.

Interestingly, the first IAW was organized by the Institute for Women’s Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto, which hosted speakers from the Arab Students Collective, the International Solidarity Movement, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights, etc.

It is no coincidence that the IAW was initiated in Canada in February 2005. On February 1, 2005, an article titled “Abu Ammar: The Palestinian National Movement Personified,” written by Rafeef Ziadah and Ahmed Nimer, was published in the activist journal Leftturn: Notes from the Global Intifada. As stated in the article, the co-author Ziadah, together with Adam Hanieh and Hazem Jamjoum were active in a variety of groups in Toronto, Canada, including Al Awda (Toronto), Sumoud Political Prisoners Group, the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, and the Arab Students Collective (University of Toronto) – the group behind the IAW.

The article provides the background information on the days when the IAW was formed. It discussed the death, three months earlier, of Yasser Arafat, also known as Abu Ammar, on November 11, 2004. The article provides background and perspective on the Palestinian war against Israel. It states, “The PLO under his leadership became the symbol of Palestinian defiance and established that Palestinians were one people with a unified struggle. Arafat would often refer to the 1968 Battle of Karameh as an example of the Palestinian will to fight against superior odds. Though suffering enormous casualties, Palestinian fedayeen (fighters) managed to repel an Israeli invasion of their base in Jordan. Palestinians emerged from the battle as no longer solely victims of Israeli aggression, but as fighters engaged in resistance. Politically it galvanized the population, establishing the centrality of armed struggle in the Palestinian movement. Prior to Arafat’s leadership, the PLO was a moribund organization of self-serving Arab elites who preferred words to action. The Battle of Karameh and other fedayeen actions turned a displaced and dispersed nation of refugees into resistance fighters. Arafat’s contribution was to take Palestinian liberation out of the hands of Arab regimes and put Palestinians in charge of their own struggle.”

As the authors stressed, “During the years of guerrilla warfare the PLO had a strong and diverse leadership, which Israel (and the Arab regimes) worked consistently to destroy. The names of those assassinated in this period are still commemorated by Palestinians today: Ghassan Kanafani, Abu Jihad, Abu Iyad, Dalal Al Mughrabi amongst many others. Moreover, tens of thousands of martyrs gave their lives to the struggle during this time.”

The article states, “The actions of Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon and elsewhere during the 1970s and 80s resisted this Zionist strategy.”

According to the authors, “The central demand of the Palestinian national struggle – the demand that unifies the struggle and goes to the heart of Zionist colonization of Palestine – has always been the right of return of Palestinian refugees who were forced from their homes and lands in 1948 and onwards. While some of those currently manoeuvring for power in the Palestinian Authority – in particular Abu Mazen – have indicated that they may be willing to concede or negotiate the right of return, others have made it clear that this right will never be relinquished.”

They ended by stating, “Abu Ammar was not simply a leader of the Palestinian revolution he was also very much a product of that same revolutionary struggle. In many ways he was the last of the leaders born of the Arab nationalist upsurge of the 1960s. We should be proud that he died a captive enemy of the Israeli state. The greatest testimony that we can give to his memory is to continue the struggle to which he dedicated his life.”

The Israeli Apartheid Weeks are symbolic of the modus operandi of the Palestinian activists and their supporters. What we see is a repetitive listing of Israeli “sins” that is resurrected year after year, detached from the actual developments on the ground. That this discourse is the preferred tactic is not surprising. It absolves the activists for contextualizing their narrative, pointing out the numerous and continuous policy failures of their leaders and the dependence of the Islamists, among them – Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – on the Iranians. Unless Palestinian activists and their supporters adopt a reality-based approach, they will continue to recycle the same fallacies without regard to changing conditions on the ground. Instead of focusing on Palestinian developments, they seek Israel’s destruction.

Israel Academia Monitor will continue to follow and report on these developments.

REFERENCES:

https://bdsmovement.net/iaw

OVERVIEW

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is a tool for mobilizing grassroots support on the global level for the Palestinian liberation struggle against Israel’s decades-long regime of settler colonialism and apartheid. It is a grassroots solidarity mechanism to raise awareness about Israeli apartheid and to mobilize support for strategic BDS campaigns to end international complicity in this system of oppression as a meaningful contribution to dismantling it.

INTRO

With effective, intersectional grassroots campaigning, we can build people power to dismantle Israel’s regime of settler colonialism and apartheid. This year, pick your IAW starting March 21st to escalate boycott and divestment campaigns and push harder for lawful sanctions against apartheid Israel, primarily a comprehensive military embargo and expulsion from the UNGA and international forums.

This IAW, let’s not just educate about Israeli apartheid! Let’s take meaningful steps towards supporting the ongoing Palestinian struggle to dismantle it. This March is a march for justice, freedom, and equality, a march for ending genocide and apartheid.

Fill out this form to register your IAW event with the International Coordinating Committee of IAW. Stay tuned for IAW program updates.

All Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) activities must adhere to the BDS movement’s anti-racist principles and respect its affiliation guidelines.

ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK (IAW) 2026: IAW BACK ON CAMPUSES WORLDWIDE

March 21 – 28 and beyond | Palestine Frees Us All

This year, Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is returning to its roots on campuses around the world, 21 years after the first IAW event at the University of Toronto, Canada. IAW’s original goals were to expose Israel’s apartheid, connect the Palestinian liberation struggle with other struggles against oppression, and build support for the Palestinian-led BDS movement. These goals are now more important than ever in the face of Israel’s genocide, illegal occupation, settler colonialism, and apartheid against the Palestinian people.

The US imperialist aggression in Venezuela and across the Global South, even its threat to “capture” territory controlled by its NATO allies, shows that the ongoing US-Israeli livestreamed genocide in Gaza is only the first “experiment” to introduce a new might-makes-right era globally. Building a global, intersectional wave of resistance to all forms of oppression, racism, colonialism, and apartheid has therefore become an existential need, not just a moral duty.

For this IAW, we are counting on the campus movement, which has played a vital role in our struggle, as the global campus mobilizations calling for boycotting and divesting from Israel have shown. In the face of unprecedented repression on many campuses, particularly in the West, we support calls by students, academics and staff to take back the campus and stand on the right side of history. Anti-war campus actions were instrumental in the struggles against the US genocidal wars in Vietnam and Iraq, as well as against the apartheid regime in South Africa, among others.

For 21 years, IAW has grown to be crucial for building grassroots BDS campaigning thanks to efforts on campuses and beyond. Intersectional mobilizations with students, racial, Indigenous, climate, socio-economic, and gender justice movements, faith communities, trade unions, and others around the world have enriched and empowered our movement. We salute the commitment of all people of conscience globally, especially in the deeply complicit colonial West, to standing in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle to end the US-Israeli genocide and dismantle Israel’s underlying, 77-year-old regime of settler-colonial apartheid. We encourage you all to organize IAW activities to amplify the call for Palestinian liberation in your communities.

IAW will launch on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21st, 2026 and will include Palestinian Land Day on March 30th going into April in different parts of the world. This year’s theme is “Palestine Frees Us All.”

ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK (IAW) ORGANIZING GUIDE

Organizing guide, resources, and impact.

A. Background

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) began in Toronto, Canada, in February 2005. Organized by the Arab Students’ Collective at the University of Toronto, it was a great success, with capacity-filled events that attracted media attention around the world. IAW spread to other Canadian cities in 2006, and by 2013, it had grown to more than 200 cities worldwide.

Initially just taking place on university campuses, IAW events are now organized globally by racial, Indigenous, social, economic, and gender justice movements, faith communities, trade unions, and solidarity networks, among others. IAW is a key part of the international BDS movement for Palestinian rights.

Israeli Apartheid Week has two main goals:

Raising awareness about Israel’s ongoing regime of occupation, settler colonialism, and apartheid over the Palestinian people. Israel’s regime meets the definition of apartheid under international law, as now recognized by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and UN experts, not to mention Palestinian human rights organizations, among others. The BDS movement has always recognized apartheid as an integral manifestation and tool of Israeli settler colonialism, highlighting the role of Zionism at the core of this regime. IAW uses this framework to make historical and concrete connections with other struggles against racism, discrimination, colonialism, and oppression. There are more resources about this framework in Section F.
Building support for the Palestinian-led BDS movement. 19 years since its launch, the BDS movement is now widely recognized by Palestinians, the solidarity movement, and even by Israel and its anti-Palestinian lobby as a key form of pressure to hold Israel to account and end international state, corporate, and institutional complicity with its regime of apartheid and settler-colonialism.

B. How to Participate

To be listed on the global calendar, all IAW activities must conform to the BDS movement’s anti-racist principles and respect its affiliation guidelines. To register your events for IAW 2026, please fill out this form!

NOTE: Registering through the form does not automatically list your event/activity on the website; it will be vetted according to the BDS guidelines above.

Listing your events at bdsmovement.net/iaw
One of our essential shared resources is the IAW webpage, where events worldwide are listed. Once you have registered, your event will be vetted by the IAW International Coordinating Committee (IAW ICC) and then uploaded to the global calendar forthcoming on the website. This means people in your local community will be able to find your event easily.
Share your events and actions online! #IsraeliApartheidWeek
Please share your organizing with the wider movement worldwide. Take photos and videos, write short reports, and share them all using the hashtags #IsraeliApartheidWeek, #DismantleApartheid, #GazaGenocide and #UnitedAgainstRacism. We’ll be sharing on social media on the accounts:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IsraeliApartheidWeek.IAW
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/apartheidweek
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/israeli_apartheid_week

C. IAW Call 2026

D. Organizing Ideas and Inspiration

Amid Israel’s unfolding genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, let’s not just educate about apartheid, let’s also take meaningful steps toward supporting the ongoing Palestinian struggle to end Israel’s #GazaGenocide and dismantle its regime of settler colonial apartheid.

This year’s IAW will be the most important since IAW was launched 19 years ago.

Let’s peacefully and responsibly disrupt* the system of military relations, funding, propaganda, diplomatic shielding, repression, and whitewashing that enables Israel to continue exterminating Palestinians and wiping our cities, villages, and refugee camps off the map.

– People with precarious residency status should be encouraged not to participate.

Below are some concrete examples of targets that your group could organize its peaceful disruption (sit-ins, occupations, etc.) against:

Highways, airports, train stations, iconic sites, etc.
Factories, outlets, or branches of companies complicit with Israeli apartheid, especially those arming its genocide or otherwise complicit in its regime of apartheid.
Parliaments, government buildings, universities, and other complicit institutions.
Ports where ships involved in arming and enabling Israeli apartheid and genocide dock.
Media corporations that amplify anti-Palestinian racism and dehumanizing propaganda.

Some points to consider when planning your peaceful disruptive actions:

Choose the most complicit targets against which such action may be effective in your context.
Set points of unity and clear, strategic objectives that your action can help achieve.
Carry out a risk assessment prior to your action and ensure activists are well prepared for every likely scenario. Consulting movement lawyers beforehand is always advised!
Create a safe space for people joining your actions. Share the information with trusted people only.
Make sure your demands and messages are clearly formulated and designed to reach the widest audience possible: a creative communication strategy that includes both social media and traditional media is a must.
Stay principled and strategic: know when to stop the action and be clear about the lines you don’t want to cross collectively.
Build connections with other justice movements, especially trade unions.

Let’s build campaign milestones and mobilize for new BDS campaigns.

The BDS movement uses the historically successful method of targeted boycotts inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the US Civil Rights movement, and the Indian anti-colonial struggle, among others worldwide.

We must strategically focus on a relatively smaller number of carefully selected companies and products for maximum impact.

Below are concrete goals your group can organize for:

Start a new BDS campaign. Please consult the list of the BDS-targeted companies profiting from the genocide of the Palestinian people and Israeli apartheid, or select new targets that make sense in your context and meet the BDS movement’s selection criteria for new campaigns.
Raise awareness around you about Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid and work with your community/center/workplace/trade union/organization to declare themselves an Apartheid Free Zone (AFZ) or an Apartheid Free Community (US) during this month of March. A toolkit and a checklist are available.
If not done yet, convince your city council/trade union/cultural or academic institution to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and lifting the siege and cut existing complicit ties with apartheid Israel during this month of March!

The Origins of Israeli Apartheid Week

Where did it all start? Let’s take a look back and take inspiration from IAW’s origin story.

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https://www.makan.org.uk/event/framing-israeli-apartheid-uses-and-limitations-for-palestine-advocacy-online/

Framing Israeli Apartheid: Uses and Limitations for Palestine Advocacy (Online)

March 24 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

‘Framing Israeli Apartheid: Uses and Limitations for Palestine Advocacy’

This online workshop for Israeli Apartheid Week offers a comprehensive understanding of apartheid, illustrating how Israel’s policies meet the legal definition of apartheid under international law. This workshop also aims to help activists develop a critical understanding of some of the limitations of the apartheid framework, and how to utilise it strategically alongside frameworks of settler colonialism and occupation in advocacy.

‘Framing Israeli Apartheid’ prioritises lecturing, with opportunities for light interactivity and questions to the facilitators interspersed.

Who Is This Workshop For?

This workshop is suitable for people who would like to build their core, foundational knowledge about Palestinian history and the Palestinian struggle, and to learn how to utilise this foundational knowledge to communicate effectively about Palestine to others.

As an organisation our primary focus is to work with student activists, trade unionists, social justice campaigners and journalists based in Britain & Ireland. We do also encourage applications from other individuals who are:

Active and engaged with Palestine outside Britain & Ireland
Involved with other social justice struggles/human rights struggles looking to start/get more involved in Palestine
Diaspora Palestinians and Palestinians based abroad or planning to study/work abroad

Apply here to secure your spot

Details

Date: March 24
Time: 6:30 pm-8:30 pm
Website: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScVq71fcj78Y2Mojqw4_V6sZqTJyCvJPKpOx0hbblnHxBWAZQ/viewform

Makan – Online Workshop Application – ‘Framing Israeli Apartheid: Uses and Limitations for Palestine Advocacy’ for Israeli Apartheid Week – Tuesday 24 March 2026, 6.30pm to 8.30pm GMT

APPLICATION DEADLINE:

‘Framing Israeli Apartheid: Uses and Limitations for Palestine Advocacy’ (Tuesday 24 March, 6.30 to 8.30pm GMT) – Deadline: Wednesday 18 March, 6pm (GMT)

About the workshop:

‘Framing Israeli Apartheid: Uses and Limitations for Palestine Advocacy’

This workshop for Israeli Apartheid Week offers a comprehensive understanding of apartheid, illustrating how Israel’s policies meet the legal definition of apartheid under international law. This workshop also aims to help activists develop a critical understanding of some of the limitations of the apartheid framework, and how to utilise it strategically alongside frameworks of settler colonialism and occupation in advocacy.

‘Framing Israeli Apartheid’ prioritises lecturing, with opportunities for light interactivity and questions to the facilitators interspersed.

Who Is This Workshop For?

Active and engaged with Palestine outside Britain & Ireland
Involved with other social justice struggles/human rights struggles looking to start/get more involved in Palestine
Diaspora Palestinians and Palestinians based abroad or planning to study/work abroad

About Makan:
Makan is an independent, non-partisan organisation dedicated to intersectional learning. Our approach is grounded in a belief that education is a liberatory act that can lay the ground for structural change. Situating Palestine within the context of other human rights, social justice and global liberation movements, we work towards transformation by adopting educational approaches that capture the history of the Palestinian struggle and the realities on the ground. We aim to support advocates as part of a community that is not only well-informed, interconnected, and empowered, but passionately committed to cultivating a future for Palestinians built on freedom, justice, and dignity.

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Carleton SJP

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Starting Tuesday, March 24th at 6pm, SJP will be hosting its first ever book club: Books Against Apartheid!

Join us in taking a deep dive into the Palestinian struggle so that we can be better equipped in the actions we take for Palestinian liberation.

Download book using the link in bio!

March 24, 2026

6:00PM

RB 3228

Chapters 1-3 of Zionist Colonialism in Palestine by Fayez A. Sayegh, download link in bio

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Carleton SJP

Join us on day of IAW for Pali Expo!! a space to explore Palestinian culture, community initiatives, and ongoing advocacy. Come connect, learn, and engage with meaningful conversations and resources.

Friday, March 6th

12-4pm

Nideyinan Galleria

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Carleton SJP

Join us on day of IAW for a teach-in with Ashton Starr on Linux, which is a free, open-source operating system. Learn about the reasons behind boycotting Microsoft and how easy it is to switch to the more ethical Linux.

Ashton is the Operations Manager at @the.leveller.ottawa and is currently in the bookkeeping and accounting program at Algonquin College.

Thursday, March 5th

6:30 PM

Patterson Hall 115

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Carleton SJP

Join us on day of IAW for a teach-in with Dr. Nahla on the so-called “ceasefire”, and its impact on the momentum of the movement. While media coverage has slowed, the violence and displacement have not.

This teach-in will break down what’s really happening beyond the news cycle, and reflect on how global momentum for justice has shifted. Our voices and organizing still matter now more than ever!

Wednesday, March 4th

3PM

Richcraft RM1200

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https://leftturn.org/abu-ammar-palestinian-national-movement-personified/

Abu Ammar: The Palestinian National Movement Personified

By:

Rafeef Ziadah and Ahmed Nimer

Date Published:

February 01, 2005

The stunned disbelief and grief of Palestinians from around the world that greeted his death provide testament to his charismatic and iconic status. The modern Palestinian national movement is inextricably linked to his figure. The PLO under his leadership became the symbol of Palestinian defiance and established that Palestinians were one people with a unified struggle. Arafat would often refer to the 1968 Battle of Karameh as an example of the Palestinian will to fight against superior odds. Though suffering enormous casualties, Palestinian fedayeen (fighters) managed to repel an Israeli invasion of their base in Jordan. Palestinians emerged from the battle as no longer solely victims of Israeli aggression, but as fighters engaged in resistance. Politically it galvanized the population, establishing the centrality of armed struggle in the Palestinian movement. Prior to Arafat’s leadership, the PLO was a moribund organization of self-serving Arab elites who preferred words to action. The Battle of Karameh and other fedayeen actions turned a displaced and dispersed nation of refugees into resistance fighters. Arafat’s contribution was to take Palestinian liberation out of the hands of Arab regimes and put Palestinians in charge of their own struggle. Peasants to revolutionaries One of the key elements of Zionist strategy has always been the atomisation of the Palestinian nation into disparate groups, each facing different political situations and capacities to struggle. Like all colonialist projects, Zionism attempted not just to displace the indigenous Palestinian population, but also to destroy any sense of a cohesive Palestinian national identity. As one example, Israel banned the Palestinian flag in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and threatened up to 10 years imprisonment for anyone displaying it. The actions of Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon and elsewhere during the 1970s and 80s resisted this Zionist strategy. Illegal broadcasts from the Voice of Palestine radio station and other banned publications brought news of the struggle to those who remained inside historic Palestine. Palestinians turned from “peasants to revolutionaries” (as an excellent book by Rosemary Sayigh on the period describes it). Arafat led this movement for forty years. It was, however, much broader than him alone. During the years of guerrilla warfare the PLO had a strong and diverse leadership, which Israel (and the Arab regimes) worked consistently to destroy. The names of those assassinated in this period are still commemorated by Palestinians today: Ghassan Kanafani, Abu Jihad, Abu Iyad, Dalal Al Mughrabi amongst many others. Moreover, tens of thousands of martyrs gave their lives to the struggle during this time. The Oslo disaster After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the PLO’s exile to Tunis, faced with the weakening of support following the collapse of the USSR and the first US invasion of Iraq, Arafat committed to what many regard as his greatest mistake – the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. While initially greeted with optimism by many on the ground, it quickly became clear that this was the culmination of an Israeli strategy to set up a system of Palestinian bantustans governed by a Palestinian leadership beholden to Israeli political and economic largesse. Palestinians would be given the fig leaf of autonomy, but real control would lie with the Israeli government. Central to this process was the rampant corruption that spread throughout the Palestinian Authority. Contrary to the Zionist apologetics that feign concern for the “stolen billions of the Palestinian people”, Israel vigorously promoted the systemic corruption that accompanied the Oslo agreements. Israel deliberately fostered economic agreements where certain Palestinian businessman linked to the Palestinian Authority were granted privileged access to Israeli markets and goods. In addition, a permit system was established where Israel used a carrot-and-stick approach to ensure cooperation with the Israeli occupation. Man of peace It was during this period that Arafat was embraced by Israel and the imperialist powers as a man of “peace”. Under his leadership the Palestinian Authority arrested political opponents from the left and Islamic movements and signed a series of disastrous agreements with Israel. With the West Bank and Gaza Strip cut off from one another, movement restrictions enforced by Israeli checkpoints and permits, and no independent economic development, Palestinians became reliant upon the Palestinian Authority for livelihood and income. Ministries were characterized by rampant nepotism with loyalties guaranteed through preferential access to the minister or other people in power. Arafat was completely aware of this corruption and in many cases encouraged it to take place. In 1996, while meeting with Birzeit University students who were protesting corruption, he uttered a phrase that he was to repeat often to those who asked him about the matter, “When walking through mud it is better to wear dirty boots.” Arafat himself though, lived a frugal and modest life. He never displayed wealth or concerned himself with material possessions for self-gain. His life was completely absorbed with the Palestinian struggle and he worked tirelessly on every detail of that struggle. His leadership style was open in the sense that he was always meeting with delegations and individuals from around the country. He would personally address the concerns of individuals who came to see him. TV footage would often show a large pile of papers stacked next to him – authorizations awaiting his individual approval. Complicated political terrain While his methods of rule often provoked complaint and controversy within the PLO, Arafat’s leadership was, in many ways, itself a product of trying to forge national unity amongst a body of diverse forces. Navigating a complicated political terrain of different political factions, Arab governments, and the demands from within his own political movement, Fatah, Arafat was able to retain leadership and ensure loyalty. While this centralization of power was often criticized by Palestinians, it is not a simple question of ‘democracy’ as many foreign observers argued. Arafat held together a movement that was composed of a variety of wildly contradictory forces. An old saying in Palestine states that “Fatah can be any color you want,” meaning that any political persuasion could find a home in Fatah. In this environment, Arafat performed the Herculean task of keeping this movement together, broadly centred on the goal of a Palestinian state. The two sides of Fatah It is this contradictory character of Fatah that explains the wide variety of assessments that have been made of Arafat’s life. On the one hand, Fatah represents a genuine commitment to national liberation, a willingness to sacrifice and fight using all means available. It is this side of Fatah that the Palestinian people were mourning in the days following Arafat’s death. It holds an integral and proud position in Palestinian history, beginning with the early days of guerrilla struggle led by Arafat and other Palestinian leaders in the early 1960s. The other side of Fatah is the face of corruption and willingness to relinquish the long-held goals of the Palestinian struggle. Rumours abound in Palestine over those who are now jockeying for power in the Palestinian Authority and their personal and commercial connections with the Israeli government. Some of these rumours have even received official acknowledgement with the Palestinian Legislative Council calling for an official inquiry into Palestinian companies associated with figures in the Palestinian Authority that have sold cement to Israel that was then used to construct the Apartheid Wall. Even more pressing than the business connections between Israel and individuals in the Palestinian Authority is the question of political negotiations. The central demand of the Palestinian national struggle – the demand that unifies the struggle and goes to the heart of Zionist colonization of Palestine – has always been the right of return of Palestinian refugees who were forced from their homes and lands in 1948 and onwards. While some of those currently manoeuvring for power in the Palestinian Authority – in particular Abu Mazen – have indicated that they may be willing to concede or negotiate the right of return, others have made it clear that this right will never be relinquished. The armed wing of Fatah, Kataeb Shuhada Al-Aqsa (Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade) for example, has made it very clear that their support for the next leader of Fatah would depend centrally on this question. These are the issues that divide Fatah, very broadly speaking, into two camps. Arafat cleverly balanced these two sides of Fatah, as well as the countless individuals and other political factions. While many saw this tension as a preparedness to sign away Palestinian rights, Arafat – despite the many bad agreements that bore his consent – did not cross the ‘red lines’ of refugees and Jerusalem. During the Camp David negotiations in early 2000, many Palestinians feared that these lines would be crossed. Demonstrations and protests across the West Bank and Gaza Strip gave voice to this fear. Arafat, however, refused the Camp David agreement despite the fact that he was meeting under the auspices of the central imperialist power, the US government, which was fully expecting him to sign. The current Intifada It was this refusal that led directly to the current Intifada and Israel’s attempt to militarily impose what they were unable to achieve through negotiations. At many points during the Intifada, most notably the meeting at Taba in early 2001 and later the Mitchell Commission and Tenet Plan, it seemed that the Palestinian Authority might crack-down on its population and end the Intifada. In all of these cases, after a few cosmetic arrests, Arafat refused to play the role of Israel’s gendarme in the West Bank. It was this refusal that earned him isolation from the various imperialist powers and the appellation of “arch terrorist.” Just a few years earlier, after signing the Oslo agreements and appearing to accede to the cantonization plan, he was lauded with the Nobel Peace prize. Israel, the US and Arab regimes such as Egypt and Jordan tried desperately to entice Arafat into halting the Intifada. Jordan and Egypt both promised assistance in training a repressive internal security force. The CIA and Israel also guaranteed economic and technical support. At the end of the day Arafat chose to resist this pressure. Instead, he continued to give quiet support to those who were engaged in resistance activities. This choice had an enormous effect on the direction of the Intifada. It is the reason that Abu Ammar died under Israeli siege as a captive in his headquarters rather than being lauded on the world stage. Following Arafat’s death The situation following Arafat’s death indicates this legacy. Israel remains desperate to find a Palestinian leader willing and able to police the population. This is a much more difficult task today than it was just a few years ago because of the increased strength of the opposition factions and the strong resistance current within Fatah itself. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have all called for the formation of a national unity leadership that would steer the day-to-day tasks of the Intifada and formulate negotiation strategy. This option would vastly strengthen the Palestinian movement and take decision-making out of the hands of the Palestinian Authority. In all revolutions, individual personalities can embody contradictory historical forces. Particularly in cases of national liberation struggles of the south, simple cut-and-dry characterizations obscure the richness and complexity of historical detail. Abu Ammar was not simply a leader of the Palestinian revolution he was also very much a product of that same revolutionary struggle. In many ways he was the last of the leaders born of the Arab nationalist upsurge of the 1960s. We should be proud that he died a captive enemy of the Israeli state. The greatest testimony that we can give to his memory is to continue the struggle to which he dedicated his life. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Adam Hanieh, Hazem Jamjoum, and Rafeef Ziadah are active in a variety of groups in Toronto, Canada, including Al Awda (Toronto), Sumoud Political Prisoners Group, the Arab Students Collective (University of Toronto), and the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid. Ahmed Nimer is a Palestinian activist in Toronto, Canada. He is a member of Sumoud Political Prisoners Solidarity Group, http://sumoud.tao.ca

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News Brief

News Brief

January 21, 2005

See Original Daily Bulletin From This Date

Activists in Toronto are protesting plans by a coalition of Arab groups to hold Israeli Apartheid Week on the University of Toronto campus. The Canadian Coalition for Democracies is urging university donors and others to complain to the school’s governing council. Representatives from the Arab Students Collective, International Solidarity Movement, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and other groups are scheduled to speak during the week-long event, which has been promoted by the university’s Institute for Women’s Studies and Gender Studies and is slated to begin Jan. 31.

Anti-Israel Activism in Canada: University of British Columbia Elections by the Alma Mater Society

11.03.26

Editorial Note

Canada’s University of British Columbia (UBC) is currently holding its annual elections by the Alma Mater Society (AMS), a student-run organization. According to the AMS website, the UBC Elections help students to “hold UBC and governments accountable and make sure their voices are heard – by electing people they trust to fight for them.” Students are “running for leadership positions that make sure students work together and fight for their rights. Student leaders and their ideas can influence every area of student life, while pushing for changes that makes UBC a better university for everyone.”

Worth noting that the UBC does not have an anti-Israel agenda.

However, coinciding with the elections, The Ubyssey, the UBC students’ newspaper, has been pushing hard its anti-Israel stand. Its latest article titled “Student referendum calls on AMS to pressure university to cut ties with ‘apartheid’ supporting universities,” promotes a students’ referendum that “will require the AMS to call on the university to cut ties with Israeli institutions that organizers say uphold apartheid. The referendum, recently endorsed by the AMS, was brought forth by a coalition of pro-Palestinian advocacy groups on campus.”

The Ubyssey describes the groups behind the referendum as a “coalition of pro-Palestinian advocacy,” urging to “cut ties with all institutions upholding apartheid, including Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and Tel Aviv University, by writing an open letter to UBC and the UBC Vancouver Academic Senate.”

During the elections, The Ubyssey cultivates selected anti-Israel students whom it interviews who run for the Board of Governors (BoG) of UBC. For example, Dayla Hart, described by The Ubyssey as “a third-year honors history student with Palestine Solidarity Action UBC, one of the groups that organized the referendum,” and Chaand Balaji, who is described as “a fourth-year political science student with the Social Justice Centre” who said students are “tired” of attending a university that is “complicit in crimes against Palestinians in Palestine. I think we don’t want to be associated with that anymore”. She also said, “Some things are just basic human rights. And I think [cutting ties] is something that we have the responsibility of doing.”

The Ubyssey promotes Bryan Buraga, a candidate to serve on the UBC Board of Governors, who discussed how “Divestment from companies’ complicit in Palestinian human rights abuses has been a contested topic within UBC administration, despite years of student advocacy.” Buraga supports divestment efforts. He said that “the genocide of Gazans is the moral crisis of our time” and a seat on BoG would allow them to bridge the gap between activists and board members… At a recent AMS Council meeting, Buraga pushed for the approval of a referendum that would require the AMS to call on UBC to cut ties with Israeli universities.”

The Ubyssey also promotes Sultana Razia, a candidate for the Board of Governors. According to The Ubyssey, “Students and other UBC community members have called on the Board of Governors to divest from organizations alleged to be complicit in Palestinian human rights violations since 2022. Razia supports divestment efforts related to Palestine.”

Zarifa Nawar is a candidate for the Board of Governors. According to The Ubyssey, “For several years, students have also called on the Board of Governors to divest from companies they say are complicit in Palestinian human rights abuses. When asked about the issue, Nawar said she supports the university being held accountable to its responsible investment commitments.”

Drédyn Fontana is a candidate for the Board of Governors. According to The Ubyssey, “Over the past couple of years, students have called on the Board of Governors to divest from companies complicit in Palestinian genocide. Divestment is one of Fontana’s main priorities. He believes there could be significant progress within the next 18 months if students keep putting pressure on the board and there’s a governor in the room willing to hear them out.”

In another interview, Luca Jenkin is a candidate for the Senate. According to The Ubyssey, Jenkin is interested in “the current movement to cut institutional ties with Israeli universities due to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.” He said, “I know in the past, there was a motion to divest and cut back from ties with Israel. I know that failed in the Senate, which I think was very unfortunate.” he said. Recently, “students garnered enough signatures to put a referendum item on this year’s ballot that would commit the AMS to call on UBC to cut ties with what they describe as ‘Israeli universities that Uphold Apartheid.’ Jenkin found discrepancies between UBC’s emphasis towards acknowledging Indigenous land and its continued partnership with Israeli universities, and never having worked with Palestinian universities. He said he intends to progress these motions by lobbying senators to reconsider this issue.”

The Ubyssey noted that “With an upcoming UBC contract with Hebrew University set to end in 2027, Jenkin expressed interest in petitioning for UBC to cut ties with this school.”

For The Ubyssey, the “UBC has been seeing students carry out action after action condemning genocide in Palestine — perhaps we just need the right candidate to push things over the edge.”

The newspaper has been criticized before. HonestReporting Canada, an organization that combats ideological prejudice in journalism and media as it impacts Israel, wrote in 2024 that an “opinion column in The Ubyssey, a Canadian government-funded student newspaper at the University of British Columbia,” was “sharing demonstrably false and unsubstantiated anti-Israel misinformation.”

As a government-funded student newspaper, the Ubyssey should provide its readers with balanced reporting, so that the Israeli side of the equation can also be heard. Needless to say, the paper has failed to live up to its obligation by ceaselessly promoting an anti-Israel agenda. All the more so, given the current developments in the Middle East triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, unprovoked and brutal attack on Israel. The paper had not condemned Hamas, a member of the Axis of Resistance cultivated by Iran to destroy Israel.

Canada deserves a balanced higher education system and should make sure that student newspapers, the Board of Governors, and the Senate are not hijacked for anti-Israel activism.

REFERENCES

https://ubyssey.ca/news/israeli-universities-election-referendum-2026/

March 10, 2026

AMS Elections 2026//

Student referendum calls on AMS to push university to cut ties with ‘apartheid’ supporting universities

Amy Sheardown

On this year’s ballot, students will be voting on a referendum that — if approved — will require the AMS to call on the university to cut ties with Israeli institutions that organizers say uphold apartheid.

The referendum, recently endorsed by the AMS, was brought forth by a coalition of pro-Palestinian advocacy groups on campus. It calls on the AMS to push the university to “cut ties with all institutions upholding apartheid, including Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and Tel Aviv University, by writing an open letter to UBC and the UBC Vancouver Academic Senate.”

In an interview with The Ubyssey, Dayla Hart — a third-year honours history student with Palestine Solidarity Action UBC, one of the groups that organized the referendum — said the AMS’s endorsement at the Feb. 26 Council meeting was an unexpected surprise. “The week before that meeting, someone was told, ‘Hey, the AMS might reject this referendum.’ So that was why we showed up.”

“We weren’t expecting it to be ‘OK, they’re deciding to endorse’.”

Hart said they felt a change in the room at the Council meeting where the referendum was endorsed. “A lot of people showed up, and something changed, and it changes how you feel in the community.”

Palestinian advocacy and recognition have been at the forefront of many social justice organizations on campus. Demonstrations — such as the solidarity encampment, an AMS-supported student strike and a vigil held outside of a UBC Senate meeting — have occurred on campus in the past few years, often with heavy police presence.

In 2024, Senator Jasper Lorien put forth a motion calling on UBC’s administration to cut ties with Israeli educational institutions, which overwhelmingly failed.

Chaand Balaji — a fourth-year political science student with the Social Justice Centre — believes that the high turnout at Council and the referendum itself represents how the student body feels. She said students are tired of attending a university that is “complicit in crimes against Palestinians in Palestine. I think we don’t want to be associated with that anymore. I think the student body is ready for change.”

Hart said this time, the support behind the referendum is different. “We’ve done a lot more organizing with a lot more people. To have this referendum, we needed to get so many petition signatures” — more than 1,000, to be exact. The petition received 1,485 signatures. They noted that while canvassing, “nobody was opposed [to the referendum]. People of all sorts of different spaces at UBC … were all signing and so I think we have this real cultural shift on campus.”

The cultural shift may be felt by some, but students have also expressed discontent with recognition of pro-Palestinian advocacy from campus organizations. Before the referendum was endorsed, a Jewish student who spoke to Council said, “demanding an academic boycott of Israeli institutions of higher learning has no effect on the state of Israel … this referendum will not change foreign policy, and it will not end conflict, but it will divide our campus.”

Notably, a “Students First” campaign is petitioning to reject the referendum; it is also no longer listed on the AMS’s website. The Ubyssey did not hear back from the campaign by press time.

Their website says if the referendum were approved, it would “narrow institutional collaboration and academic opportunities, shift student government away from its core focus on campus priorities and risk creating division among a diverse student body.”

Balaji said that “an academic boycott is such an important step” that UBC can, and should, take. She noted that the Dahiyeh Doctrine — an Israeli military strategy that focuses on large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure — was “generated by these universities.” Tel Aviv University, one of the three institutions the referendum identifies as having ties with UBC, hosts the Institute for National Security Studies — a research institute that openly expresses their support and role in creation of the Doctrine.

“I don’t think we can separate this from the genocide of the Palestinians are facing. We can’t say that it’s separate from the so-called conflict,” Balaji said.

Hart said that advocacy groups on campus are continuously overlooked and undermined by UBC’s administration. They also noted that the administration has often shied away from directly commenting on the ongoing war in Palestine in an attempt to remain “apolitical.” Balaji agreed, saying, “they’ll [Senate] specifically say conflict. They will say Gaza, but they will not say Palestine … How is that neutral?”

In a statement to The Ubyssey, UBC Media Relations Director of University Affairs Matthew Ramsey wrote “UBC is committed to upholding the rights to freedom of expression and fostering an environment where diverse viewpoints can coexist peacefully and productively — an essential foundation for our academic and societal missions. The president and the university’s leaders have discussed these issues formally and informally many times with students and other UBC community members over the past few years.”

He noted that international academic partnerships are overseen by the Senate, and that “any review of academic partnerships at UBC is conducted in accordance with our established processes and with a commitment to academic freedom.”

Balaji said, “some things are not political. Some things are just basic human rights. And I think [cutting ties] is something that we have the responsibility of doing, more than it being a political decision that is contestable. Multiple organizations have agreed that it is a genocide and apartheid. So why are we still supporting institutions that are complicit in the oppression of Palestinian peoples?”

Balaji and Hart also both noted that UBC has quickly cut ties with other academic institutions and regimes implicated in human rights controversies — and divested — in the past. “UBC tries to present itself in this way that is more progressive and anti-racist … when Russia invaded Ukraine they [cut] ties with Russian universities, so they know how to do it,” said Hart. They pointed to UBC’s partial divestment in South Africa and the severance of ties from students and constituencies, saying “a cultural boycott matters.”

They believe that UBC’s lack of action on cutting ties with Israel is “very much Islamophobia, and [with] most Palestinians being brown, I think [it’s also] just plain old racism,” Hart said.

“We raise our voice and we get bureaucratically snubbed, they [Palestinians] raise their voice and they face bullets.”

Palestinian advocacy groups are looking to continue their momentum with a Senate motion pushing the university to follow in the AMS’s path of endorsement in the upcoming months. Balaji noted that “if the Senate motion passes, that’s not the end of our fights … we shouldn’t stand silent ever.”

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https://ubyssey.ca/news/candidate-profile-bryan-buraga-board-of-governors-2026/

March 4, 2026

AMS Elections 2026//

Bryan Buraga

Candidate profile, Board of Governors

Amy Sheardown with photos by Saumya Kamra

Bryan Buraga is running for one of two positions on UBC’s Board of Governors (BoG), promising tenant protections for students in residence, long-term funding for the Food Security Initiative and advocating for a tuition freeze.

The Board of Governors — comprised of 21 members including the chancellor, president, 11 governors appointed by the province and eight elected by faculty, students and staff — oversees UBC’s annual budget, investments and property management, among other administrative duties.

A first-year Master of Community and Regional Planning student, Buraga is currently the Graduate Student Society councillor on AMS Council. During his undergrad, Buraga served as president of the Student Society of McGill University and held seats on McGill’s Senate and Board of Governors — all experiences that Buraga says put him in a good position “to advocate for students as priorities.”

Buraga’s key campaign promises reflect both his personal passions and the issues they see UBC students facing — specifically around housing policy. He cited B.C.’s Residential Tenancy Act, which has an exemption applying to “accommodation owned or operated by an educational institution.” Buraga claimed this exemption has allowed UBC to “evict any student at any time for whatever reason.” Buraga promises to ensure tenant protections for students living in residence and plans to do so by sitting on the Property Committee — responsible for determining land use, rezoning and building approvals.

Although UBC’s 2025-26 budget predicted a surplus, there have been spending constraints across B.C.’s post-secondary institutions due to the federal caps on international student visas. Many universities, including UBC, have already implemented measures to mitigate the issue like hiring freezes, administrative budget reductions and program restructuring. Buraga says lack of funding is negatively impacting campus life — specifically for graduate students.

If elected, Buraga plans to fight for long-term funding for food security initiatives, instead of the university renewing its allocation. He said, “there are hundreds, thousands of students on campus that rely on these food security initiatives” and that if not increased, the limited food security funding will be detrimental to all members of campus.

Buraga said that he will fight for “increased access to co-ops, internships and research” and graduate student stipends at a livable rate. “They [graduate students] are being paid starvation wages right now … Graduate students make up a disproportionate amount of [food-bank] users, somewhere in the realm of 50 per cent when they only make up 20 per cent of [the student body].”

Buraga was not wrong. The 2024-25 AMS Services Report confirmed that 49 per cent of food bank visits were made by graduate students. UBC announced on Feb. 26 that funding for PhD students will be going from $24,000 annually to $40,000, but this does not include any commitments to masters funding. Buraga expressed interest in sitting on the Finance Committee to advocate for student financial needs, saying UBC needs to ensure that “where we’re cutting doesn’t materially impact the basic needs of its community members. We cannot cut.”

Buraga is also against any tuition increases and wants to establish a tuition freeze.” “The university needs to look at freezing [or] cutting salaries of senior administrators, making an active decision to pull more money from the endowment, and continuing to advocate for greater provincial government funding” to lessen the financial burdens placed on students, explained Buraga.

Divestment from companies’ complicit in Palestinian human rights abuses has been a contested topic within UBC administration, despite years of student advocacy. Buraga supports divestment efforts. He said that “the genocide of Gazans is the moral crisis of our time” and a seat on BoG would allow them to bridge the gap between activists and board members. There are “various arguments from a financial, legal, reputational perspective that I think board members would be more amenable to.”

At a recent AMS Council meeting, Buraga pushed for the approval of a referendum that would require the AMS to call on UBC to cut ties with Israeli universities, saying at the meeting that the AMS “should continue to amplify the voices of our students that have been fighting for this year after year, and not stand in their way.”

Buraga’s campaign focuses largely on affordability measures for students, and he thinks that his education in community planning has given them “a really unique perspective, both from the student advocacy point of view, as well as the skills that [he is] learning within the program itself.”

“I really care about my peers, and seeing everybody suffer doesn’t bring me joy, but fighting for them does.”

First online March 4, 2026, 8:58 p.m

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https://ubyssey.ca/news/candidate-profile-sultana-razia-board-of-governors-2026/

March 4, 2026

AMS Elections 2026//

Sultana Razia

Candidate profile, Board of Governors

Stephen Kosar with photos by Saumya Kamra

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Editor’s Note: Razia also serves on The Ubyssey Publication Society’s Board of Directors. The board has no control over The Ubyssey’s coverage.

Sultana Razia is running for one of two student positions on the Board of Governors.

A fourth-year student double-majoring in economics and cognitive systems, Razia previously served a term on Senate and is a current Arts Undergraduate Society councillor.

Razia wants to be a governor so she can “speak up for those who don’t have that platform to speak up.” The decisions the board makes, she said, “really impact our lives.”

Razia believes that her experience on Senate gives her the expertise required to effectively work on the board. “I learned how to talk to [UBC administrators], negotiate [and] discuss issues with them … being the student senator and being on the Senate committees,” she said.

She cited her time on the Senate Library Committee, where she pushed for librarians to “make it a priority that students want more extended hours.”

“For anything that we want to accomplish, it’s very important that we start somewhere. It’s gonna be slow. We might not see the results, but then, if we have the conversation started someday, I believe we will see [change].”

Students and other UBC community members have called on the Board of Governors to divest from organizations alleged to be complicit in Palestinian human rights violations since 2022. Razia supports divestment efforts related to Palestine and also major fossil fuel emitters.

“Why is it so hard for them to divest? There’s so many other companies in the world that you could invest your money [in],” she said. “I don’t know why [the board is] so hard-bent on investing in companies that have … solid proof of links to human rights violations.”

Razia supports UBC’s responsible investing framework, but said that work has progressed too slowly.

The university has had a responsible investing policy since 2013, but advocates have criticized the policy for years, saying that it does too little, too late. In 2024, UBC set up a working group — including Board of Governors representatives — to oversee the development of a new social risk framework. In February, UBC said that the working group’s work is still ongoing.

Razia also opposes tuition increases, but conceded that student governors are most likely unable to block increases at the board — at the last board meeting where tuition increases were up for debate, governors voted overwhelmingly in favour. Still, Razia said she wants to advocate against increases.

“Our priority is student affordability,” she said. “We want everybody to have access to education. And tuition fees are the biggest barrier to [that].”

At a board meeting last December, UBC Vancouver’s Provost and Vice-President, Academic Gage Averill said that tuition increases are necessary to preserve UBC’s financial situation as the university continues to face funding challenges.

To fix these funding issues, Razia said that the university needs to push the provincial government to increase funding to UBC, even as the province did not commit to substantial post-secondary funding in its most recent budget.

“The board’s job is literally to negotiate with the government,” she said. If the financial situation does not improve, Razia will not support budget cuts.

“I don’t think budget cuts [are] something anyone wants.”

Razia acknowledged that the board moves slowly on its goals. To implement her priority areas, she said that “getting the conversation started” is essential.

“It’s really slow. It takes a long time to get things done … the crucial point is getting something started, getting the work started, and then try your best to finish it as soon as you can.”

First online March 4, 2026, 8:58 p.m.

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https://ubyssey.ca/news/candidate-profile-zarifa-nawar-board-of-governors-2026/

March 4, 2026

AMS Elections 2026//

Zarifa Nawar

Candidate profile, Board of Governors

Thea Lee

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Zarifa Nawar is running for the Board of Governors opposing tuition increases and pushing for further funding for food security initiatives and UBC’s Work Learn program.

Nawar has served as the AMS vice-president academic and university affairs (VP AUA) since January 2025 and is also a student senator-at-large. She says over the past two years she has secured $2 million for undergraduate research opportunities and pushed for mandatory statements on Gen AI in course syllabi to reduce ambiguity around academic misconduct.

“I have a very thorough understanding of the way the university governance works and the way that university advocacy works, and I’ve always, since my first day in office, delivered for students,” said the third-year standing political science major.

If elected, Nawar said she would focus on affordability, specifically in the areas of food security, housing, tuition and extra support for international and graduate students.

Nawar said she wants UBC to commit to multi-year funding for food security initiatives, instead of the current annual approvals.

On housing, Nawar said she would push the university to prioritize lower-cost, higher-density student housing. She additionally argued UBC should consider more “creative” funding approaches to keep construction feasible, even as costs rise, such as third-party partnerships used at other universities. She also wants to advocate for developing more than the 3,300 student beds committed to UBC’s Campus Vision 2050. Nawar also wants to leverage donor opportunities, but did not explain how she would do so.

Nawar opposes tuition increases. UBC has continued to raise tuition despite student backlash; post-secondary institutions across B.C. are facing significant financial hardship.

“I think this is one of the most fundamental mandates the student body has ever gifted its student leaders, and I very much intend to continue opposition to tuition,” said Nawar. With the federal government’s cap on international student permits, Nawar argued UBC needs to find alternatives to tuition-driven revenue. Nawar said international students are “the [financial] backbone of this university,” and 22 per cent of UBC’s 2025-26 operating budget came from international tuition. She argued UBC’s reliance on international tuition developed in response to insufficient provincial funding for post-secondary institutions and is now proving unstable.

She said that she will ensure that “student priorities cannot be on the chopping block.” Nawar wants to expand financial aid for international students, and develop a system to assess financial need across different countries. She did not elaborate on what the specific of this financial assessment system would look like.

Beyond affordability, Nawar said she would prioritize academic and career support. She argued undergraduate research funding should be sustained beyond short-term programs and more firmly integrated into UBC’s long-term academic planning, positioning research access as a core part of the university’s identity.

Nawar said expanding UBC Work Learn funding could create more student jobs and would push for a $2 million increase in the program. “We know that demand is incredibly high, and we know that the funds and the investment into the program from UBC is not nearly on the same level,” said Nawar.

As a longer-term proposal, Nawar raised the creation of an exam testing centre for deferred, standing deferred and accommodated exams.

On the extensive delays associated with exam accommodations, Nawar said “I don’t think that meets the calibre and rigour of academic standards that we have at this university. A student should not have to wait an entire term to write their final exam.”

For several years, students have also called on the Board of Governors to divest from companies they say are complicit in Palestinian human rights abuses.

When asked about the issue, Nawar said she supports the university being held accountable to its responsible investment commitments.

“There’s been a lot of things that the student body wants, and I want to ensure that UBC is listening to them, and, you know, doing its due diligence when it comes to this work,” she said. However, she said divestment is a long process and would focus on “timely updates” and transparency.

“When it comes to advocating for students, I have dedicated pretty much my entire time at UBC towards doing this … and I very much intend to continue that,” said Nawar.

First online March 4, 2026, 8:58 p.m.

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https://ubyssey.ca/news/candidate-profile-luca-jenkin-senate-2026/

March 4, 2026

AMS Elections 2026//

Luca Jenkin

Candidate profile, Senate

Liana Raisanen

Luca Jenkin is running for one of five spots on UBC’s Vancouver Senate with his top priority being to ensure that the Senate’s approaches to future programs and university connections reflect the wishes of the student body.

The first-year linguistics major pinpointed this problem with what universities UBC has ties to and wanting “the universities we are working with [to] reflect … the position that students want.”

“With the current political climate, education is unfortunately no longer an apolitical place,” Jenkin said. He specifically mentioned the current movement to cut institutional ties with Israeli universities due to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. “I know in the past, there was a motion to divest and cut back from ties with Israel. I know that failed in the Senate, which I think was very unfortunate,” he said. At a 2024 Senate meeting, a motion to discuss cutting ties with Israeli universities overwhelmingly failed; during the meeting, there was also a vigil being held outside by protesters from the Palestinian solidarity encampment. Recently, students garnered enough signatures to put a referendum item on this year’s ballot that would commit the AMS to call on UBC to cut ties with what they describe as “Israeli universities that Uphold Apartheid.”

Jenkin found discrepancies between UBC’s emphasis towards acknowledging Indigenous land and its continued partnership with Israeli universities, and never having worked with Palestinian universities. He said he intends to progress these motions by lobbying senators to reconsider this issue, but did not specify how we would sway senators. With an upcoming UBC contract with Hebrew University set to end in 2027, Jenkin expressed interest in petitioning for UBC to cut ties with this school.

The 2024 Senate meeting was also done primarily in private, since senators voted to close the public gallery. Jenkin added that he wanted to ensure there is transparency when the Senate is making decisions about these things and that “dealings are done ethically.”

If elected, Jenkin said he is committed to transparency and student outreach and would be grounded in making his position “more openly available” by “talking to students” and “getting to know them.” Other than speaking to students, Jenkin did not include other ways he would reach out to the student body.

With experience in the Iowa Youth Congress, “I’m really passionate about education, access to education, and how education can control the information and what we learn, and how we perceive society,” said Jenkin. “The Senate is an important thing,” especially as it concerns what students are learning at university, which is “one of the main motivators students have,” he said.

When asked what Senate committee he would like to sit on, Jenkin could not name a specific committee, commenting that he needs “to do more research.”

Regarding instructors’ concerns on harmful, vague and discriminatory comments in student experience of instruction (SEI) surveys, Jenkins said that while he believes SEI’s are the most efficient way of gauging the educational environment, there “needs to be fail-safes.” To do so, Jenkin suggested communicating more with instructors and setting up an anonymous forum for them to create an “open discussion space.”

Additionally, Jenkin raised the ongoing issue of generative AI in education as important to his candidacy. Commenting on AI’s economic and ecological downsides, “I think the way AI is being approached at university [is] much too neutral,” said Jenkin.

Jenkin remarked that he wants to focus on and propose more “hard- set rules” regarding AI use in the academic setting. “Rather than just treating it like this big, scary thing that we can’t comprehend, actually working and trying to come up with a more concrete policy” is one of Jenkin’s goals. UBC currently has principles and guidelines on how to use AI in the classroom; in February, Senate also passed a revision to the university’s syllabuses policy, now requiring a statement on how AI use will be allowed, which will go into effect in September.

Jenkin acknowledged positive uses for AI in terms of efficiency, but suggested that the use of tools like ChatGPT is “counterintuitive” when it comes to doing physical research. “You are paying part of your tuition to access a large library of sources,” Jenkin said. “I think it [AI] should just be helpful as a tool, not something that is used to actually create the work that you’re trying to put out there.”

First online March 4, 2026, 8:58 p.m.

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https://ubyssey.ca/news/candidate-profile-dredyn-fontana-board-of-governors-2026/

March 4, 2026

AMS Elections 2026//

Drédyn Fontana

Candidate profile, Board of Governors

Spencer Izen

Drédyn Fontana is running for one of the two student seats on the Board of Governors, the university’s top decision-making body on finances, land use and projects.

If elected, he plans to push for increased faculty-level financial transparency and facilitate the development of a human rights investment framework for the university by the end of his one-year term.

Fontana, a sixth-year dual degree international relations and electrical engineering student, isn’t a new face to institutional politics. He was first elected to the Senate in 2024 as the applied science student senator, and also served as the AMS’s VP academic and university affairs. He was fired from the latter role by AMS Council in November of that year — the first executive to be fired in the student union’s history — after it concluded he made misrepresentations to councillors. Fontana has disputed that claim, saying he was fired for going against the grain in a toxic workplace. He has since brought a suit against the AMS for wrongful termination — and has served as a student senator at large since 2025.

On tuition, Fontana breaks with student governor orthodoxy: “’I’m running on maintaining sub-inflationary tuition increases.”

“I know a lot of people have run on tuition freezes. I can’t in good conscience run on [a] tuition freeze, because I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Post-secondary institutions are facing a financial crisis across the province. In November, the Ministry of Post-Secondary Affairs and Future Skills announced it was initiating a review of the post-secondary sector, citing decreasing domestic enrolment, inflation and the federal government’s “unilateral” reduction in the number of international students admitted to Canada annually. UBC’s enrolment report, however, reports increasing domestic enrolment. This year’s provincial budget holds post-secondary funding steady, with funding rising below the rate of inflation.

The province’s review is due on March 15, and the AMS and other student unions have expressed concern that it might justify the government allowing domestic tuition increases beyond the present two per cent limit, which has held since 2005. The limit does not apply to international tuition.

Referring to his own program, Fontana said UBC engineering’s tuition is lower than the University of Toronto’s. He argued that given inflation was around 2 per cent last year, “keeping tuition the way it is” is his goal.

Asked about the AMS’s Academic Experience Survey that reports widespread financial hardship among the student body, Fontana says both the post-secondary sector and students are in a tough situation. “I myself have been a recipient of emergency bursaries, and it really helped me when I needed it.” But, he says, “how do you square that with the budget?” He noted that tuition essentially decreases based on the value of money if increases are sub-inflationary.

Fontana said the key differences between himself and the current student governors will be his focus on greater faculty-level financial reporting. “I think there’s a lot going on in the faculties that just doesn’t get seen as much,” he said.

He said he’s reviewed 20 years’ worth of UBC budgets in the AMS Archives. Over that period, he noticed that the budget “got a little more unstable” when universities began to rely on international student tuition revenue. “We’ve tied our revenue stream to a market.”

Fontana also has an interest in seeing more centralized financial planning across the university.

“If we can do more and more resourcing at a central level, I think that will help to save a … lot of labour costs,” he said.

Fontana also supports the ongoing work to develop a human rights framework for the university’s wholly-owned investment management firm. He’s confident that work will be done — the challenge, he said, will be aligning “spirit and principles that students have in mind when we’ve been asking for it.”

Since 2023, UBC has faced renewed calls for a human rights framework to govern its investment, precipitated by Israel’s genocide in Gaza and UBC Investment Management’s holdings. The student group UBC Divest has identified a list of 30 companies connected to the genocide that they want UBC to cut ties with.

When he says the investment framework will be “done” by the end of his term, ending April 2027, Fontana said “done” means a framework “which will eliminate certain companies,” from UBC’s holdings. “I think this year it will get done,” he said.

Fontana also wants to expand the Universal Design for Learning Fellows Program, a program of the Provost’s Office that helps faculty redesign courses to reduce accessibility barriers. He said it currently operates drawing on an annual fund, but he wants it to be a permanent fixture.

First online March 4, 2026, 8:58 p.m.

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https://ubyssey.ca/opinion/editorial-buraga-and-fontana-win-the-board-experience-wars/

March 9, 2026

Editorial Endorsements//

Editorial: Buraga and Fontana win the Board experience wars

Students are dramatically outnumbered on the board, so we need our two governors to agree with each other.

Ubyssey Editorial Board

The Ubyssey endorses Bryan Buraga and Drédyn Fontana for UBC’s Board of Governors.

Editor’s Note: The new Editorial Board is a pilot project launched for this year’s elections. From now on, that term refers to the group of journalists who write their views as a collective in the newspaper’s name, linking us with centuries of newspaper tradition.

Our pilot Editorial Board consisted of Features Editor Elena Massing, Politics Columnist Maya Tommasi and AMS Columnist Quyen Schroeder, who served as the board’s chair.

Over the past few weeks, they contacted every candidate, held interviews, attended debates and studied platforms before deliberating among themselves who The Ubyssey will endorse. Their deliberations were private and isolated from the rest of the newsroom, including from me, the Opinion Editor, until drafts had been filed. Like all of our journalists, they practised according to the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Ethics Guidelines.

— Spencer Izen, Deputy Managing Editor and Opinion Editor

Much of this debate — and our conversations with the candidates — revolved around who had the most experience and connections to powerful people at the university. Sure, there’s value in having big names and advocacy wins under one’s belt, but candidates generally have similar governance experience. When student governors bring opinions and issues to the board, rarely do decisions pan out in their favour, as evidenced by countless years of tuition increases or the resistance to a widely supported call to divest from companies complicit in genocide. While Buraga, Fontana and Zarifa Nawar all bear notable experience, the former two bring new or overlooked ideas to the table that might have more to offer students.

Buraga hopes to collaborate with students doing on-the-ground advocacy work, inspired in part by the student walkout for food security in October 2022 and the $800,000 allocation toward food security initiatives that followed in early 2023. This was a “student-focused movement” in which the governors had to “use their position and privilege to drive home the need for that increased funding.” It was an anomalous year, as there hasn’t been that kind of dialogue between students and governors in the past couple of years, but Buraga is set on mobilizing the “students on the ground” to bring this back. It’s an approach he found quite effective during his time serving on the McGill University Board of Governors.

Similar to Buraga’s emphasis on collaboration, Fontana was adamant on advocacy being a “team sport.” Fontana aims to prioritize working with faculties. He claimed “42 per cent of every international student dollar goes toward faculties,” implying they will suffer particularly badly from international student reductions. He plans to advocate for more transparency in faculty budgets, which he described as “essentially a black box.” This leads us to believe he will, compared to previous governors, have a more constituency and faculty-focused approach.

Over the past couple of years, students have called on the Board of Governors to divest from companies complicit in Palestinian genocide. Divestment is one of Fontana’s main priorities. He believes there could be significant progress within the next 18 months if students keep putting pressure on the board and there’s a governor in the room willing to hear them out.

Buraga holds a similar opinion. He’s optimistic about change being on the horizon if a candidate is willing to make divestment a priority and, like Fontana, emphasized the importance of continued “student momentum.”

To explain her stance on the matter, Nawar referenced UBC’s divestment from fossil fuels in 2019, nearly a decade after the first Climate Action Plan was developed in 2010. She says she’s passionate about moving forward on divestment, but believes that it is unattainable in the near future. We disagree. In the debate, she said progress needs to happen at a “significantly speedier pace,” and we think this is possible — but not from a candidate who resigns themselves to accepting the past as the only answer. It’s also worth reflecting on the context around UBC deciding to divest from fossil fuels. Amid thousands striking at UBC and millions taking to the streets around the world for climate protests, it would have been a bad look for the university not to take action. UBC has been seeing students carry out action after action condemning genocide in Palestine — perhaps we just need the right candidate to push things over the edge.

Unlike other candidates in this year’s race — and many governors past — Fontana is not running on a promise to fight for a tuition freeze, instead proposing a push for maintaining sub-inflationary tuition increases. UBC’s budget, he says, is not in a place where we can afford to freeze tuition without making cuts to affordability measures currently in place for students. By keeping increases sub-inflationary, tuition actually decreases relative to the value of money, which he says will lead to “essentially a free tuition” for both domestic and international students. Fontana has had to access emergency aid bursaries himself. He sees these increases as a more “fiscally responsible” way to go about making tuition more affordable without sacrificing any services along the way.

Both Nawar and Buraga will push for tuition freezes. To avoid making cuts, Buraga proposed using money from the endowment as a “rainy day fund.” Nawar’s proposal relied on recruiting more international students, specifically from the US — to her, the current political state is an opportunity, but we’re concerned that continuing to fund our university with international students is short-sighted.. Students have yet to advocate successfully for tuition freezes, but perhaps these alternate funding proposals will prove more persuasive. If Buraga and Fontana were to be elected, they would need to compromise on tuition increases.

We found candidates Jacky Xue and Sultana Razia did not rise to the level of the other three. Both candidates were not particularly knowledgeable about the board in its current state. Like other candidates, they proposed limits to annual tuition increases and divestment from companies complicit in genocide, but their proposals for achieving these goals were unconvincing. They had neither the experience and connections nor the inspiring approach required to put them on par with Buraga, Fontana or Nawar.

Xue proposed alleviating upcoming budgetary strains by creating micro-credentials to increase university revenue. While the idea itself isn’t all that bad, he did not express concrete ideas regarding how it might be implemented — and even if this happened, it would be unlikely to make a significant dent in our budgetary difficulties, especially given the additional resources needed to run these programs.

Razia’s approach to budgetary constraints was to “just venture out and get more funding,” not specifying what this would look like. She admitted to having fewer connections than Nawar and Fontana, but claimed she could “do it better than them” if given the chance.

Students are dramatically outnumbered on the board, so we need our two governors to agree with each other. Nawar has got wins in the past, but when asked how she would find success on the board, she took a hostile approach to asserting her superiority over candidates. She ended her debate by, yet again, listing her accomplishments and reinforcing that “no one else can say the same.” Among fellow candidates who have previously sat on a university board or held positions as an AMS executive and senator, we consider that simply untrue — and it’s certainly not the attitude we want to see one of our student governors bringing to advocacy work.

While voting for Nawar is reasonable — unlike voting for Razia or Xue — we’ll be casting out ballots for Buraga and Fontana. Their experience on university bodies and willingness to work together will benefit students across our campus.

Editor’s Note: Razia also serves on The Ubyssey Publication Society’s Board of Directors. The board has no control over The Ubyssey’s coverage.

Editorials are opinion essays, and while they represent the views of the Editorial Board, they may not speak for every person at our newspaper. They are subject, however, to the same standard of fact-checking as anything else in our report.

First online March 9, 2026, midnight

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https://ubyssey.ca/news/ubc-president-reaffirms-universitys-anti-bds-stance-on-parliament-hill/

May 31, 2024

UBC president reaffirms university’s anti-BDS stance on Parliament Hill

Aisha Chaudhry

On May 28, Palestinian solidarity encampment organizers People’s University UBC released a response to the UBC president’s May 16 statement on the encampment’s demands and May 27 speech on Parliament Hill.

UBC President Benoit-Antoine Bacon joined university presidents from Concordia University, University of Toronto and McGill University at a House of Commons standing committee on Justice and Human Rights to discuss antisemitism on campus.

“UBC supports freedom of expression and demonstration, for however we do not condone behaviors that affect the safety, security of our university community or threaten or interfere with our operations,” said Bacon at the meeting.

People’s University UBC wrote Bacon’s May 16 statement and May 27 speech show UBC is not “acting in good faith and … have cast doubt among students, faculty, and community members regarding the sincerity of his invitations to ‘constructive’ conversations.”

UBC president responds to Palestinian solidarity encampment’s demands

MP Anthony Housefather representing Montréal’s Mount Royal riding asked the university administrators if their universities would support the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by the federal government, and the application of the IHRA’s handbook on campuses.

“This is one of the tools we consider going forward on cases of antisemitism,” said Bacon.

The IHRA’s definition includes any rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals, their property, or Jewish community institutions and religious facilities

The IHRA said examples of antisemitism include claiming “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” or “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination.”

People’s University UBC wrote the IHRA’s definition “has been widely criticized by scholars, academics and human rights groups globally for conflating legitimate criticism of the state of Israel with anti-semitism.”

In 2022, Independent Jewish Voices Canada released a statement opposing the IHRA’S definition.

Housefather also asked the presidents if their administrations oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Bacon said UBC does not support BDS.

“It is imperative for the administration to demonstrate its commitment to such dialogue by meaningfully addressing our demands instead of pre-emptively taking an anti-BDS stance,” wrote People’s University UBC.

In Bacon’s May 16 statement, he said universities “stand strong against all forms of violence, exploitation, intimidation, discrimination, harassment or any other form of harm directed at individuals or groups on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation or any other characteristic or label.”

People’s University UBC wrote UBC condemned Russia’s invasion in Ukraine in February 2022, and that “this selective application of principles serves only to further the oppression of Palestinians rather than support free expression and academic inquiry.”

People’s University UBC also called on Bacon to release a statement on May 29 by 8 a.m. to “Publicly condemn Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israel … Denounce the invasion of refugee camps and protected zones in Rafah [and] Condemn the scholasticide, including the bombing and destruction of every university in Gaza.”

As of May 31 at 1 p.m., Bacon has not released a statement in response to this request.

“We believe our demands represent the minimum actions necessary in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” wrote People’s University UBC. “We will not stop until Palestine is free.”

On May 30, People’s University released another statement reinstating their demands to Bacon and called on him to respond to their demands by 8 p.m. today.

The Ubyssey did not hear back from UBC Media Relations by press time.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

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https://honestreporting.ca/petitions/government-funded-ubc-student-newspaper-features-column-by-anti-israel-jew-on-campus-who-calls-zionism-white-supremacist-and-accuses-israel-of-genocide/

Government-Funded UBC Student Newspaper Features Column By Anti-Israel “Jew On Campus” Who Calls Zionism “White Supremacist” and Accuses Israel Of Genocide

· By Robert Walker

April 2, 2024

In a March 21 opinion column in The Ubyssey, a Canadian government-funded student newspaper at the University of British Columbia entitled: “Why Hillel makes me feel less safe as a Jew on campus,” author Jess Goldman led readers down a meandering path of self-reflection, all while sharing demonstrably false and unsubstantiated anti-Israel misinformation.

According to the newspaper’s biography of the author, Goldman “is a queer Jewish writer, comics artist, amateur puppeteer, and half-baked Yiddishist.”

In the commentary, Goldman wrote that “to oppose Zionism is to oppose a settler-colonial project rooted in white supremacist expansionism. It is not anti-Semitic. In fact, I’d argue it’s the opposite.”

Beyond the faux-academic gobbledygook used by Goldman in an attempt to defame Zionism as something nefarious, nothing about it is “settler-colonial,” or rooted in “white supremacist expansionism.”

Zionism is the Jewish People’s national liberation movement which holds that Jews have the right to pursue self-determination on a collective scale in their historic and ancestral homeland.

To oppose Zionism, consequently, is to accept historical revisionism and deny the three thousand years of Jewish habitation in the Levant, an ignorance that Goldman is apparently enthusiastic to embrace.

As for Goldman’s bizarre take, that opposing the Jewish People’s collective right of self-determination is somehow “the opposite” of antisemitism is simply unintelligible nonsense. In fact, by any reasonable definition of antisemitism, denying Jews the rights one would give to others would fall under the rubric of Jew-hatred.

Seemingly unsatisfied with attempting to bastardize the meaning of Zionism, Goldman twice accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza as part of its counter-terrorism campaign against Hamas.

While such allegations are often favoured by anti-Israel activists, such claims are ridiculous to the point of absurdity.

Israel, though it possesses the military capacity to effectively wipe Gaza off the map in minutes, has obviously not done so. In fact, even after six months of high-intensity urban warfare, where Hamas terrorists – with hundreds of Israeli hostages in tow – have hidden amongst civilians, Israel has taken extraordinary measures to minimize civilian casualties.

Israel has provided repeated and ample warnings to civilians, has placed Israeli soldiers on the ground to fight, rather than simply striking targets from the air.

As a result, the proportion of civilian casualties in Gaza is far lower than in virtually any other armed conflict in modern history, a fact that has received virtually no mention in Canadian news media coverage of the Hamas-Israel war.

Goldman’s column also defended the now-failed effort by anti-Israel activists to force the University of British Columbia to effectively expel Hillel, the largest Jewish campus organization, by ending the institution’s lease with the group.

Fortunately, the hateful effort was a catastrophic failure for those who sought to expel Hillel, but Goldman defended the attempt, ostensibly because they “have never felt represented” by Hillel, and citing the group’s temerity to have a soldier from the Israel Defense Forces speak on campus.

Jess Goldman’s opinion column in The Ubyssey is a rambling anti-Israel screed which shows little respect for factual accuracy, and attempts to condescendingly twist the meaning of Zionism into a nefarious movement, when it is the exact opposite.

Antisemitism on Australian Campuses: Parliamentary Debate and the Case of Randa Abdel-Fattah

05.03.26

Editorial Note

Following the Bondi Beach attack against Jews in December 2025, the Australian Government established a Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion in early 2026 to examine the increase in antisemitism in society. The opening hearing took place on February 24, 2026.

The issue is not new. In 2024, the Australian Parliament debated a Bill titled “The Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill,” sponsored by Senator Sarah Henderson. Its purpose was to establish a statutory commission of inquiry specifically into antisemitism at Australian universities, particularly in the context of reported rises in incidents and tensions on campuses.

After its introduction, the Bill was referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for review. Public submissions were called for, including from universities, the Jewish community, student groups, and others. The committee heard hundreds of submissions and held public hearings in 2024, with university leaders giving evidence. The committee did not recommend adopting the judicial inquiry model proposed in the original Bill, noting that such an inquiry would be too slow when more immediate action was needed. Instead, the committee recommended broader reviews of university policies and processes for handling antisemitism.

The proposed Bill formed part of a larger national conversation in Australia about antisemitism, free speech, and racism on campuses.

When debating the Bill, Senator Jacqui Lambie told the committee that “we have a problem with our Australian universities… Last year’s Australian Jewish University Experience Survey found that 64 percent of Jewish students experienced an incident of antisemitism during their time at university. Of these, 29 per cent reported that staff had participated and 70 per cent said that staff were present but not involved.”

Lambie gave an example of Macquarie University academic Dr. Randa Abdel-Fattah, who said in March 2024 that “Zionists had no right to cultural safety.” Lambie stated that Abdel-Fattah helped to spread a leak of private information on hundreds of Jewish artists. Also, in late April, Abdel-Fattah and an activist group, Parents for Palestine, organised an excursion where primary school children were told to chant “intifada” and “Israel is a terrorist state.” Lambie complained that “Macquarie University has not condemned this academic.”

Abdel-Fattah was awarded a $889,000 grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC) for research on “Arab/Muslim Australian Social Movements since the 1970s: a hidden history.” According to the abstract, “This project will be the first study of a neglected but constitutive part of Australia’s social movement history: Arab/Muslim Australian social justice activism. It aims to recover previously untapped oral histories and rare archival collections of Arab/Muslim Australian activists working in anti-racism, anti-war and feminist social movements from the 1970s to date. Expected outcomes include new knowledge about how this activist community has struggled against external systems and internal conflicts to build a socially just future in multicultural Australia. Anticipated social and cultural benefits include a greater understanding of the transformative activism of communities whose movement work is often relegated to the margins.” She stated, “In a world characterized by vast inequalities, we are witnessing urgent local and global debates on how marginalized communities can work together across social justice movements.”

Abdel-Fattah further stated that the project seeks to examine how Arab/Muslim Australian activists have mobilized diverse groups, including Indigenous activists, to influence local, national and global politics. She is also planning “a public exhibition that will tour Australian museums, an open-access website and writing workshops with marginalized communities.”

The Macquarie University academic concludes that this project will demonstrate the “importance of social justice activism as part of Australia’s history and how it shaped Australia’s current democratic and political culture,” which will provide “significant social and cultural benefits to members of the wider Australian community by offering a roadmap for how contemporary minority communities can work to build a socially just future in multicultural Australia and negotiate the politics of exclusion and inclusion and nurture united relationships.”

The parliamentary debate and media reports indicated a measure of unease with the grant. Senator Henderson disclosed that a grant assessor expressed “trepidation” regarding her activist approach to academic work. According to media reports, Jason Clare, the Education Minister, wrote to the ARC in January 2025 to investigate her research grant after Abdel-Fattah told an anti-racism symposium that she sought to “bend the rules” and “subvert them.” He did so after Abdel-Fattah said she had refused an ARC requirement to hold an academic conference as a condition of her grant, and instead, she invited “women to contribute revolutionary quotes.” Following allegations of “bending” the grant rules and promoting anti-Jewish activism, the funding was temporarily suspended in February 2025 before she was cleared of wrongdoing in December 2025.

Abdel-Fattah has a long history of anti-Israel activism. In 2013, she published an article titled “Who’s afraid of BDS? Israel’s assault on academic freedom,” where she stated, “I am one of 2000 Australian and international human rights advocates from some 60 countries who signed a pledge supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.” She wrote this article in support of Professor Jake Lynch from the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, who was sued for refusing to host a visiting academic from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem because of “its support of the illegal occupation of Palestine and close connections with the Israeli armament industry.”

For Abdel-Fattah, “There is nothing racist or anti-Semitic about BDS. Efforts to intimidate and defame its supporters are based on a concerted campaign of lies, bullying and deliberate distortions.”

She claimed, “Israel is exporting its brand of oppression into Australia. For Israel is no stranger to dismantling democratic principles and fundamental human rights in its effort to stifle criticism of its racist policies.”

She also claimed, “Whether it is invoking the slur of anti-Semitism against anybody who dares to call Israel to account for its illegal occupation and apartheid practices, or accusing Jewish activists who support justice for Palestinians as ‘self-hating Jews,’ or punishing Palestinians and Israelis alike for commemorating the day they lost their land (the Nakba), Israel is a state that does not suffer criticism of its policies. It is a state that considers itself to be above scrutiny and which enjoys the right to act with impunity.”

Abdel-Fattah added that “Economically and militarily, the Palestinians do not stand a chance. The occupation and apartheid machinery have, no doubt, accelerated. But the moral force that used to drive that process is eroding – and this is what Israel is scared about: delegitimation.”

For her, “Palestinians, by contrast, now occupy the moral high ground and, with the launch of BDS in 2005, they and their supporters have signaled that they will no longer trust in tired political games and a farcical ‘peace process,’ investing instead in a strategy that highlights their moral power, and trusting that justice will be delivered through the collective effort of global civil society.”

She ended by stating, “How can a state engaged in a racist, outmoded, ethno-religious colonial project founded on ethnic cleansing seriously claim that those who oppose its racism are racist? It is likely that, as the case against Professor Lynch progresses, the smears and distortions will escalate, but many Australians will see through the blatant tactics of intimidation and attacks on freedom of speech, recognizing this lawsuit for what it is: a blatant attempt to stifle dissent and criticism of Israel under the pretense of racial discrimination.”

In a 2022 post titled “Palestinians use Australian Campuses to Delegitimize Israel and Australia,” Israel Academia Monitor (IAM) reported on Abdel-Fattah, among others, who signed a petition, which stated, “As scholars, academics and students in Australia, a settler colony built on the dispossession of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, we stand in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle for liberation and against Israeli settler colonialism.”

Overall, Abdel-Fattah is among a number of pro-Palestinian academics who have used university platforms to advance arguments that portray Israel as a colonial or illegitimate state. In the Australian context, such arguments often draw on the country’s treatment of Aboriginal peoples, framing the Palestinian experience through an analogy with Indigenous Australians. These comparisons are frequently presented without reference to key historical facts, including the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which proposed the creation of both Jewish and Arab states in the territory of the British Mandate. Arab leaders rejected the proposal and launched a war against the newly declared State of Israel that they hoped to win but lost.

Australian higher education authorities and the Royal Commission should examine the role that certain pro-Palestinian academics play in promoting narratives that contribute to antisemitic hostility on campus and beyond.

REFERENCES:

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansard_Display?bid=chamber/hansards/28049/&sid=0007

Chamber

BILLS – Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024 (No. 2)

Senate on 3/07/2024

Item

Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024 (No. 2)

Second Reading

Consideration resumed of the motion:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Senator LAMBIE (Tasmania) (09:01): I want to begin by stating what I’ve already stated in the past: we have a problem with our Australian universities. It seems to me they’re finding their own ideology these days. That’s a matter of fact. They are beyond a joke.

Last year’s Australian Jewish University Experience Survey found that 64 per cent of Jewish students experienced an incident of antisemitism during their time at university. Of these, 29 per cent reported that staff had participated and 70 per cent said that staff were present but not involved. In other words, staff just ignored what was going on. They turned their backs and didn’t have the courage to deal with it. This is where our Australian universities are today. This is where they’re at. Sixty-one per cent of those students said that they didn’t make a complaint because they didn’t think it would make a difference. Nearly half of them said they didn’t make a complaint because their university wouldn’t take it seriously.

I’ve spoken to Jewish academics and students who have told me they feel intimidated and afraid. A student has told me that she tries to hide the fact that she is Jewish and that she feels afraid every time she must walk past one of the pro-Palestinian encampments. In March this year, two Israeli academics who the University of Sydney had invited to speak on campus had to be locked in a room, with anti-Israel activists screaming at them for more than an hour while the university security people were instructed to stand by and do nothing. Also in March, Macquarie University academic Randa Abdel-Fattah said that Zionists had no right to cultural safety, and she helped to spread a leak of the private details of hundreds of Jewish artists. In late April, she and activist group Parents for Palestine organised a kids’ excursion where primary school aged children led each other in chants, including ‘intifada’ and ‘Israel is a terrorist state’.

Senator McKenzie: Whoa!

Senator LAMBIE: Yes. This is what is going on in our own backyard. Our values are being depleted, and people are turning their backs because they don’t have the courage to stand up and stop it. That is where we’re at in Australia in 2024.

This was at the University of Sydney’s pro-Palestinian encampment. You did nothing. You allowed those encampments to sit outside your university and you turned your back. I don’t know what you are selling in those universities, but you are not selling the values of Australians, nor do you seem grateful for the freedoms that you have been given through the blood, sweat and tears of our veterans.

Macquarie University has not condemned this academic. The New South Wales Co-President of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, Danielle Tischmann, said it’s ‘heartbreaking’ to see the University of Sydney allow its campus to become a safe haven for preaching hatred, as she put it. She said:

It’s incomprehensible that students are walking to class hearing young children chanting for violence—

in this country. There are boot camps out there for that. New Zealand is running them today. They said, ‘We’re going to do this.’ By the way, those boot camps can be used for the deradicalisation of these kids. There’s a wake-up call for you. Over on this side, for three months I’ve been discussing with you these boot camps, and the difference they can make to a young person’s life. They have a 75 per cent success rate. They’re not just about young offenders; they can be used for deradicalisation as well. Have a good look. New Zealand is onto it. Once again, you are behind. You don’t want to deal with this.

A University of Queensland associate professor, Yoni Nazarathy, said he had serious incidents of antisemitism happening in front of him. These included the snatching of flags, pouring coffee on signs and using the word ‘Zionist’ in a ‘derogatory and hurtful’ manner. As he put it:

I think that the University of Queensland … is complicit with anti-Semitism … It does not mean that they’re anti-Semitic, but they allow for anti-Semitism to go on campus unchecked …

Once again, no courage. So, yes, we clearly have a problem with antisemitism in our universities, because the universities do not want to deal with it.

Well, I say this to the universities: you’ve got to build some courage, because I can tell you now that, if I were in charge, this is what I would do. I would ask you to put the pressure on these universities. They get millions of dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money, and they can’t behave themselves. They need to be disciplined. They need to know that this cannot happen in this country. Because they have no courage to stand up against this, they’re not carrying our Australian values, and it’s probably time that your government and the minister get tough with them. I would suggest holding up their funding—their grants—until they can start coming into line with Australian values, leading by example and teaching our kids what our values are in this country. Do you over there have the courage to do that? Watch them jump up and down then, if they have no money coming in from Australian taxpayers. I can guarantee that Australian taxpayers do not want that money going in there at the moment.

I will say this time and time again: universities, you are supposed to be places of learning, you are supposed to be teaching our kids the right thing, and you are failing miserably to do so. Universities are supposed to be where the free and frank exchange of ideas begins, but they should never, ever be made safe havens for racists, and that’s exactly what you are doing: you are making your universities safe havens for racists. My goodness!

So, yes, we do need a commission of inquiry into antisemitism at Australian universities, and I’ll tell you what: I wholeheartedly support this Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024.

Senator O’SULLIVAN (Western Australia—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (09:08): I rise to speak on and support the Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024. I thank Senator Henderson for bringing it before us in this way, and I hope that it receives the support that it needs to. I 100 per cent endorse this private senator’s bill. Let me be crystal clear: there is no room in Australian society for antisemitism, period—no ifs; no buts; zero tolerance.

Antisemitism is not new, but since the terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas on 7 October there has been a gradual increase in antisemitic behaviour across this country culminating in the disgraceful behaviour seen recently at our university campuses. Jewish Australians no longer feel safe in their homes, in their places of worship or indeed at their educational settings. Jewish students right now are being harassed and verbally abused at Australian taxpayer funded universities as they make their way to classes. Meanwhile some Jewish schools are resorting to hiring security guards to ensure that their students feel safe in class.

As a conservative I believe in free speech. I support free speech and, of course, freedom of assembly. But with free speech comes a duty and a responsibility. It is not to be misappropriated. The right to protest must not be a cover for intimidation. It shouldn’t be a cover for racism or indeed for religious discrimination. Free speech and the right to protest are not to be used to stir up hate and spread division, but that is exactly what is going on. That is exactly what we’re seeing at university campuses with these encampments.

With a sense of the incredulous, I have watched the Left search for its moral clarity on antisemitism in Australia—the manoeuvring and the hesitation, the ambiguity and the self-doubt. This is not a time for such moral indecision. Now is the time to call out antisemitism when we see it and to call it out when we hear it. As observed by Greg Craven in a column in the Australian on 11 May:

Why are people who endlessly propound human rights—

that’s what we hear from the Left all the time—

revile racism and foster gender diversity so negatively obsessed—at best—with one of the smallest, historically most persecuted minorities in the world?

Why indeed.

Where has the university leadership been during this time of crisis on their campuses? Why have they been so silent and so quiet? Why have they been so slow to act and call out and condemn the antisemitism that’s occurring on the very campuses that they administer? By way of example, on the St Lucia campus at the University of Queensland, the flag of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was flown at the Gaza solidarity encampment. The PFLP has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States Department of State. It’s been that way since 1997. It’s also considered a terrorist organisation in the EU and in Canada. But there, at the St Lucia campus, the PFLP flag is proudly flying alongside the Aboriginal and the Palestinian flags. This was on the same day a rally locked down two buildings at the university after the protesters stormed the buildings. Meanwhile, over at the University of Sydney, the Gaza solidarity encampment has school aged children chanting ‘intifada’ against Israel and calling Israel a terrorist state.

These institutions are supposed to be settings of academic enlightenment and educational attainment, centres of critical thinking and beacons to society representing the pinnacle of higher education. Yet the silence of university administrators in failing to condemn these antisemitic activities can only draw one conclusion: they condone the radical actions of their students by allowing these protests to go on in the way that they are. It needs to be called out. This bill needs to be supported. Is it any wonder why Jewish Australians are increasingly feeling unsafe and isolated in their own country? The activists’ behaviours on campuses, like those that I have highlighted, only fuel a heightened sense of concern and insecurity. I note that, at long last, at least one university has decided to take action. Deakin University in Melbourne has committed to taking action and clearing the encampments. Other universities must do the same. The time for being idle has passed—it’s long passed. There needs to be more respectful debate on matters currently unfolding in the Middle East. Chanting slogans such as ‘intifada’ and ‘river to the sea’ while conducting other provocative activities at university encampments is not the way forward.

During recent Senate budget estimates, I spoke about having met several Jewish students who had come to see me to express their deep concern about what was happening on their university campus. These students were from the university just down the road here, at the ANU. The ANU has a proud record. It has nearly 7,000 residential students, many of whom are Jewish and Israeli. The ANU has one of the largest percentages of residential students of any university in Australia. But, over the past few months, it’s become a site of pro-Palestine and anti-Jewish encampment.

Each morning, students walk out their front door only to be confronted with protesters camped out on their front lawn. This isn’t just any place for them; this is their home. They don’t have the benefit of being able to go home, of retreating to the comfort or protection of their family and their household. This is where they live. They are putting up with this encampment and these protests and racial taunts every time they walk out their door. The administrators of the National University have a responsibility to ensure that those students are cared for. Every student should be protected, particularly those young students who are in their homes. They live on campus and can hear the taunts. The encampment is just outside their door! It’s unbelievable! It needs to be called out.

This bill needs to be supported so that we can properly examine this issue and so that an inquiry can be set up to properly engage on this issue to see the extent of this happening. These stories should drive us to support this bill. We need an inquiry. This is not the Australian way. Our Jewish and Israeli students deserve much more. These students are 18, 19, 20 years old. They’re just kids, basically. They shouldn’t have to deal with this kind of horrible racial and religious rhetoric.

The ANU showed it was able to move the encampment from where it was. The encampment was in the hub of the campus, where the tavern and the student services are. They moved it from there, but they didn’t move it because that’s where Jewish students interact and that was where they were going to be confronted by this social and emotional harm; they moved it because there was a fire risk. That’s right; they should move it if there is a fire risk—absolutely, move it on—but why didn’t the ANU consider the safety of those students living on campus during the weeks this was going on? They weren’t just there for their contact hours. It was their home! Where was the consideration of their emotional, social and mental safety? None of that was considered. Come on, administrators of universities. You need to take this issue seriously. Students should not have to put up with this.

This bill will establish a commission of inquiry to examine instances of antisemitic activity on campuses both before and after 7 October. It will consider whether the response of university leaders, regulators, representative organisations and others has been adequate. I am pointing out to you today that it hasn’t been. Let’s have an inquiry and check that.

In closing, when laying out the cornerstone for the future site of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in October 1988, which I was fortunate enough to visit in Washington, President Ronald Reagan said:

We must make sure that from now until the end of days all humankind stares this evil in the face, that all humankind knows what this evil looks like and how it came to be. And when we truly know it for what it was, then and only then can we be sure that it will never come again.

The ongoing persecution of Jewish students on university campuses across Australia cannot be tolerated, and I urge every senator in this place with every fibre of my being to please support this bill. Let’s do the right thing. Let’s ensure that protests are able to occur but not in the way that they are. We shouldn’t be seeing what we’re seeing on our campuses. Please support this bill.

Senator KOVACIC (New South Wales) (09:20): I rise to speak on the Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024. I commend my friend in this place Senator Henderson and my friend in the other place the member for Berowra for their work on this incredibly important matter. Before I turn to the matter of university campuses, I want to reflect on this point. As honourable senators would know, Julian Leeser is my good friend. I have worked closely with him for many years in his service of the people of Berowra. Julian has had to deal with many things that other members and senators would never think of, particularly during election campaigns. I particularly remember the 2019 federal election when our campaign office was vandalised and defaced with antisemitic symbols. After that we had to lock ourselves in for our own safety. In 2019, in Sydney, we had to lock ourselves in our campaign rooms for our own safety.

Julian is a proud Jewish Australian, and, as a result, he is targeted by hate and intimidation. This is something that Jewish Australians right across our country sadly have to deal with. But the clear message from the Jewish community is that this is the worst that it has been in living memory. The level of discrimination that Jewish Australians are facing at the moment is extraordinary. It is the worst that I have seen. At its crux, this bill is responding to some disgraceful behaviour that we have seen on our university campuses. What we are seeing is a group within our society who are facing untold amounts of discrimination on the basis of their race at Australian university campuses, places where young Australians go to learn so that they can better contribute to our society.

Unfortunately, we have seen a clear lack of appropriate action from this government. A commission of inquiry, as proposed in this bill, is in stark contrast to the Albanese government’s establishment of a racism study led by the Australian Human Rights Commission into various forms of racism—a study led by the AHRC rather than action now. This study is a woefully inadequate response to campus antisemitism. The AHRC doesn’t have the independence, powers or personnel to adequately deal with campus antisemitism. To make matters worse, the AHRC will not hand down its final report until after 30 June next year. That’s the priority which this government gives this problem. The report is not even due until after the next federal election. This further reflects the government’s weakness in combatting antisemitism on university campuses.

We’re also concerned that the AHRC is not fit to run such a study, as we revealed in Senate estimates. It has failed to expressly condemn the Hamas terrorist attack, and its employees include individuals under investigation for antisemitic slurs published on social media. Let’s think about that. It’s important to also note that the AHRC does not have the confidence of the Jewish community. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the Australian Union of Jewish Students, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, and the Australian Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism all reject an inquiry led by the AHRC and support a judicial inquiry.

For a government that speaks frequently on the importance of consultation and co-design in social policy, it makes me wonder why they aren’t listening to Australia’s Jewish community. Education minister Jason Clare, who should be throwing the book at university vice-chancellors, has done very little here. He has failed to directly condemn the kids’ excursion at Sydney University that encouraged young children—let’s think about this—to chant anti-Israel slogans such as ‘Intifada’ and to participate in a march calling Israel a terrorist state. This is a school activity. This is a children’s activity, on an Australian university campus. These are children.

I think this is something the education minister needs to reconsider. He suggested that terrorist slogans like ‘Intifada’ and the slogan ‘River to the sea’ mean different things to different people. Well, they mean very bad things to Australia’s Jewish community. The minister continues to draw a false equivalence between antisemitism and other forms of racism, such as Islamophobia. The minister has also failed to condemn university encampments which are fuelling antisemitic hate and incitement.

These are Australian government funded campuses. Can we think about this? We are funding these campuses that allow this behaviour to continue unchecked. The coalition has consistently called out the minister for weakness of leadership, raising concerns that he has not shown the moral courage that is needed. This is a time for strong and clear leadership. I understand that the minister has concerns in relation to his own electorate. That’s a separate matter and should not be a consideration here.

On 28 May 2024, the coalition announced that a coalition government would use provisions of the migration act to cancel visas of any student protestors found to be involved in spreading antisemitism or supporting terrorism—and rightly so. That should pretty much be a given, shouldn’t it? Under section 116 of the act, the ministers for Home Affairs and Immigration have significant powers to cancel the visas of any person who is or may be a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Australian community or any segment of the Australian community. Section 501 of the act gives ministers the power to do so if visa holders show contempt or disregard for the law of our country or human rights, including terrorist activities and political extremism and for vilifying a segment of the Australian community or inciting discord in Australia. These laws already exist. Yet there is no evidence that the Minister for Home Affairs, Clare O’Neil, or immigration minister Andrew Giles have cancelled one student visa under the significant powers available to them under the Migration Act. Why? Why have they not acted? How much longer will Jewish students have to fear for their safety when they go to classes at university before this government acts? Let me repeat that: how long do they have to fear for their safety before this government acts?

Australia respects the democratic right to protest and free speech. But we will not tolerate racism, antisemitism or the public support for a terrorist organisation like Hamas. Australians are witnessing a failure of leadership from this government and some university authorities, which have profoundly failed to combat antisemitic hate and vilification on campus. Senator Henderson’s private senator’s bill before the Senate today mirrors the private member’s bill introduced into the House of Representatives by the member for Berowra, Mr Leeser, on 3 June 2024. He has been a leading voice in our parliament in fighting to combat the scourge of antisemitism. I thank Senator Henderson for her work on this as well.

It is regrettable that, despite multiple invitations to endorse this commonsense bill, this government has provided no public acknowledgment of or support for the proposal. They have completely ignored it. I think it’s called ‘ghosting’. This government has provided no public acknowledgment of or support for the proposal. Members of the coalition have directly reached out to the Attorney-General, inviting him to discuss this bill and this issue. He has not responded, despite promises to do so. On behalf of coalition senators, Senator Henderson has taken up the fight for a judicial inquiry by way of introducing this bill into the Senate. We note with concern that the Assistant Minister for Education, Senator Chisholm, said in budget estimates that the government would not support a judicial inquiry into antisemitism on university campuses. Why? I especially ask why given that, in this time, the situation at many universities has become worse. This government needs to act.

The situation at universities includes the endorsement of the horrific actions of Hamas by some academics and students and classroom invasions where those who don’t support activist causes are photographed and vilified for evidence, like something from the 1930s. Think about it. If you don’t do what they want and you don’t stand with them, they’ll take your photo and use it for something down the track. It’s extraordinary. It’s absolutely extraordinary, and it’s happening on Australian university campuses, taxpayer funded campuses. In the face of this weak leadership from the Albanese government against antisemitism on campus, the coalition will keep fighting for what is right. The coalition will not tolerate universities becoming a law unto themselves.

Senator SHARMA (New South Wales) (09:32): I too rise to speak in support of this private senators’ bill—the Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024—to establish an instituted judicial inquiry into antisemitism on university campuses. I think the term ‘antisemitism’ can confuse Australians sometimes, but antisemitism is simply another form of prejudice or discrimination on the basis of race. It is in this instance directed against the Jewish people and the Jewish faith, but it is as worthy of condemnation and as worthy of this parliament’s attention as any other form of discrimination.

Unfortunately, many people, including in this chamber, seem to have a blind spot when it comes to this form of discrimination. They will be virulent and condemnatory, and rightly so, of any other form of prejudice or discrimination they see arise in Australian society, but when it comes to antisemitism, which is directed against a particular part of the Australian community—the Australian Jewish community—these same voices often fall silent. We have seen this far too often in this debate.

Let’s remember what the 7 October terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel involved—the massacre of some 1,200 innocent people—families, women, children and the elderly—and the abduction of some 240, who were taken to Gaza and continue to be held by Hamas. Large numbers of those hostages have since been killed. A number still remain in captivity. These were crimes of a truly barbaric fashion. Young children dancing at a music festival fled for their lives. Some 354 of them were killed that day. More were taken hostage. Others were hiding in a safe room, lying on top of their children, trying to protect them from Hamas gunfire. Bodies were defiled and mutilated. Women were the victims of horrific sexual assault and abuse. All of this has been well documented.

But, strangely enough, after these atrocities the only form of discrimination and prejudice we have seen surface in Australia has not been directed at Hamas or their fellow travellers or ideological supporters; it’s been directed at the victims of these terrorist attacks—Israel and the Jewish people. And, undoubtedly, since 7 October we have seen what is a truly horrifying and unprecedented outbreak of antisemitism here in Australia.

We saw it begin with the shameful protests, if you can call them that, on the forecourt of the opera house on Monday 9 October, a day that was meant to allow Jewish people and other people who sympathise with Israel and the victims of that terrorist attack to gather together in solidarity—not in malice and not with ill will towards anyone, but in solidarity with and remembrance of the victims of 7 October. That event was hijacked by people who instead sought to glorify and celebrate the horrific acts perpetrated by Hamas. We saw that on the night that the opera house was lit up with the colours of the Israeli flag—at the same time, I’d point out, that the Brandenburg Gate, the Eiffel Tower, Number 10 Downing Street and the Washington Monument were. All these other international capitals were able to respectfully honour the victims of that attack. Instead, in Australia, we had a mob descend upon the opera house, we had police forces tell Jews to stay at home and we had people burning Israeli flags, chanting hateful slogans and wishing ill will not just towards Israel but to Jewish Australians as well, uttering phrases which have been the subject of a number of police investigations but in which you could only detect malice and ill will.

Since that time, we’ve seen Jewish individuals, many of whom have no public profile and many of whom have expressed no political opinion or public opinion whatsoever on this conflict, doxxed—that is, had their personal and private details released with a view to them being harassed, being targeted on social media and having their businesses boycotted. We’ve seen the hijacking of theatrical productions to express a political statement in places like the Sydney Theatre Company and elsewhere. We’ve seen religious services disrupted, notably in Melbourne. We’ve seen property vandalised at Mount Scopus Memorial College in Melbourne and many other places. We’ve seen the boycott of Jewish owned businesses. And, of course, on university campuses, we’ve seen similar things.

If this sort of behaviour were targeting any other group of Australians—if it were targeting Coptic Christians, Muslim Australians, the Australian Chinese community or the Australian Filipino community—we would be, in this chamber and outside, united in our condemnation of this and equally repulsed by it. We would be as one as a society in calling out this sort of unacceptable behaviour and in taking resolute action. Instead, when we are dealing here with one of the oldest, most persistent and most virulent forms of discrimination, many of us have fallen silent.

On university campuses in particular, many of us have spoken to Jewish Australian students, and we know how unsafe they feel. We know that they are avoiding classes. We know that, if they are attending universities, they’re seeking to give the encampments a wide berth. We know that, if they ever wear Jewish insignia such as the Star of David, they’re not wearing it today. If they—heaven forbid—wear a kippah, a head covering, they are certainly not wearing that. If they are wearing anything that suggests their Jewish faith or even some element of solidarity with Israel, they are removing that.

The recent survey by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students—which was conducted, in fact, in August 2023, before these October 7 terrorist attacks—already revealed that Jewish students had personally experienced antisemitism on campus. That has only been exacerbated—multiplied, really—by the events since. I was in Israel several weeks ago, and a fact that far too few people know about Israel is that Israel’s population is about 20 per cent Arab-Palestinian. They are full citizens who enjoy the same rights and who attend university in the same proportions as Jewish-Israeli students. You haven’t seen any protests there. You haven’t seen the majority, the Jewish-Israelis, organising encampments or protests on campuses which have Arab academics and Arab students. You haven’t seen Arab students harassed, you haven’t seen Arab students deterred from attending lectures and you haven’t seen them vilified or persecuted. In fact, communal relations between Israel’s Jewish and Arab Palestinian communities have been, in some ways, improved as a result of this attack because of the solidarity they all feel with the victims.

So why are we seeing this on Australian campuses, our own university campuses? Not only have we seen encampments at places like Monash University and the University of Sydney, but we’ve also seen Jewish academics have their classes disrupted, be denied entry to their offices and be subjected to other forms of hate and intimidation. We’ve seen academics at places like Macquarie University actually join the encampments, take children to the encampments, encourage and urge that no Jewish-Australian be allowed to have a safe space and encourage the targeting of them on social media and in other forms. I accept that universities face a difficult task in balancing freedom of speech and freedom of expression on campus. I’ve met with a number of vice-chancellors in my home state of New South Wales and discussed these issues with them. I think some of them have handled it better than others, frankly, but what I’ve heard consistently is that they have been looking for some leadership on this issue from the federal government, and they have found that leadership to be profoundly lacking.

You’d be aware that a number of university vice-chancellors wrote to the Attorney-General some months ago, seeking his legal advice, particularly around phrases like ‘from the river to the sea’, but the Attorney-General pushed it back on them and said, ‘It’s up to you to figure this one out.’ Rather than telling universities to clamp down resolutely on this and to make sure campuses, whilst tolerating free speech, remain a safe space for everyone, where students of all faiths, denominations, race and ethnicities can attend without fear, we’ve seen the Minister for Education and Youth not only fail to issue firm directions to the university vice-chancellors but also equivocate about phrases like ‘intifada’ and ‘from the river to the sea’. Jason Clare, the education minister, said that such things can mean ‘different things to different people’, a comment which was rightly disowned and condemned quite quickly by the Prime Minister.

But we’ve seen too much of this, too much moral equivocation, from those in government, who are expected to set the moral tone of the nation. Frankly, we’ve heard too many ‘both-sides-isms’. It’s rare that you hear anyone in government condemn antisemitism without in the same breath condemning Islamophobia. Theoretically, yes, of course they should be condemned together, but, practically speaking, we’re seeing demonstrations only of antisemitism on Australian streets, in Australian civic life, in Australian artistic institutions and on Australian university campuses. Of course, if we see an outbreak of Islamophobia or if I become aware that Muslim students are hesitant about wearing the hijab in public, feel intimidated about attending university classes and are being victimised, harassed or doxxed, I will condemn it just as much as anyone else in this chamber will. But here we are dealing with only one form of discrimination directed against only one sort of people.

In Australia, one of the secrets to our success as a nation is that we have been able to bring together and people this nation with individuals of vastly different backgrounds, different traditions, different religions, different ethnicities and, in many cases, different value systems, and mould them into one. If you were to conduct an experiment and say, ‘We’re going to set up a new country, and there will be an old and existing civilisation, and we’re going to bring people from all corners of the globe, from all different backgrounds, from different socioeconomic strata and with different professional skills, different life experiences, different religions, different faiths and different ethnicities and put them all together,’ most people would think you were creating a recipe for social division and disharmony.

We’ve succeeded in spite of that because we’ve firstly demanded that everyone becomes Australian—that is, adopt, accept and promulgate Australian values. Whilst remaining true to their own heritage, their Australian identity must take primacy, and adherence to Australian laws and values must take primacy. We’ve also been very resolute in not allowing the importation of foreign conflicts and the tensions they bring into Australia. We are failing on this score right now because we have allowed people whose emotions can understandably run high as a result of the conflict in the Middle East to bring those emotions into Australia and to use them to target their fellow Australians.

Australians all enjoy—and this is one of our joys as a nation—equal civil and political rights. They should enjoy equal rights to be free from discrimination and harassment, equal rights to express their political opinion without intimidation or fear and equal rights to go about their lives—to conduct businesses, to study at universities, to attend artistic productions and to identify themselves as of a religion or a faith. Our Jewish Australians certainly deserve those rights, but those rights have been eroded over the events of the last several months, and what we have been seeing, frankly, in Australia is redolent of 1930s Germany.

Antisemitism in Germany began with schoolteachers and academics being harassed in university campuses and forced to leave their jobs and with Jewish students being forced away from universities. It then escalated into the targeting and boycotting of Jewish businesses, property defacement, harassment and intimidation. We have been seeing all those same precursors here in Australia. In 2024 in Australia, we are seeing pictures that are redolent of 1930s Germany. That should be alarming to all of us because it is making one community of Australians feel unwelcome and unsafe—a community of Australians who, incidentally, have made a massive contribution to Australia in all spheres. Some have come from some of the most humble and fearful backgrounds, many of them Holocaust survivors, and have helped build this nation. Not only are we endangering their own lives and eroding their rights as Australians but we’re risking the very social fabric of our nation by failing to stand up to this.

I support this private senator’s bill because I believe it will give the guidance to university vice-chancellors that they need to deal with this issue resolutely.

Senator BRAGG (New South Wales) (09:47): I rise to make some supportive comments in relation to Senator Henderson’s private senator’s bill. It concerns me that one of the consequences of us living through a period where the country has a low level of ambition and has failed to address division in our own community, is that minority groups have been treated unfairly. This has been a very difficult time to be a Jewish Australian. Since October 7, it would have been one of the most difficult minority groups of which to be a member. That is a great shame for our country because the mark of a good society is how it treats minority interests.

We are all Australian, and we are all able to take pride in our country, but the mark of how we treat minorities is so terribly important. It was with great shame and embarrassment that after the October 7 attacks on Israel—the greatest loss of life amongst Jewish people since the Holocaust—we saw the scenes of celebration in Sydney at the iconic Sydney Opera House. Fancy that—celebrating the deaths of people, of our fellow humans. That was a real low point. Regrettably, I have to say, there has been a huge spurt of antisemitism throughout our community since October 7. It is undeniable that the threats against Jewish people for the crime of being a Jew have not been properly investigated and subjected to enforcement. I’m very disappointed that the state criminal code in my own state of New South Wales has not been enforced to protect people who have been vilified and threatened just for being Jewish. This is a great shame. Right now, the lesson from history is this: don’t think it will end with the Jews. It will spread and metastasise, and this is a huge failure of leadership and of law enforcement to be specific about it.

This bill, of course, deals with a judicial inquiry into antisemitism in our university campuses, and we know this has been a major problem for students, academics, teachers and staff at universities. It has been well documented that the University of Sydney completely capitulated to the demands of the activists on campus and has subjected the university’s governance and investment arrangements to activists, who can pore over the internal affairs of the university.

This is another example of Israel being treated very differently to other countries around the world. We hear a lot from the crossbench, particularly in this place, about Israel, but we don’t hear a lot about Russia and other countries. The reality is that there is a strong equivalence between what is happening in Ukraine and what has happened in Israel. We hear a lot about how the war is going in Israel, and everyone in this place feels for our fellow humans and the loss of life, but we also fear and feel for the people who are living through a similar conflict about borders and security in Ukraine.

The attempts to change Australia’s foreign policy, I think, are obvious to everyone. Australia is part of the liberal democratic alliance, and it is very important that we maintain fidelity to that alliance, because if we give up on the security of one of our partners then how can we expect our partners to support us? That is a very important point for us all to reflect upon. If Australia that had been attacked in the way that Israel has been, would we honestly expect that our government would take no action to defend the lives of Australians? I think the answer to that question is no.

This bill would establish a process where a judicial inquiry would be able to get to the bottom of what has happened at the universities. The universities have been in the main, I would say, indolent and weak. I call out the University of Sydney for particular attention here, because their capitulation to these activists sets a very worrying precedent.

As I said at the start of my remarks, we have always been a country which has protected minority rights and interests. In relation to Jewish Australians, after the Second World War Australia went out of its way to ensure that Jewish people who had fled the Holocaust and Nazi Germany could be resettled in our country. These people, in the main, have gone on to make an outsized contribution to our country. It is very important that, in protecting those minority interests, we set and maintain a standard that would apply to all Australians, so I say to all my colleagues here in the Senate: we need to tread very carefully here, because if we set a standard whereby one group or one minority interest is not worth preserving and protecting then what message are we sending to everyone else?

I think it is absolutely disgraceful that it has had to come to the point where the Senate is effectively considering stepping into the shoes of the universities, who have failed to protect Jewish students and teachers. It has been a very hard time to be a Jewish Australian, and I think that is a great shame for us all, particularly given the history of this country, as I say, in resettling Jewish people after the Second World War, but also given our outsized role in establishing the State of Israel after the Second World War and the role that Doc Evatt and other people in the Labor movement played in making sure that that happened. I have to say that I think that if Bob Hawke were still with us we would have been in a much stronger position to be able to repel some of these terrible things that have happened.

Leadership is about calling out poor behaviour and ensuring that it is not repeated. I think we’ve now had eight or nine months of appalling behaviour happening in our community and attempts to change our foreign policy for the worse. This has been allowed to run and run. Leadership is about calling out poor behaviour, correcting it and then endeavouring to bring us all together. There is far too much division in Australia and too little ambition.

Senator SCARR (Queensland—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (09:56): I rise to speak in favour of this private senator’s bill, the Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024 (No. 2), and I congratulate my dear friend and colleague Julian Leeser MP for his role in advocating for this and also, of course, Senator Sarah Henderson, who has been at the forefront of this debate. I’ll make a number of points in my contribution.

What I want to do at the start is respond to the point which has been made by some members who’ve spoken against this bill. They ask: why have an inquiry that looks just at the rise of antisemitism in our universities and at how universities have managed that issue? I say this to you: quite simply, our Australian Jewish community is asking us, the Australian parliament, to convene this inquiry. When any part of our community—our society—exhorts us to establish an inquiry into issues relating to their victimisation and to the intimidation and harassment of that group and looks to us, the Australian Senate, to lead the way and to set up a judicial inquiry with appropriate powers and appropriate impartiality to look into an issue that is of particular concern to them, I think we have a moral obligation to reflect very, very carefully on that request, wherever it comes from.

I want to quote from the representatives of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which is the federal representative body of the Jewish community in Australia. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry is the peak body. This is what they’ve said in relation to this private senator’s bill:

A judicial inquiry, as originally called for in May by Mr Leeser, would allow Jewish students and staff to give evidence in a closed hearing, without having to fear reprisals from the fanatical fringe of anti-Israel or Jew-hating students, or victimisation from anti-Israel and antisemitic faculty members. There would be no opportunity for political grandstanding by any party, and the sole focus would be on getting to the truth.

I’ll just focus on some elements of that statement made by our Jewish community in calling for this inquiry, calling for this bill to be passed. There is a fear that, if Jewish students and staff are not provided the opportunity to give evidence in a closed hearing, they will be subject to reprisals and further intimidation. This is very sobering. I say to those opposite: you should carefully consider your position before you vote against this private member’s bill, because the Australian Jewish community is calling for this judicial inquiry into antisemitism on our campuses and how our universities are managing this issue. That’s the first point.

The second point I would like to make is that, on the same day that Julian Leeser MP announced his intention to bring forward his bill, I attended my old university, the University of Queensland, at the invitation of the organisers of Camp Shalom to engage in a silent protest with them in response to the antisemitism they were seeing on my own university campus. I participated in that night-time silent protest. We went silently to the building of the office of the vice-chancellor and held up signs that simply said, ‘Keep us safe.’ That’s all the Jewish students and academics were seeking: a commitment from the university to keep them safe. Even in the course of us engaging in that silent protest, there was vile abuse directed at the students and the faculty members participating. Even in the course of that silent procession, there was vile abuse. I commend all the participants in that silent protest for their discipline in terms of ensuring that they didn’t do anything to respond to that vile abuse. There was dignity in that silence.

I subsequently wrote to the vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland, Professor Deborah Terry, and told her about what I had witnessed on my university campus. I also conveyed to her the fact that Camp Shalom, the Jewish camp on the University of Queensland, was subject to vile acts of intimidation that very night after I left. I read a heart-rending email from a student at that university who was in the camp with his two-year-old son about the impact of that on his two-year-old son and how heartbreaking it was for him. That was on my university campus.

I also referred to the fact that there’d been a terrorist flag flown on the university campus, the flag of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP has been declared a terrorist organisation by a number of our closest allies. They’re responsible for aircraft hijacking, kidnappings, assassination and murder—absolutely despicable. A terrorist flag was flown on my university campus. There was also the incident relating to intimidation of a UQ academic where a protester went into their office and urinated in their office and called on them to resign. We have seen it all—swearing, flag stealing and sign tearing. We’ve seen all of it.

Then what did the University of Queensland do? It entered into an agreement. It gave a commitment to the protesters who are in the other encampment. It issued a statement of commitment dated 1 June 2024 to those other students. In that commitment that goes for three pages—I have it here—it doesn’t even mention antisemitism. They couldn’t bring themselves to even mention antisemitism. That’s my university. In the context of this debate, they couldn’t bring themselves to even mention antisemitism. It’s absolutely disgraceful.

This is what Camp Shalom member and liaison for the Academic Alliance Against Antisemitism, Yoni Nazarathy, said. These are the words of a Jewish academic at my university:

… seems like a commitment for keeping the door open to more harassment, vilification, hate speech, and anti-Semitism on campus. The university has had a very slack response to a series of hate and vandalism events on campus during the past month.

With this, the statement negotiated with the anti-Israel camp has no explicit mention of anti-Semitism—

extraordinary—

and opens the door for a series of more demands from anti-Zionist protesters.

As such, the contributors to Camp Shalom have agreed to physically set up the camp on campus during the graduation days, July 8 to 12, in protest.

Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies President Jason Steinberg said the university’s decision to acquiesce to the protesters was absolutely abhorrent. He said:

What they’ve done is opened the door for anti-Israel, anti-Semitic activists to change the policies of the university … which was already an unsafe place for Jewish people; now it’s an even more unsafe place.

Following that, alumni of the University of Queensland have written an open letter to the Chancellor of the University of Queensland, Mr Peter Varghese, and the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deborah Terry. The letter says:

Whatever anyone’s view about the current war between Israel and Hamas terrorists, there is no excuse for bringing the hatred of that war into Queensland. That’s what the anti-Israel supporters on your campus are doing in Queensland—they are directly attacking Jewish staff and students through their words, graffiti, posters and violent acts.

One of the signatories to that letter—and I commend him for it—is previous Chief Justice and Governor of Queensland, Paul de Jersey, an outstanding Queenslander. He has raised this issue as a former Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court and as former Governor of Queensland. This is an issue of grave, grave concern to the Jewish community in Queensland and to the Jewish staff and academics at the University of Queensland.

I call upon the Labor party to reconsider its position if for no other reason than because the Jewish community of Australia is calling for this bill to be passed. How can you stand in the way of a bill calling for a judicial inquiry into antisemitism on our university campuses and the management of that policy? How can you stand in the way of that inquiry when the Australian Jewish community is united in calling for it?

I commend the mover of the bill, and I certainly look forward to supporting it.

Senator NAMPIJINPA PRICE (Northern Territory) (10:07): I stand to support the Commission of Inquiry into Antisemitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024 (No. 2). I was brought up in a household with a parent who was a history teacher who taught me the importance of understanding not only our nation’s history but also world history, because our history teaches us what we should do in order to avoid atrocities from occurring. We, as an entire world, understand what the Jewish people have endured through world history. Yet, here we are, in Australia, in 2024, where there has become a huge rise in antisemitism throughout our democratic nation and, of particular concern, in our education institutions. Universities are supposed to be a place of learning, challenge, academia and safety, where our young people can learn within an environment where everyone is treated equally and where they don’t have to be subjected to racism or prejudice.

In our past we have been victim to terrorism. We can all think back to the Lindt Cafe incident not so long ago. Following on from the Lindt Cafe incident, our Australian community was encouraged to ensure that we did not subject our entire Muslim community to any kind of prejudice. However, that same attitude or respect has not been applied to our Jewish community in this country, and, most importantly, in our universities.

I would hate to think what would happen if the same sorts of behaviour were projected towards Indigenous students. Imagine that. Imagine the outcry, the uproar and the calls of racism that would take place. But for some reason in Australia in 2024, it has been acceptable for terrorist flags to be flying out the front of our universities and for terrorist chants to be used at the front of our universities.

Let’s look back to history, shall we? It really wasn’t that long ago, in 1926, that the Nazi Party founded the National Socialist German Students’ League. Part of their role was to foster ideological training of young people on university campuses. This is where it all begins. If we don’t stand up and recognise the signs now as to where this can all go, then we are not learning from history.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Chandler ): Order! Senator Nampijinpa Price, the time for consideration of private senators’ bills has expired. You will be in continuation when debate resumes.==========================================================================

https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/research-funding-body-suspends-grant-to-pro-palestinian-academic-20250227-p5lfl2

Research funding body suspends grant to pro-Palestinian academic

Julie Hare

Education editor

Feb 27, 2025 – 5.04pm

A controversial pro-Palestinian academic at Macquarie University who has made public anti-Israel statements has had her $870,000 grant suspended by the Australian Research Council.

In 2022, Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah was awarded $870,269 by the ARC to conduct a study titled “Arab/Muslim Australian Social Movements since the 1970s”.

Three years into the four-year grant, the university now has to prove to the ARC that the money has been used appropriately and for the purposes intended.

If it cannot, the money will need to be repaid to the research council.

Abdel-Fattah became the centre of media attention last year after she made numerous anti-Israel statements on social media such as, “If you are a Zionist, you have no claim or right to cultural safety”.

Education Minister Jason Clare asked the ARC to look into her research grant and whether it was being used appropriately.

During a federal inquiry into antisemitism in February, Macquarie University vice chancellor Bruce Dowton was grilled over whether Abdel-Fattah was still employed or had been disciplined over the statements.

The parliamentary committee is inquiring into antisemitism at universities following the establishment of protest camps on some campuses in the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel on October 7, 2023.

Dowton told the inquiry that the university was engaging with the ARC over whether the grant was being properly managed and complied with the terms of the agreement.

When asked on Thursday whether Abdel-Fattah was still employed, a Macquarie University spokeswoman said the institution was “subject to strict obligations of confidentiality and does not comment on matters that could impact the privacy of its staff”.

While Abdel-Fattah has her critics, a group called Scholars Against Political Repression sent an open letter to Clare, condemning his request for the ARC to investigate Abdel-Fattah’s grant.

The letter, published on the Overland website, said that “academics who have criticised Israel’s conduct in Gaza have faced relentless attacks”.

“Abdel-Fattah, an award-winning author and leading Palestinian scholar, has been subjected to consistent attacks and attempts to destroy her career, including by shadow minister Sarah Henderson who has been campaigning for the ARC to cancel her research fellowship since April 2024,” it said.

“The role of the education minister should be to defend the independence of the ARC, not to interfere with its operations on the basis of political campaigns.”==============================================================================

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/23/pro-palestine-academic-randa-abdel-fattah-cleared-of-wrongdoing-after-investigation-into-research-grant-ntwnfbPalestinian Australian academic Randa Abdel-Fattah cleared of wrongdoing after investigation into research grant

This article is more than 2 months old

A suspension on the grant was lifted earlier this month, after a 10-month investigation into potential conflicts of interest

Sarah Basford Canales

Tue 23 Dec 2025 06.19 GMT

Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, a prominent academic and Palestinian advocate, has been cleared of any wrongdoing, after an investigation into potential conflicts of interest and spending queries launched amid criticism of her comments on Israel.

The Australian Research Council (ARC) confirmed on Tuesday that a suspension placed on an $870,000 research grant to Abdel-Fattah had been lifted earlier this month. This followed a preliminary investigation by her employer, Macquarie University, launched in early 2025.

Abdel-Fattah had been awarded the funding by the ARC in 2022 and was commissioned to research Arab and Muslim-Australian social movements.

But the education minister, Jason Clare, wrote to the ARC in January to investigate her research grant as a “matter of priority”, after Abdel-Fattah told an anti-racism symposium she looked to ways to “bend the rules” and “subvert them”.

He did so after Abdel-Fattah said she had refused an ARC requirement to hold an academic conference as a condition of her grant, instead inviting women to contribute revolutionary quotes.

The prominent academic has previously faced criticism from the Coalition, some Jewish bodies and media outlets for controversial comments on Israel, including alleging Zionists had “no claim or right to cultural safety”.

On Tuesday, Abdel-Fattah took to social media to confirm her research would continue following the investigation.

“After a 10-month exhaustive, rigorous investigative process, I have been cleared of all allegations raised against me and my employment suspension has been lifted and my ARC Future Fellowship reinstated,” she said.

“I can finally resume my work with community Elders, artists and knowledge holders.”

The university’s 10-month investigation looked at the code of conduct for responsible research, and included an examination of the appropriateness of expenditure and the disclosure of potential conflicts of interest.

It engaged two internationally respected academic leaders to contribute to the assessment.

A spokesperson for Macquarie University said the ARC indicated the investigation “satisfied their concerns”, and subsequently lifted the grant’s suspension.

“Based on the rigorous process undertaken and the information considered in the assessment, the university has determined there is no basis for any further investigation of the concerns raised by the ARC,” they said.

“The assessment has been thorough, evidence-based, based on best practice and followed due process.”

The ARC’s chair, Prof Peter Shergold AC, told a Senate estimates hearing in February the council had been engaging with Macquarie University “for a year” on the academic prior to media reporting and the minister’s letter.

“The ARC, every year, investigates 10, a dozen, sometimes more, grants to make sure they are administered appropriately by the university that is responsible,” he said.

“This is not an issue about freedom of speech … it’s about the acquittal of public funds.”

– Additional reporting by Caitlin Cassidy
===============================================================================

https://www.smh.com.au/national/pro-palestine-kids-event-accused-of-emotional-child-abuse-20240429-p5fney.html

Pro-Palestine kids’ event accused of ‘emotional child abuse’

Ben Cubby

April 29, 2024 — 5:17pm

Organisers of a children’s pro-Palestine event held at the University of Sydney have been accused of “emotional child abuse” by a Jewish group, as a divisive debate about the role of children in protests escalates.

During Friday’s event, primary school-aged children participate in chants including “5, 6, 7, 8, Israel is a terrorist state” and calls for intifada, or uprising. It was billed as a “kids’ excursion” to a pro-Palestine encampment at the university, and footage showed children engaged in craft workshops, colouring in posters and face painting of Palestinian flags as well as chanting.

Children led chants using megaphones.Twitter / X

Macquarie University academic and author Randa Abdel-Fattah, who spoke at the event, defended the children’s chants on Monday with a statement posted on social media sites Instagram and X.

“We offered them the megaphone to lead chants of their choosing, hoping to give them a sense of agency in a moment of distress,” Abdel-Fattah said.

“The ones who jumped at the opportunity had been to the weekly rallies for over seven months, observing and participating in chants and calls for justice, freedom and an end to the slaughter. Our children refuse to accept that their siblings must be condemned to be killed by Israel.”

She said it was “reprehensible … to portray the compassionate, brave children who attended as radicalised and violent extremists”.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry responded to Abdel-Fattah’s comments, saying children were too young to properly comprehend the issues and were being indoctrinated.

“Children under the age of 10 years do not spontaneously burst into ugly political chants that call for an intifada and delegitimise other nations,” the group’s co-chief executive Peter Wertheim said.

“They are taught to do these things by adults. To suggest that this gives the children ‘agency’ is risible,” he said in a statement.

“In truth these children are being indoctrinated and used for a political purpose that they are too young to genuinely comprehend. This is a form of child emotional abuse and ideological conditioning.”

Abdel-Fattah was approached for comment.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group representing state-based Jewish organisations, takes a staunchly pro-Israel line on the current war and has previously criticised Abdel-Fattah for her activism.

Their criticisms of her have been taken up by conservative commentators, but not all Australian Jews share their views.

Dr Elizabeth Strakosch, co-executive officer of liberal Jewish group the Jewish Council of Australia previously said in relation to the protest: “We should be proud of all of the students and children, many of whom are Jewish, who are speaking out against this unfolding genocide. We all seek to raise our children with a strong sense of values and what is right and wrong in the world.”

A statement from the organisers of the excursion, Families for Palestine, said the event was a “peaceful gathering of multi- and no-faith people to educate children about social justice and solidarity, especially amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

The current war in Gaza was sparked when Hamas militants crossed the Israel border and killed about 1200 people and took another 250 hostage.

More than 34,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Israel’s air and ground offensive in Gaza, according to local health officials, who say about two-thirds of the dead are women and children.

Ben Cubby is an investigative reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.

==================================================================

Time to combat ugly tide of hatred at Australian universities

29 April, 2024

Time to combat ugly tide of hatred at Australian universities

The vice-chancellors of two of Australia’s most prestigious universities must expel students and call in the police to combat an alarming rise in antisemitism on campuses.

In the face of escalating harassment, intimidation and threats of violence by pro-Palestinian activists, the University of Sydney and University of Melbourne are failing to act against this ugly tide of hatred.

These universities have strong policies to safeguard students and staff, but are failing to take appropriate action.

The protest encampments must be dismantled.

The weakness of the universities is surpassed only by Education Minister, Jason Clare, who has been missing in action.

If he can’t do his job and throw the book at universities which fail to keep people safe on campus, he should resign.

Minister Clare has even refused to directly condemn the “kids’ excursion” at Sydney University which encouraged young children to chant anti-Israel slogans such as “intifada” and participate in a march calling Israel a terrorist state.

This indoctrination of children not only fuels hatred and division, but puts their well-being at risk.

I also call on Minister Clare to cancel a taxpayer-funded research project awarded to Macquarie University academic, Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, after she led children at the protests.

Australian taxpayers should not be providing $837,000 to an activist academic who has engaged in such appalling conduct.

=============================================================================

Click to access Letter_from_Senator_Henderson_to_Minister_Clare.pdf

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https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/NCGP/Web/Grant/Grant/FT220100427

Grant

ARC Data Portal/
Grant

FT220100427 — Macquarie University

Summary: Arab/Muslim Australian Social Movements since the 1970s: a hidden history. This project will be the first study of a neglected but constitutive part of Australia’s social movement history: Arab/Muslim Australian social justice activism. It aims to recover previously untapped oral histories and rare archival collections of Arab/Muslim Australian activists working in anti-racism, anti-war and feminist social movements from the 1970s to date. Expected outcomes include new knowledge about how this activist community has struggled against external systems and internal conflicts to build a socially just future in multicultural Australia. Anticipated social and cultural benefits include a greater understanding of the transformative activism of communities whose movement work is often relegated to the margins.

National Interest Test Statement:In a world characterised by vast inequalities, we are witnessing urgent local and global debates on how marginalised communities can work together across social justice movements. The project aims to investigate how Arab/Muslim Australian activists, working in anti-racism, anti-war and feminist social movements from the 1970s to date, have mobilised a range of diverse groups (such as Indigenous activists) to establish partnerships that impact local, national and global politics. Through a public exhibition that will tour Australian museums, an open-access website and writing workshops with marginalised communities, the project will demonstrate the importance of social justice activism as part of Australia’s history and how it shaped Australia’s current democratic and political culture. The study will provide significant social and cultural benefits to members of the wider Australian community by offering a roadmap for how contemporary minority communities can work to build a socially just future in multicultural Australia and negotiate the politics of exclusion and inclusion and nurture united relationships.

Scheme Name:

ARC Future Fellowships

Status:

Active

Funding Commencement Year:

2022

Project Start Date:

1 January 2023

Anticipated End Date:

28 May 2028

International Collaboration:

England; Turkey; United States of America

Primary FoR Code:

4410 – Sociology

FoR/RFCD Codes:

441004 – Social Change
441013 – Sociology of Migration, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism

SEO Codes:

280123 – Expanding Knowledge In Human Society

At Announcement

Funding:$802,000.00
Investigators:
- Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah (FT)
Organisations:
- Macquarie University

Current

Funding:$889,275.00
Investigators:
- Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah (FT)
Organisations:
- Macquarie University

========================================================

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/whos-afraid-of-bds-israels-assault-on-academic-freedom/10099544

Who’s afraid of BDS? Israel’s assault on academic freedom

Randa Abdel-Fattah

Posted 30 Oct 2013

By suing an Australian academic, Israel is trying to export its brand of oppression. For Israel is no stranger to dismantling human rights in order to stifle criticism of its racist policies.

Australians who care about academic freedom and freedom of speech should be very concerned by Israeli efforts to undermine values that remain fundamental to our democracy, and to demonise supporters of Palestinians and human rights.

I am one of 2000 Australian and international human rights advocates from some 60 countries who signed a pledge supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and offering to be a co-defendant in any legal action taken against Professor Jake Lynch from the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies. On Tuesday, Shurat HaDin, an Israeli based law centre, filed a case in the Federal Court of Australia against Professor Lynch, claiming he has supported policies which are racist and discriminatory by his specific endorsement of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and individuals representing them. Jake Lynch has refused collaboration with Hebrew University because of its support of the illegal occupation of Palestine and close connections with the Israeli armament industry.

There is nothing racist or anti-Semitic about BDS. Efforts to intimidate and defame its supporters are based on a concerted campaign of lies, bullying and deliberate distortions – a campaign directed from outside Australia. United States government cables leaked by Wikileaks show that Shurat HaDin takes direction from the Israeli government over which cases to pursue and relies on Israeli intelligence contacts for witnesses and evidence. While the case against Professor Lynch is to be adjudicated in an Australian court, this is clearly an external political attack on Australian democratic principles and freedoms. By attacking an Australian academic’s right to free speech, to dissent and to support a political and human rights cause of his choice, Israel is exporting its brand of oppression into Australia. For Israel is no stranger to dismantling democratic principles and fundamental human rights in its effort to stifle criticism of its racist policies.

In March 2011, the Israeli Knesset passed a law authorising the Finance Minister to reduce state funding or support to an institution if it engages in an “activity that is contrary to the principles of the state.” Relevantly, the activities include “rejecting the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state” and “commemorating Independence Day or the day of the establishment of the state as a day of mourning.” Whether it is invoking the slur of anti-Semitism against anybody who dares to call Israel to account for its illegal occupation and apartheid practices, or accusing Jewish activists who support justice for Palestinians as “self-hating Jews,” or punishing Palestinians and Israelis alike for commemorating the day they lost their land (the Nakba), Israel is a state that does not suffer criticism of its policies. It is a state that considers itself to be above scrutiny and which enjoys the right to act with impunity, given the tacit, sometimes explicit, approval of Western nations who are all too ready to condone its lawlessness and militarism.

So why is Israel so scared of BDS? After all, it is a military juggernaut and covertly nuclear state. Economically and militarily, the Palestinians do not stand a chance.

The occupation and apartheid machinery have, no doubt, accelerated. But the moral force that used to drive that process is eroding – and this is what Israel is scared about: delegitimation. Israel is rightly worried about the largely symbolic victories to be gained from BDS and the potential for this, over the long term, to erode Western support for Israel’s intransigence and thereby to further isolate it from the family of democratic nations. From Lebanon in 2006, to Operation Cast Lead, to the Gaza Flotilla, to the siege on Gaza, to the bombing of Gaza in 2012, Israel has lost much of its credibility in the eyes of the international community. There is an undeniable shift in the balance of moral power.

Palestinians, by contrast, now occupy the moral high ground and, with the launch of BDS in 2005, they and their supporters have signalled that they will no longer trust in tired political games and a farcical “peace process,” investing instead in a strategy that highlights their moral power, and trusting that justice will be delivered through the collective effort of global civil society.

It is precisely because of the power and effectiveness of BDS that Israel is worried and is willing to go to such lengths as to wage a kind of lawfare on an Australian academic who dared to refuse to host a visiting academic from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The predictable “anti-Semite” and “racist” slurs have been invoked in an attempt to make this an issue about so-called Israeli victimhood, ignoring what BDS is all about and pretending that it has somehow emerged out of thin air – and not because of over 60 years of oppression, brutality and apartheid.

The sheer ludicrousness of accusing supporters of BDS of racism is thrown into sharp relief when one considers that, in 1980, the United Nations passed a resolution urging “all academic and cultural institutions to terminate all links with South Africa.” BDS takes inspiration from the boycotts and divestment initiatives applied to pressure South Africa to end apartheid. It was not racism for international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to support non-violent punitive measures and impose boycotts, including academic boycotts, on South Africa to end apartheid. And it is not racism for a similar model to be applied against Israel for its apartheid practices and continued violations of international law.

Indeed, there is something altogether ironic about an Israeli law centre playing the racism card. How can a state engaged in a racist, outmoded, ethno-religious colonial project founded on ethnic cleansing seriously claim that those who oppose its racism are racist? It is likely that, as the case against Professor Lynch progresses, the smears and distortions will escalate, but many Australians will see through the blatant tactics of intimidation and attacks on freedom of speech, recognising this lawsuit for what it is: a blatant attempt to stifle dissent and criticism of Israel under the pretence of racial discrimination.

Randa Abdel-Fattah is an award-winning author of eight novels. She practiced as a lawyer for ten years, and is now completing a PhD in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University.

Posted 30 Oct 2013

The American Historical Association Vetoed Resolutions Against Israel Again

25.02.26

Editorial Note

One year ago, Israel Academia Monitor (IAM) published a post titled “The American Historical Association Vetoed Resolution Against Israel,” reporting that the General Assembly of the American Historical Association (AHA) debated a proposal called “Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza,” which was subsequently vetoed by the AHA Council on the grounds that it fell outside the Association’s mission as defined in its Constitution.

Last month, the AHA Council again refused to approve two resolutions against Israel proposed in January 2026 during the annual meeting, titled “Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza” and “Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education” which specifically opposes the use of anti-racism/antisemitism allegations to “suppress dissent” regarding the war in Gaza – because they fall outside the scope of the AHA chartered mission.

The AHA Constitution is defined as “the promotion of historical studies through the encouragement of research, teaching, and publication; the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts; the dissemination of historical records and information; the broadening of historical knowledge among the general public; and the pursuit of kindred activities in the interest of history.”

The two latest resolutions were added to the AHA 2026 business meeting agenda by members’ vote on January 10, 2026. Both resolutions were approved by members in attendance at the meeting and were referred to the AHA Council for consideration. According to the Council, “the AHA Council voted not to approve the two resolutions… As worded, the two resolutions fall outside the scope of the American Historical Association’s chartered mission. Approving them on behalf of the entire Association would present institutional risk and have long-term implications for the discipline and the organization.”

The AHA stated it “previously condemned any intentional destruction of academic and educational facilities and historical sites, including in Gaza.” In addition, AHA is providing “assistance to Palestinian historians and has been undertaking extensive work in defense of history and history education.” As part of the AHA’s mission to “defend, sustain, and enhance the work of historians in the United States and abroad,” the Council established in 2025 the Ad Hoc Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians. “This committee provides guidance for the Association’s efforts and complements the AHA’s longstanding partnership with Scholars at Risk and the work of other committees, including the Committee on International Historical Activities.”

An activist group, Historians for Peace and Democracy (H-PAD) (formerly, Historians Against the War), is behind the anti-Israel resolutions. The mission of H-PAD, under the banner of “Organizing for Justice and Honest History,” is to “stand up for peace and diplomacy internationally, and for democracy and human rights at home. We mobilize activists on campuses and in communities across the United States of America, create educational resources for students, teachers and parents, and network with other organizations working for peace and democracy at home and abroad.”

The activists have quite a long history. In 2014, Haaretz published an article on BDS, when Van Gosse, a retired historian who serves as H-PAD’s co-chair, was mentioned as the co-organizer of an AHA roundtable discussion “critical of Israeli policy.”

In another update, the AHA stated that “the AHA Council appreciates the work of Historians for Peace and Democracy and recognizes the diversity of perspectives, concerns, and commitments among AHA members.” Adding, “The AHA Council deplores any intentional destruction of Palestinian educational institutions, libraries, universities, and archives in Gaza.”

Last week, a queer and trans historian under the name “Dana M.,” published an article in Jadaliyya, an Arab Studies Institute journal mostly funded by George Soros, titled “The American Historical Association Veto Should Terrify Queer People.” She begins with describing the AHA annual conference last year, which “voted overwhelmingly (423 to 88) to condemn scholasticide in Gaza.” She then states, “Just over a week later, the AHA Council, a partially democratically elected leadership committee, vetoed the resolution.” She lamented that “Among their stated reasons was a fear of right-wing backlash and potentially losing government contracts.” She described how “Scholars of authoritarianism have long warned of ‘anticipatory obedience’ in cementing the power of fascism.”

She claimed that “If the American Historical Association’s act of obeying in advance is any indication of the state of our institutions going into the second – and much scarier – Trump era, queer and trans scholars (and people in general) should be terrified. Palestine is a litmus test. If the AHA council refuses to recognize a genocide that has played out live on the internet, that has been condemned in the court of global opinion (and in global courts), and which their membership overwhelmingly opposes, how can we, queer and trans scholars, expect them to show even an ounce of backbone in opposing American fascists’ increasingly genocidal rhetoric and plans to ‘eradicate’ us from public life.”

She ended her post by stating, “A smart, liberal, democratic, member-run organization would be working overtime to seek alternative sources of funding and support… To my fellow queer and trans historians: institutions will not protect us. It is up to us to defend our past and secure our future. There is no pride in genocide and the struggle for Palestinian liberation is ours as well. Join Historians for Palestine and Historians for Peace and Democracy. Organize and fight back. To the AHA Council: as scholars and moral beings you are clearly incapable facing our historical moment. Fund Palestinian history. Let members vote. Resign.”

Dana M’s manifesto is both hypocritical and highly misleading. She must be aware that Hamas’s treatment of queer and trans people is severely repressive. Same-sex relations are criminalized under the law. Hamas ideology is explicitly hostile to homosexuality and gender nonconformity, framing them as religiously forbidden and socially corrupting. There are no legal protections for gay or transgender people—no recognition, anti-discrimination laws, or safe avenues for complaint. LGBTQ people generally live completely underground, conceal their identities, or attempt to flee. Over time, many sought asylum abroad or refuge in Israel due to the fear of persecution.

Instead of espousing falsifications about Israel, the pro-Palestinian activist group – which bears the misleading name “Historians for Peace and Democracy” – would be well advised to expose the brutality endured by the LGBTQ community and other human rights abuses by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

REFERENCES:

https://www.historians.org/about/governance/business-meeting/

Response to Proposed Resolutions: Taking Action to Support Historians

The AHA has a broad responsibility to advocate for the historical discipline and to enable our members and affiliates to carry out their own priorities. We are united across our different missions in our shared commitment to furthering historical work. At a time of unprecedented global threats to historical scholarship, the AHA Council is prioritizing direct action to support the discipline and its institutions as a whole.

The Council received two resolutions for consideration at the 2026 annual business meeting: the “Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza” and the “Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education.” The Council has heard powerful expressions from members about threats to academic freedom and the needs of Palestinian historians and appreciates the work of affiliated societies to address these concerns. In response, the Council has taken direct actions on topics addressed in both proposed resolutions. Under its authority to set the business meeting agenda, and after careful review in light of the obligations and realities the AHA faces in its role as a professional advocate for the entirety of the discipline, the Council will not place the proposed resolutions on the agenda.

In our legal obligations as fiduciaries of the AHA, the Council has a responsibility to act in the long-term best interests of the Association, which represents the whole community of historians and their work. This obligation includes the duty of carrying out the AHA’s mission, safeguarding its charter, and sustaining the work of the Association.

As previously announced, and as part of the AHA’s mission to defend, sustain, and enhance the work of historians in the United States and abroad, the Council unanimously supported the establishment of the Ad Hoc Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians. This committee will provide guidance for the Association’s efforts and complements the AHA’s longstanding partnership with Scholars at Risk and the work of other committees, including the Committee on International Historical Activities.

In light of continuing threats to the historical discipline, academic freedom, and freedom of speech, the AHA established the Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom. This committee convenes historians from many institutional backgrounds and other scholars and practitioners with relevant expertise to aid the Association in its longstanding work with affiliated societies and other scholarly associations to advocate collectively for academic freedom.

The Council gratefully acknowledges the work of AHA members serving on committees and working groups and participating in the new Community Action and Resource Exchange network. If you are interested in supporting these or other initiatives now or in the future, please contact us at info@historians.org.

January 11 Update on Business Meeting Resolutions Collapse

Two resolutions were added to the American Historical Association’s 2026 business meeting agenda by members’ vote on January 10, “Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza” and “Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education.” Both resolutions were approved by members in attendance at the meeting and referred to the AHA Council for consideration.

On January 11, the AHA Council voted not to approve the two resolutions that came before the business meeting on January 10. As worded, the two resolutions fall outside the scope of the American Historical Association’s chartered mission. Approving them on behalf of the entire Association would present institutional risk and have long-term implications for the discipline and the organization. The Council is preparing a more detailed explanation for its membership. The Association has previously condemned any intentional destruction of academic and educational facilities and historical sites, including in Gaza. The organization is also taking steps to provide assistance to Palestinian historians and has been undertaking extensive work in defense of history and history education.

FAQs on the 2026 Proposed Resolutions Collapse

The questions below reflect concerns raised by members across the Association about the AHA Council’s decisions regarding proposed resolutions related to Gaza. These are difficult and deeply felt issues, and the Council recognizes that people within the discipline hold strong and sometimes divergent views.

The Council offers these responses in the spirit of transparency and good-faith engagement, with respect for the concerns expressed by many members and for the Council’s responsibility to steward the Association in accordance with its mission, charter, and governance obligations. The purpose of this FAQ is to clarify the Council’s reasoning and the actions the AHA has taken, not to foreclose debate or scholarly disagreement.

Why did the AHA Council decide not to place the proposed resolutions on the business meeting agenda?

In deciding whether to include these resolutions on the agenda, the question before the Council was not whether the situation in Gaza warrants moral concern. It plainly does, which is reflected in our prior statement condemning any intentional destruction of educational institutions in Gaza, in our defense of scholars’ rights to free expression and peaceful protest, as well as in our recent creation of a new committee—unanimously approved by the Council—to provide guidance on the Association’s efforts to aid Palestinian historians and students.

The question instead was whether the Association should use its general business meeting to adopt binding institutional positions on active geopolitical conflicts in ways that would set enduring precedent for the Association—particularly on matters where our membership holds deeply divergent views—and whether the resolutions fell within the Association’s stated mission.

After careful reflection on our mission, governance responsibilities, institutional risk, and the long-term implications for the discipline, the Council concluded that taking on this role would fundamentally alter the nature of the Association and its capacity to serve historians across perspectives and geographies. Especially at a time when the fundamental practice of history and the humanities face existential threats within our own institutions and public sphere, the Council determined that this resolution fell outside what it determined to be the appropriate scope of the Association’s congressionally chartered mission.

In what ways did the proposals fall outside the scope of the AHA’s mission?

The resolutions, as written, would have required the Association itself to take positions and actions that go beyond the scope of the AHA’s congressionally chartered mission and its responsibilities as a 501(c)(3) organization. In particular, the resolutions would have obligated the Association to adopt ongoing institutional positions on an active geopolitical conflict, creating precedent with implications well beyond the immediate case.

The AHA was chartered by Congress in 1889 for a specific purpose: “the promotion of historical studies, the collection and preservation of historical manuscripts, and for kindred purposes in the interest of American history and of history in America.”

The Association can and should take principled, history-focused actions in alignment with this mission, but it must do so in a way that neither undermines its ability to serve a diverse membership nor exposes it to undue legal and financial risks.

Why did the AHA not include these resolutions on the business meeting agenda, yet issued a statement condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and approved a resolution condemning the war in Iraq?

The 2025 and 2026 resolutions are substantively different—both in form and consequence—than the 2007 resolution related to the war in Iraq and the 2022 statement related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The 2007 resolution was far more limited in scope, simply urging individual AHA members “to take a public stand as citizens on behalf of the values necessary to the practice of our profession, and to do whatever they can to bring the Iraq war to a speedy conclusion.” It did not mandate any ongoing institutional statements, actions, or commitments.

The 2022 statement was coordinated and co-signed with 41 other organizations and dealt specifically with Russia’s use of “outlandish historical claims, including an argument that Ukraine was entirely a Soviet creation.” It was not a resolution, nor did it mandate any ongoing institutional statements, actions, or commitments.

The 2025 and 2026 resolutions regarding Israel and Gaza are far broader and mandate specific institutional actions and commitments that go beyond the scope of the AHA’s congressionally chartered mission and its responsibilities as a 501(c)(3) organization.

Why did the AHA create the Ad Hoc Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians? And what is the status of the committee?

Using the Council’s discretion on how to best advocate and support historians while also acting in the long-term best interests of the Association, the AHA has chosen to prioritize concrete, direct action to address the concerns of its members and the broader historical community related to Gaza.

At its regularly scheduled meeting in October 2025, the Council unanimously approved the establishment of the Ad Hoc Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians, which, similar to the body that both the 2025 and 2026 resolutions called for, is tasked with identifying resources and other organizations with whom to collaborate and ultimately presenting an actionable plan for the AHA to aid Palestinian historians and to support educational needs in the region.

This committee’s structure is consistent with the Association’s mission and institutional precedent. It also complements the AHA’s ongoing and longstanding partnership with Scholars at Risk, an organization that protects scholars suffering grave threats to their lives, liberty, and well-being by arranging temporary research and teaching positions and providing advisory and referral services.

The AHA is in the process of appointing committee members, which includes invitations to Palestinian historians, historians of genocide, and archival experts with expertise in human rights.

Does not including the resolutions on the business meeting agenda stifle discussion and debate?

No. The AHA is committed to robust scholarly debate and provides numerous opportunities at the annual meeting to discuss and engage with Palestinian history, genocide, and state violence. These include sessions organized or accepted by the program committee; sessions organized by Historians for Peace and Democracy (HPAD), who submitted the 2025 and 2026 resolutions; and a roundtable on “Historians and the Politics of Genocide Studies,” organized by the Council’s Research Division.

The Council’s decision concerned the use of the business meeting as a mechanism for adopting binding institutional policy, not the substance or legitimacy of scholarly debate.

Why did the AHA allow similar resolutions on the agenda in 2025?

The AHA initially allowed the 2025 resolutions to proceed in recognition of the depth of member concern and in good-faith engagement with members’ desire for action. Following the business meeting, however, the Council concluded that adopting the resolution as institutional policy would exceed the Association’s chartered mission.

Why did the Council veto the 2025 resolution that was approved by members present at the Business Meeting?

Under the AHA’s governance structure, the Council retains responsibility for ensuring that actions taken in the name of the Association comply with its legal obligations and mission. After careful review, the Council determined that implementing the resolution as institutional policy would exceed the Association’s chartered mission.

While the 2025 resolution was vetoed, the Council also asserted that the AHA “deplores any intentional destruction of Palestinian educational institutions, libraries, universities, and archives in Gaza.”

What other actions has the AHA taken related to the war in Gaza and the impact on Palestinian historians and educational facilities?

For years, the AHA has been actively involved in protecting both the rights of individual members to speak freely as well as the rights of scholars to study and preserve our past. These include statements and actions defending the right of faculty and students to engage in peaceful campus protests, as well as in support of international students and faculty. On these issues and others, the AHA has deeply engaged in advocacy with other associations across a broad landscape, including K–12 schools, universities, museums, archives, national parks, and others.

These are examples of direct actions taken in response to member requests that can create meaningful change and that also allow the AHA to continue to carry out its work on behalf of all its members.

Can individual historians and affiliated societies still advocate and take positions?

Absolutely. The Council’s decision applies only to what the Association itself formally adopts as institutional policy, and the AHA remains committed to fostering robust scholarly exchange and disagreement within the discipline.

Individual historians, caucuses, and affiliated societies remain free to debate, organize, advocate, and express moral and political positions, and the AHA will continue to defend their right to do so.

AHA Council Letter to Members, January 20, 2026 Collapse

To Our Members:

On January 11, 2026, the American Historical Association’s Council vetoed by majority vote two resolutions that were passed at the January 10 Business Meeting, which was attended by 360 members.

The Council made this decision even as we recognize and deplore the killing of scholars and students and the destruction of archives, libraries, museums, and universities in Gaza. Numerous AHA members as well as international humanitarian and human rights groups have concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. We also express our horror at the violence unleashed by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The loss of life and the destruction of educational and historical resources are matters of grave concern to us as people and members of the historical community.

However, the AHA as an organization is bound by its legal obligations and congressionally chartered mission. As worded, the two resolutions go beyond a specific focus on history and thereby fall outside the scope of the AHA’s mission. As such, approving them would present institutional risk and have long-term negative implications for the organization. It is critical that the AHA maintain its organizational standing, congressional charter, nonpartisanship, and independence, in order to preserve and defend scholarly expertise; support historical research and teaching; and otherwise fulfill our core mission. The AHA supports the historical discipline and historians on behalf of its 11,000 members in the United States and abroad. Our responsibility as Council members is to protect the institution’s capacity and stability so that the AHA can continue to serve the discipline and its constituents into the future.

The Council took concrete action after the 2025 business meeting to respond constructively to the concerns of members and established a Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians. It is our hope that this committee, in collaboration with Palestinian historians, can identify an actionable plan to mobilize members and identify partners with whom we can work to support Palestinian historians and Gaza’s historical and educational institutions. We welcome all with expertise or interest in these pursuits to join in this endeavor.

In response to increasing threats to academic freedom, we also established a Committee on Academic Freedom to support our members and the historical discipline in the face of ongoing and new attacks on teaching and learning. The AHA is committed to defending all historians’ ability to teach, research, and work in their area of expertise, without fear that their evidence-based scholarship and teaching will be construed or attacked as divisive political speech.

The last few years have been extraordinarily challenging, and we all, as historians and individuals, have divergent views about how to identify, prioritize, and respond to threats to our discipline. But there is no question that the threats to historians and historical scholarship—from violence, censorship, and harassment of many kinds—is uppermost in our minds.

We will continue to lead efforts to confront the many threats to history and historians at local, state, national, and international levels as outlined in our fall 2025 Call to Action. Historians’ particular skills—and the work of historical thinking—put us at the center of current crises. We must act collectively to defend the individuals and institutions that make this work possible.

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https://www.historians.org/news/business-meeting-resolution-update/

Update as of January 17, 2025: The AHA Council deplores any intentional destruction of Palestinian educational institutions, libraries, universities, and archives in Gaza. The Council considers the “Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza,” however, to contravene the Association’s Constitution and Bylaws, because it lies outside the scope of the Association’s mission and purpose, defined in its Constitution as “the promotion of historical studies through the encouragement of research, teaching, and publication; the collection and preservation of historical documents and artifacts; the dissemination of historical records and information; the broadening of historical knowledge among the general public; and the pursuit of kindred activities in the interest of history.” After careful deliberation and consideration, the AHA Council vetoes the resolution. The AHA Council appreciates the work of Historians for Peace and Democracy and recognizes the diversity of perspectives, concerns, and commitments among AHA members.

Update as of January 6, 2025: The “Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza” was passed by members attending the business meeting. As per the AHA’s Constitution, article 7(3–5), all measures passed by the business meeting shall come before the AHA Council for acceptance, nonconcurrence, or veto. The AHA Council has begun a thoughtful and vigorous conversation and will make a decision at its next meeting, which will take place within the month.

https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/47115

Jan 15, 2026

We Refuse to be Silenced: The Palestinian Historians Group Responds to the AHA Council Vetoes

By : Jadaliyya Reports

We, the Palestinian Historians Group, are outraged by the American Historical Association Council’s decision to veto two resolutions that members passed by 78 and 79 percent at the AHA Annual Business Meeting on January 10, 2026. The first resolution condemns Israeli scholasticide in Gaza and calls on the AHA to support our colleagues in Palestine. The second opposes attacks on core principles of education, including academic freedom at US universities and the freedom to criticize the US-sponsored Israeli genocide in Gaza.

The AHA Council claims these resolutions fall outside the AHA’s mission and pose “institutional risk” to the organization. They are wrong. It is their vetoes that violate the AHA’s mission. These vetoes are an abandonment of the AHA’s democratic principles and a dereliction of the AHA’s duty to defend academic freedom. With these vetoes, the AHA Council has silenced Palestinian scholars and colleagues, placed historians of Palestine at greater professional and personal risk, and fed rising authoritarianism at home and abroad.

The AHA’s mission is to serve historians in “every historical era and geographical area.” Its guiding principles commit it to take a public stance “when public or private authorities, in the United States or elsewhere, threaten the preservation of or free access to historical sources.”

It has taken such public stances before in defense of institutions and scholars in the US and elsewhere. Yet it refuses to do so for Palestinians.

Over the past two years, Israel’s military has killed, injured, and displaced tens of thousands of our academic colleagues and students. It has severely damaged or destroyed Gaza’s seven universities, six university colleges, and five intermediate colleges, as well as over 100 major archaeological sites. At least 195 historic buildings, 12 museums, 3 historic shrines, 6 public libraries, and 8 publishing houses in Gaza, were destroyed, damaged or looted by Israeli armed forces between October 2023 and January 2024 alone. All of Gaza’s major university libraries were bombarded or burnt, and the same fate befell the major archival and manuscript collections, including the Gaza City municipal archives and the Great Omari Mosque collection. Shouldn’t the deliberate destruction of these irreplaceable historical sources, archives, libraries, and universities demand an institutional response from our professional association?

The Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza has called on us to support Palestinian historians as they retrieve what remains from Palestine’s cultural artifacts and rebuild Gaza’s universities. They have asked us to work alongside them and “to refuse all plans seeking to bypass, erase, or weaken the integrity of our academic institutions.”

The AHA Council’s decision to establish an “Ad Hoc Committee to Aid Palestinian Historians” has no legitimacy, substance or mandate. Without a democratic mandate, and without taking a clear, public stance against scholasticide, such a committee would bypass, rather than support, our Palestinian colleagues.

In contrast to such toothless efforts, genuine solidarity with Palestinians has come from principled historians across the profession: graduate students, early-career scholars, tenured and contingent faculty, K-12 teachers, education unionists, librarians, archivists, as well as museum and preservation experts and curators. In the face of doxxing campaigns, professional blacklisting, and other harms, they continue to speak up and organize against genocide. They understand the inextricable link between scholasticide in Palestine and the rising tides of authoritarianism in the US.

Palestine has become a test of institutional courage, and the Council members who vetoed these resolutions failed that test. They have revealed a disregard for our fellow Palestinian academics and a fundamental contempt for democratic processes. The leadership’s message is clear: they seek to silence us so they can return to a comfortable status quo.

We refuse to be silenced, and we refuse to accept that our colleagues’ lives matter less than institutional comfort. We will win because history—and the majority of historians—are on our side.

Palestinian Historians Group

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AHA Members Support Our Resolutions

AHA Members Support Our Resolutions

Filed under: Announcements

January 14, 2026

We want to share the news of our victories at the recent American Historical Association meeting in Chicago. On Jan. 10, 2026, the AHA Business Meeting passed the Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza by a vote of 282 to 76 and the Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education by a vote of 245 to 62. Barbara Weinstein, HPAD, and Abdel Razzaq Takriti, a member of the Palestinian Historians Group (PHG), gave powerful speeches in favor of the Gaza resolution. Ellen Schrecker, HPAD and Sherene Seikaly, PHG, spoke forcefully for the academic freedom and free speech resolution. This success was the result of the ongoing collaboration among Historians for Peace and Democracy, the Palestinian Historians Group and Historians for Palestine and months of mobilization before the 2026 AHA conference and at the meeting.

Our victory was short lived, however, for on Jan. 11 the AHA council vetoed both resolutions. In a statement on the AHA website, the Council said both resolutions fell “outside the scope of American Historical Association’s chartered mission.” Yet, according to the Guiding Principles on Taking a Public Stance, “the AHA has the responsibility to take public stands” in a variety of situations, including “when public or private authorities in the United States or elsewhere threaten the preservation of or free access to historical sources.” The AHA leadership said approving the resolutions would result in “institutional risk” but did not specify what sort of risks they feared, how they had been assessed, or who was determining them. The AHA further said the resolutions would have “implications for the discipline and the organization,” but again failed to specify of what sort. Nonetheless, we remain committed to extending solidarity to Palestinian historians and educators in Gaza and to denouncing allegations of antisemitism on college campuses when they are used to restrict criticism of Israel.

This year’s veto follows the veto of the Scholasticide Resolution passed by an overwhelming majority of members at the January 2025 AHA business meeting. It follows the Council’s refusal to put this year’s resolutions on the business meeting’s agenda, after AHA staff accepted them as they met all the requirements outlined in the bylaws. Only when two-thirds of those attending the business meeting approved a motion by HPAD’s Patrick Manning, a former AHA President, to suspend the rules, was discussion and passage of the Gaza and the Core Principles of Education resolutions allowed. The votes at the well-attended 2026 business meeting reflected the democratic will of the AHA membership. If the Council doubted that, it should have sent the resolutions to the full membership for a vote.

Despite this setback, Historians for Peace and Democracy will continue to work within the AHA to make our professional organization more democratic, transparent, inclusive, and willing to respond to the challenges of our time. The energy and enthusiasm of the working historians at the Business Meeting convince us that conscience-driven activism in the historical profession will flourish. We believe our efforts are part of a broader struggle being undertaken within other disciplinary organizations and academic groups to take a strong stand against political repression.

In solidarity,

Historians for Peace and Democracy

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Click to access New-Resolutions.pdf

Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza

Whereas the U.N. Special Committee on Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People; leading international, Palestinian, and Israeli human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, Al-Haq, and B’Tselem; and the International Association of Genocide Scholars and prominent genocide scholars and historians have concluded that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza; Whereas U.S. military and diplomatic support enables Israeli actions, including providing Israel with $30 billion in funding since October 7, 2023; Whereas U.N. experts have raised alarm over the “intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide.’” This includes bombing Gaza’s 12 universities; destroying over 90 percent of its schools and most archives, libraries, and museums; and killing, starving, and displacing thousands of students, faculty, and staff; Whereas academics in Gaza have declared their refusal to allow this “continuous Nakba” to “extinguish the flame of knowledge and resilience,” and Gaza university presidents have called for “immediate international mobilization to support and protect Gaza’s higher education institutions,” stating: “We are more than buildings—we are academic communities, comprised of students, faculty, and staff, still alive and determined to carry forward our mission”; Whereas Gaza’s nonprofit universities have established a unified Emergency Committee that has articulated concrete priorities for international support; Be it resolved that the AHA, which supports the right of all peoples to freely teach and learn about their past, condemns Israeli scholasticide against Palestine; echoing the call of AHA members at the Association’s business meeting on January 5, 2025; Be it resolved that the AHA, in cooperation with universities in Gaza and their representative bodies, will support efforts to ensure the survival and rebuilding of Palestinian higher education by forming a committee that will pursue the objectives specified in this resolution. Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza Resolution Opposing Attacks on Core Principles of Education Whereas ongoing attacks on academic freedom, free speech, faculty governance, and equity from government officials including the president of the United States, are irreparably damaging education in the United States; Whereas these attacks weaponize allegations of antisemitism and racism to obscure struggles against real problems, justify massive cutbacks, and silence protests against the U.S.-sponsored genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza; Be it resolved that the AHA condemns attacks on academic freedom, free speech, faculty governance, and equity and their specious justifications; it urges all U.S. educational institutions to join in this opposition, and to particularly defend untenured and adjunct faculty and international students who are especially vulnerable to doxxing, firing, and deportation. Be it resolved that the AHA will form a committee to protect academic freedom that will pursue the objectives specified in this resolution.

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https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/46518

Feb 16, 2025

The American Historical Association Veto Should Terrify Queer People

By : Dana M.On January 5, 2025, attendees at the American Historical Association annual conference, representing the largest and oldest organization of historians and history teachers in the nation, voted overwhelmingly (423 to 88) to condemn scholasticide in Gaza. The resolution denounced the “pattern of attacks on schools, universities, teachers, and students in the Gaza Strip,’” including the destruction of all Gazan universities, as well as the targeted destruction of “archives, libraries, cultural centers, museums, and bookstores,” and the near obliteration of “Gaza’s education system,” during the Israeli genocide in Gaza over the past year and a half. Just over a week later, the AHA Council, a partially democratically elected leadership committee, vetoed the resolution. Among their stated reasons was a fear of right-wing backlash and potentially losing government contracts.Scholars of authoritarianism have long warned of “anticipatory obedience” in cementing the power of fascism. If the American Historical Association’s act of obeying in advance is any indication of the state of our institutions going into the second – and much scarier – Trump era, queer and trans scholars (and people in general) should be terrified.

Palestine is a litmus test. If the AHA council refuses to recognize a genocide that has played out live on the internet, that has been condemned in the court of global opinion (and in global courts), and which their membership overwhelmingly opposes, how can we, queer and trans scholars, expect them to show even an ounce of backbone in opposing American fascists’ increasingly genocidal rhetoric and plans to “eradicate” us from public life.

Over the past few years, the American Historical Association has made itself into an active lobbying body, correctly recognizing teaching historical facts as an inherently political project, especially given the centrality of erasing and rewriting History to contemporary fascist and far-right movements. As they state in their last tax filings, the AHA provides the critical service of defending its members’ “academic freedoms” and “access to archives.” They have taken stances on the importance of queer and trans histories, opposed the panic over “Critical Race Theory,” written an amicus curae brief in the Supreme Court Case that ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade, and attacked Trump’s hackey and racist attempts to whitewash US history. For one of dozens of examples of foreign–policy positions, in 2022, the Association condemned Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, in fact actively supporting “Ukrainian nation and its people in their resistance to Russian military aggression.” The Association, moreover, has taken positions explicitly supporting queer and trans people, from a 2015 LGBTQ taskforce, to public statements in defence of queer history, and, more performatively, branding much of their merch in rainbow and trans flag colors.

One refrain that emanated from sympathetic-centrist-types, was a candid worry that the American Historical Association may lose lucrative federal money and projects if it took an allegedly controversial stance on the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The Association requires money to fund its increasingly public political scope and the US government has been a source of some of that money.

This is, to be fair, a scary time to adopt even the most milquetoast resolution in support of Palestinian life and history. At the end of the last legislative session, Congress Passed H.R. 9495, which many have taken to calling the “Nonprofit Killer” bill, terminating “tax-exempt status” for organizations deemed to be supporting terrorism, whatever that means. Even large nonprofits, working across sectors, but especially those like Students for Justice in Palestine, Committee on American Islamic Relations, and American Muslims for Palestine, as well as Jewish Voice for Peace, have expressed existential dread. This bill is part of a broader strategy, outlined in a document titled “Project Esther,” aiming to combat an alleged “Hamas Support Network” ostensibly operating on university campuses across the nation. Conflating hatred of Israel and hatred of America with antisemitism, the project seeks to eradicate pro-Palestine groups from America’s “open society” or its public sphere. To this end, they plan to use financial audits, academic blacklists, and lawfare campaigns, including hate-speech and counterterrorism laws, as well as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). This playbook is not new. Though originally passed to imprison the mob, the RICO Act and domestic terrorism accusations have been thrown at a range of progressive protest movements, especially the climate and racial justice movements.

The worry over the finances of the American Historical Association, however, is either misinformed or disingenuous. With an existing annual revenue of almost $6 million and assets totalling almost $11 million, the AHA’s budget dwarfs those of most other professional organizations in the humanities. Much larger associations, however, have taken much stronger stands. The American Anthropological Association, with $7.8 million in revenue and almost $16 million in assets adopted a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction proposal in 2023, while the American Sociological Association ($7.8 million in revenue, almost $15 million assets) in 2024 denounced the genocide in Gaza and called for defending scholars’ rights to speak out on Palestine.

In fact, this argument does little more than serve to hold queer scholars hostage. It pits us and those few groups the association has deigned to stand up for against Palestinians and their historians. If we want to keep having nice things (in this case an association that feigns regard for our lives) we must play a game of make-believe and at least not publicly reject a near consensus in our leadership that holds a well-documented and already litigated genocide to not be “settled” history.

What this veto actually teaches us is that American Historical Association Council will, when under enough pressure, refuse to stand for what the vast majority of their members believe is just and good. Beneath their ostensibly caring liberal platitudes lies a cold and vicious spinelessness that leaves transgender scholars uniquely vulnerable.

Since entering office, Donald Trump immediately began his onslaught against transgender people. While the worst wildfires in US history continues to burn across California, Donald Trump has issued executive orders banning transgender athletes from competing in sports, erasing the gender-neutral X as a marker on US passports, and legally requiring all people to re-register on their passports with their “god-given” sex “at contraception” (a nod to how anti-trans legislation is also a gateway to attacks on all women and bodies). Meanwhile, from day one, Trump is overseeing an onslaught against DEI initiatives and funding, seeking to eradicate “gender ideology,” alongside other ostensibly subversive ideas out of the government.

At this last AHA conference, we heard story after story of scholars being systematically targeted, harassed, and threatened by the right-wing outrage machine just for being transgender. We heard stories of loneliness and immiseration in Britain. And we heard how already at public institutions in states with proliferating anti-trans laws, professors have been hounded out of their jobs, and have faced doxing and death threats for teaching historical facts that the right wing deems controversial. The Committee on LGBT History even held an open Listening Sessionto try to figure out how the AHA could respond to the rising tides of well-funded and politically powerful transphobia around the world. But to what end? What use is this accumulating archive of transgender suffering?

Republicans, moreover, have long viewed Palestinian and queer liberation as intertwined. Republicans blamed the Spring 2024 encampments (much like the 2025 L.A. wildfires) on a nebulous “woke agenda” ostensibly making campuses unsafe for “regular” people.” Across the country, as the American Association of University Professors tell us in a recent report, we are entering an era of McCarthyist repression. Public university systems across the country are mandating the removal of discussions of “race,” “gender,” and “sexuality,” while the University of Florida system even yoking these anti-gender and anti-DEI efforts to a mass review of courses for any “anti-Israel bias.” In the schizoid mind of a representative “gender critical” City University of New York Emeritus Professor, “The Palestine True Believers and the Trans True Believers,” are one and the same. Conservatives are “pro-Israel and pro-biology,” while both transgender people and Palestinians are “bloodthirsty barbarians” on a Jihad to destroy “Judeo-Christian” civilization.

Indeed, many queer and trans scholars have long been at the forefront of solidarity struggles with Palestinian liberation. There is, notably, a rich and varied tapestry of queer and trans Arab and Muslim life in and around the academy, for whom Palestine is a central concern. By November 2023, over 1200 scholars in queer, trans, and feminist studies had signed onto a letter declaring that “None of us are free until we are all free. Palestine is not an exception. … Our feminism compels us to say: Free Palestine!” Beyond a ceasefire, the letter declared: “End the Siege. End the Occupation. Land Back.” The National Women’s Studies Association, moreover, has gone beyond just calling for a ceasefire (which it did in October 2023), recommitting itself to the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and endorsing the 2024 People Conference for Palestine in Detroit. Over this past year around the world queer and feminist historians have been at the frontlines supporting students on and off campus, where they have also born the disproportionate brunt of administrative backlash. Famous cases include Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian at Hebrew University, Mohammed Abdou at Columbia, Maura Finkelstein at Muhlenberg College, and Steven Thrasher at Northwestern, among many, many others.

These scholars, as do many other queer and trans people, recognize that the Israeli Genocide of Gaza is a genocide of queer and trans people. Over 85,000 tons of bombs raining down (more than all of World War II) do not distinguish between straight and queer people. Up until the eve of the ceasefire, Israel’s blocking of medical aid has led to massive shortages of life-saving HIV medication, while Palestine as a whole was in 2020 already declared an area of “increasing concern” for the spread of the disease. Now, in the wake of the almost entire destruction of Gaza’s one-robust health infrastructure, during which the Israeli military treated medical caches “like weapons depots” and systematically destroyed and denied medical aid, HIV/AIDS is just one of many epidemics roiling across the Gaza strip.

During this genocide, the Israeli army has openly wielded queerness and gender violence interchangeably as weapons. Video of soldiers sexually humiliating and brutalizing Palestinian men has aired on Israeli television, while at least one Israeli soldier sodomized a man to death. As Al-Qaws, a Palestinian LGBT organization has put it, the past year and a half saw the regular outpouring of media of “Israeli soldiers posing with their rainbow flags and other Western gay symbols atop the ruins of our society, alongside genocidaires boasting about their sexual abuse, torture, and rape of Palestinian men, women, and children.” This, in turn, emerges out of years of Israeli policy. This self-proclaimed beacon of gay rights has for years systematically blackmailed queer Palestinians, and sexually tortured the Palestinian prisoners and hostages the state holds at any given time.

As queer people, we must ask ourselves: if the AHA is willing to go so far against their members’ stated beliefs and desires in anticipatory obedience over the potential outcry over us condemning the extermination of queer and trans people in Palestine, what will they do in the face of the powerful anti-trans outrage machine in the United States? Will this council have the moral fortitude to stand with marginalized historians and against American fascism? Will it mobilize any of its millions of dollars in annual revenue and its lobbying arm to protect us? If this vote is any indication, the answer is clearly no. Not unless forced to do so.

A smart, liberal, democratic, member-run organization would be working overtime to seek alternative sources of funding and support, as Trump Administration begins its onslaught against marginalized scholars and people. A courageous organization would support the vast army of precarious, adjunctified workers that sustain our profession. It would use its vast reach and influence in curriculum development to tell stories of Palestinian life, of queer life, of, in short, real history. It would demand more: better history through better working conditions, more funding for the humanities, and clearer ties between history and the present.

Instead historians will remember that in the days before the inauguration of Donald Trump as our President, one of the most powerful and well-respected, not to mention well-resourced, academic organizations in the nation chose anticipatory obedience.

To my fellow queer and trans historians: institutions will not protect us. It is up to us to defend our past and secure our future. There is no pride in genocide and the struggle for Palestinian liberation is ours as well. Join Historians for Palestine and Historians for Peace and Democracy. Organize and fight back.

To the AHA Council: as scholars and moral beings you are clearly incapable facing our historical moment. Fund Palestinian history. Let members vote. Resign.

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https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2014-12-27/ty-article/.premium/bds-opponents-shifting-strategy/0000017f-e695-df5f-a17f-ffdf02b00000

The year BDS became the number one concern for American Jews

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2014-12-27/ty-article/.premium/bds-opponents-shifting-strategy/0000017f-e695-df5f-a17f-ffdf02b00000

The year BDS became the number one concern for American Jews

Posted on December 27, 2014 | Debra Nussbaum Cohen | Haaretz
source

[Note de l’AURDIP] Malgré un parti-pris clairement anti-BDS, cet article du Haaretz illustre le succès du boycott académique dans les campus américains et l’inquiétude qu’il suscite en Israël et parmi ses relais habituels dans les universités.

NEW YORK – This was the year that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement moved to the center of the American Jewish community’s agenda.

While BDS efforts began more than a decade ago and have not reached the level of impact that similar work has in Europe, BDS proponents claim progress.

This academic year “we faced the most organized campaign to demonize Israel and attack pro-Israel students we have ever seen,” wrote Hillel CEO Eric Fingerhut in a Dec. 22nd letter to Hillel International board members. “We were prepared,” he wrote, citing Hillel’s work with nearly 250 campus professionals on communications and other training, and plans to bring many to Israel in January.

The academic sphere is a major focus, with BDS resolutions brought before student governments and graduate student unions, as well as academic associations of college professors. The next attempt will be at the annual conference of the American Historical Association, a 14,000-member group meeting in early January in New York City.

BDS has become a central focus for the organized American Jewish community, which views it as a long-term threat. This year new coalitions were formed and efforts to fight it intensified by countering anti-Israel speakers and events on college campuses with others on the pro-Israel side. A new book of nearly three dozen essays, “The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel,” edited by Cary Nelson and Gabriel Noah Brahm, has just been published.

Prompted in part by last summer’s Gaza war, “we certainly did see an increase in anti-Israel activity in the beginning of the semester but simultaneously we’ve seen a dramatic surge in pro-Israel activism. The movement has never been broader, has never been stronger,” said Jacob Baime, executive director of the Israel on Campus Coalition. “We’re tracking at least 4 or 5 pro-Israel events for every anti-Israel event. Pro-Israel activism by far outweighs anti-Israel activity in the aggregate. There are tons of pro-Israel speakers for every anti-Israel speaker” on a campus, he said.

One of the few BDS resolutions to win endorsement in a college system was at the University of California, whose graduate student union members on December 10th approved a resolution that calls on the UC system and United Auto Workers International union “to divest from companies involved in Israeli occupation and apartheid.” The union has 13,000 members working as teaching assistants and tutors on UC’s nine campuses.

Just over half the 2,100 union members who voted personally pledged not to participate in any research, conferences, events or exchange programs sponsored by Israeli universities.

Another was at Chicago’s Catholic DePaul University, where divestment narrowly won a student referendum in May.

A similar measure was rejected in the City University of New York’s graduate student union.

BDS opponents say in the U.S. “the BDS campaign has been a complete failure. They have not really succeeded in convincing anybody except a handful of students and some professors that this in any way will contribute to peace or improving the lot of Palestinians,” said Mitchell Bard, executive director of the Israeli-American Cooperative Enterprise, a group which brings Israeli academics to American campuses.

“When it comes to campuses, the boycott has been a colossal failure,” he said. “There are roughly 2,000 four-year colleges in the U.S., and in the last academic year there were 16 or 17 divestment resolutions and they lost at least 12.”

Andrew Kadi, an IT professional of Palestinian descent in Washington, D.C., is co-chair of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. In an interview, he took issue with Bard’s description. If “this has been a complete failure, then why is so much money being invested in trying to counter it? All of the explicitly Zionist Jewish organizations in the country seem to be investing very heavily in the millions to oppose BDS,” Kadi said.

“I am not going to sit here and try and paint boycott as the greatest victory success of this year. This is a long-term process. It took 10 to 15 years for these type of campaigns to help end apartheid in South Africa, for those campaigns to have an effect at the policy level.”

Kadi acknowledged that BDS has been far more influential in Europe. “In the U.S., he said, “we still have a long ways to go.”

Death by papercuts

American Jewish organizations are shifting strategy in order to make change in the long term, moving toward building relationships with potential partners rather than being reactive when a new BDS initiative emerges.

“All of the leaders of our community believe we have to broaden our efforts. We all believe that this is not just a Jewish issue, but an American issue,” said Baime. “We’re seeing pro-Israel students active in politics making new allies outside the pro-Israel traditional circles.”

The David Project, for instance, is growing a program that this winter break will bring a pro-Israel student and two or three non-Jewish campus leaders they invite on a trip to Israel. This year it involves 32 campuses. Next year, said Philip Brodsky, the group’s executive director, they plan to involve 40.

“The community has gotten more sophisticated in understanding that every fight doesn’t have to be at the nuclear level,” said Bard. “Different tools are needed.”

“There are reasons to be concerned about growing disaffection from Israel, concern that even if today we have support, 10 years down the road we will have a bigger problem,” said Geri Palast, director of the Israel Action Network. Her network, which supports pro-Israel work at Hillels, JCRCs and non-Jewish groups like churches and black and Latino organizations, is a partnership between Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Center for Public Affairs and has a $1.5 million annual budget.

A decade from now, “will you have a progressive community in America that is no longer as supportive of Israel as they are today because they’ve grown up in this environment? That’s what you have to think about – not the resolution itself.”

“It’s death by a thousand papercuts,” Bard said. “People seem to feel we need to defeat it everywhere so they don’t gain the foothold or confidence they’ll need to succeed.’

Ethan Felson, vice president of the JCPA, the community relations arm of the organized Jewish community, said there should be a positive focus to anti-BDS efforts. “We’re trying to develop a movement in support of peace embodied in two states for two people, not fighting some bogeyman,” he said.

Felson tracks BDS efforts among Christian churches and said that he anticipates divestment resolutions similar to that passed in June by the Presbyterian Church (USA) to be raised in just about every mainline Protestant denomination in the coming year.

Entry point to academia

BDS proponents say their efforts this year have yielded success.

“BDS efforts have been greatly effective,” said Sydney Levy, advocacy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, which describes itself as part of the BDS movement. The decision of Durham, NC, to drop a $1 million contract with G4S, a multinational security corporation, over the company’s work in Israeli prisons and security checkpoints is one reflection of their success, Levy said.

Another is SodaStream’s decision to move its factory from a West Bank industrial park to a town in southern Israel. The home seltzer-maker manufacturer said in November it was moving for purely commercial reasons. But, Levy told Haaretz, that it is “moving out of a settlement shows the success of the BDS campaign.”

Beyond, perhaps, that instance, the BDS fight is not influencing Israeli policy, said JCPA’s Felson. “Even if Israelis are aware of the BDS movement, it’s not a motivator. Israeli leaders make decisions and Israeli voters make decisions based on far more tangible factors like security, their economic interests and political concerns. They’re inured to international isolation. They’re used to the UN and the EU and this one here and that one there saying they should go away.”

BDS has also not impacted Americans’ views on Israel, as a whole. In focus groups with influential non-Jewish Americans “no one knew what BDS was,” said a source, who did not want to be named. “It consumes a lot of our energy but it doesn’t have much reach. We think the whole world is BDS. It’s not so much.”

One arena in which BDS advocates have been notably successful this year is in academia, where being pro-boycott and divestment has become a near prerequisite for progressive bona fides.

“Our contacts on campuses are extremely alarmed at the way the Palestinian issue is being framed as a kind of entry point for people who want to see themselves as defenders of the downtrodden,” said Gideon Aronoff, CEO of Ameinu, a liberal Zionist organization that started The Third Narrative in 2013. This year TTN launched a forum for academics who oppose both the occupation and boycotts of Israeli universities.

“Its ability to become a sort of huckster for being properly left is very worrisome. When it becomes this kind of ideological signifying issue it loses its ability to be countered with factual arguments. That transition has happened this year,” Aronoff said.

The next battle?

At next month’s conference of the American Historical Association, which has 14,000 members, there will be a roundtable discussion by historians “critical of Israeli policy,” said one of the organizers, Van Gosse, and two resolutions condemning Israel will be raised at the business meeting.

Historians Against The War, a group started in 2003 to oppose the American occupation of Iraq, is trying to put the Israeli occupation on the AHA’s agenda.

Their resolutions reprimand Israel for “acts of violence and intimidation by the State of Israel against Palestinian researchers and their archival collections, acts which can destroy Palestinians’ sense of historical identity as well as the historical record itself,” for “refusing to allow students from Gaza to travel in order to pursue higher education abroad, and even at West Bank universities” and its “policy of denying entry to foreign nationals seeking to promote educational development in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

“If you move a large body like the AHA, which has real standing, that changes consciousness and opinion,” said Gosse, associate professor of history at Pennsylvania’s Franklin and Marshall College, and a member of HAW and the AHA. “If we stimulate debate on these issues, that’s what we’re seeking to do,” said Gosse, who has personally donated money to JVP.

The AHA has not addressed international issues in his four years as AHA’s executive director, said Jim Grossman but previously that took a stand on the freedom of scholars in Russia. Grossman declined to share if he is Jewish or pro-Israel, saying, “my views on this are irrelevant. If there are historians whose rights as scholars, whose academic freedom is being constrained then we will speak out on their behalf.”

The AHA would join several other academic associations that have put anti-Israel resolutions on their dockets in the past year, though the AHA is the largest by far. The Middle East Studies Association adopted a policy last month allowing its 2,700 members to boycott Israel. The American Studies Association, with 5,000 members, passed a resolution to boycott Israeli academics and institutions in December 2013, though Israeli scholars were permitted to participate in its conference this year.

The American Anthropological Association rejected an anti-boycott measure at its annual conference last month, instead appointing a task force to bring recommendations to its 2015 conference. The Modern Language Association, which has nearly 24,000 members, rejected an Israel boycott motion at its conference in June.

Some pro-Israel historians members said they are working behind the scenes to try to scuttle boycott efforts at the AHA.

“The notion the AHA will have any effect whatsoever on Israel’s policies in the West Bank or nudging the parties toward negotiations is ridiculous,” David Greenberg told Haaretz. Greenberg is associate professor of history, journalism and media studies at N.J.’s Rutgers University. “There is a worldwide campaign of delegitimization of Israel. Every little piece makes a difference. In and of itself it’s not important but insofar that it contributes to the idea that Israel should be a pariah state it’s a bad thing. It’s bad for the AHA, it alienates Jewish members and creates divisions.”

Young scholars’ views on BDS can threaten their career prospects, he said.

“People who are even mildly supportive of Israel are in kind of a delicate position in academia. If you’re a graduate student or junior untenured professor you’re really fighting a strong anti-Israel climate in a lot of departments and your future could be on the line,” said Greenberg. “It’s no secret that there are almost no conservatives in the historical profession. Support for Israel has become equated with the conservative position. Anyone remotely supportive of Israel faces the legitimate worry that they will suffer as a result.”
“You should be able to say that I’m a Zionist and still get tenure and people shouldn’t care. It shouldn’t impinge on judgments of your scholarship. But it does.”

The PLO Urges a Boycott of Hebrew University Conference on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

18.02.26

Editorial Note

The Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights at the Hebrew University promotes high-quality research in the spirit of its namesake, Jacob Robinson, the Jewish jurist of Lithuanian origin (1889-1977). As the About Us page states, “His life and work guide the Institute’s academic activities and define its topics.” It also reveals Robinson’s personal story: he was a member of the Lithuanian parliament and the European Congress of Nationalities in the 1920s and defended the minority rights of Jews and others. In 1940, Robinson escaped Europe and moved to New York, where, together with his brother Nehemiah, he developed plans for postwar compensation to Jewish victims of the Nazis. Robinson advised the American prosecution team in the Nuremberg trials. In 1952, the brothers were involved in the negotiations with Germany over Holocaust reparations. In 1961, he assisted with the Israeli prosecution in the Eichmann trial. From the moment of Israel’s founding in 1948, Robinson served as a legal adviser to its delegation to the United Nations and was heavily involved in drafting the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. He also participated in establishing the UN Human Rights Commission.

The Robinson Institute continues Robinson’s life’s work across several disciplines, including law, history, and international relations. Individual topics include modern Jewish and non-Jewish minority politics, the idea of national self-determination, and the development of collective human rights and their relationship to individual rights; compensation to Jewish and non-Jewish victims of grave human rights abuses; international criminal law with respect to the Holocaust and other mass atrocities; Israel’s statehood, sovereignty, and relationship with the Jewish and Israeli diaspora; forced displacement; the history of the human rights regime, humanitarianism; and the interplay between democracy and the rule of law.

In May, the Institute will host an international conference to mark the 60th anniversary of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). The Conference is titled “Opposing Racial Discrimination: Historical Struggles and Legal Perspectives.”

The Call For Papers noted that the Conference honors the 60th anniversary (December 21, 1965) of the United Nations’ adoption of this landmark treaty – a pivotal milestone in the global fight against racism, aimed at combating racial prejudice and advancing human rights. “The adoption of the Convention followed complex and often contentious debates among states, international institutions, and civil society actors,” it states. The international symposium aims to bring together international and local scholars to reflect on the Convention’s history and legacy. The papers will be “addressing broader questions related to anti-racist and anti-antisemitism activism, as well as the evolving role of international law, diplomacy, and civil society in confronting racial and ethnic hatred.”

Not surprisingly, the Palestinian BDS movement published numerous calls for the boycott of the Conference, announcing that “Palestinians Call to Boycott Orwellian Conference ‘Opposing Racial Discrimination’ at Complicit Israeli University.” The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Department of Culture and Information also endorsed the BDS boycott call.

The call for boycott stated “Hebrew University’s absurd conference… must be boycotted,” calling on “all principled scholars to boycott the conference.” The boycott call asks, “How can a conference purporting to address the role of international law in confronting racial prejudice be held at an institution complicit in grave crimes such as apartheid and genocide? During Israel’s ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, Hebrew University has openly declared it has provided ‘diverse logistics equipment to several military units’ serving in the genocide. As legal scholars have noted, Hebrew University is partially built on land illegally expropriated from Palestinian owners in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem. Hebrew University has additionally offered its campus buildings to Israeli forces for the express purpose of oppressing the surrounding occupied Palestinian communities. Hebrew University itself hosts a military base on campus to offer academic training to Israeli soldiers, including during times of genocide. Hebrew University embodies absolute disregard for international law, racial justice and equality. In the current era of might-makes-right, where universal principles are being shredded, we cannot allow, or afford for international law to be hijacked by those working to undermine it. This includes rogue states and their complicit institutions.”

The call to boycott the Conference appeals to “principled scholars to boycott the Conference and to work for accountability by ending institutional ties with Hebrew University and all complicit Israeli institutions.” The highly active British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) also published a post repeating the same allegations.

The BDS appeal to boycott the Conference is especially ironic because the Palestinians have been the primary beneficiary of Robinson’s work. After the 1948 Arab–Israeli war, the UN created the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) specifically to provide relief and employment for Palestinians displaced from Mandatory Palestine. Unlike all other refugees, their refugee status is passed from parent to child indefinitely. UNRWA has been misused by the Palestinians for decades, but the Gaza War revealed corruption on an unimaginable scale. Hamas penetrated the UNRWA bureaucracy, used its buildings to store weapons and munitions, and dug shafts into its extensive tunnel system. Islamist ideology permeated the educational material in UNRWA schools and generally benefited from its humanitarian legitimacy. Faced with evidence provided by the IDF, UNRWA admitted that some of its employees were in fact Hamas members. Other groups that were inspired by Robinson’s forceful humanitarian advocacy have also served the Palestinians and were taken advantage of by Hamas. For instance, the French organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) recently admitted that Hamas gunmen were active in one of their hospitals.

The call to boycott the Conference reveals a striking moral irony. It repudiates the very universalist principles—human dignity, civilian protection, and humanitarian obligation—that made institutions such as UNRWA conceivable in the first place. What is lost, then, is not merely a conference, but an opportunity to affirm that humanitarian law is not an ethnic possession, nor a political weapon, but a fragile moral inheritance that depends on intellectual honesty to survive.

REFERENCES:

https://networks.h-net.org/group/announcements/20133832/international-conference-60th-anniversary-international-convention

International Conference on the 60th Anniversary of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)

Tom Eshed•11/30/2025Announcement

Call for Papers

Date

May 11, 2026 – May 12, 2026

Location

Israel

Subject Fields

Diplomacy and International Relations, Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, Human Rights, Jewish History / Studies, Law and Legal History

Call for Papers

International Conference on the 60th Anniversary of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD)

“Opposing Racial Discrimination: Historical Struggles and Legal Perspectives”
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus Campus, 11-12 May 2026

The year 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of a pivotal milestone in the global fight against racism: on December 21, 1965, the United Nations adopted the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), a landmark treaty aimed at combating racial prejudice and advancing human rights.

The adoption of the Convention followed complex and often contentious debates among states, international institutions, and civil society actors. Against the backdrop of ICERD’s 60th anniversary, this international symposium will bring together scholars to reflect on the history and legacy of the Convention. We also welcome papers addressing broader questions related to anti-racist and anti-antisemitism activism, as well as the evolving role of international law, diplomacy, and civil society in confronting racial and ethnic hatred.

Submission Guidelines

We invite scholars to submit proposals for 20-minute presentations. Please send an abstract of up to 350 words, along with a short bio (up to one page), by January 15, 2026, to Dr. Tom Eshed at tom.eshed@mail.huji.ac.il. The event will take place in person at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Participants will be provided with single-occupancy accommodation in Jerusalem for the duration of the event. Economy-class flight expenses will be reimbursed, subject to budgetary considerations.

For further inquiries, please contact Dr. Eshed at the email address above.

Contact Information

Tom Eshed at tom.eshed@mail.huji.ac.il

Contact Email

tom.eshed@mail.huji.ac.il

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https://www.dci.plo.ps/en/article/27431/BDS-Palestinians-Call-to-Boycott-Orwellian-Conference-%E2%80%9COpposing-Racial-Discrimination%E2%80%9D-at-Complicit-Israeli-University-(February-4,-2026)

BDS: Palestinians Call to Boycott Orwellian Conference “Opposing Racial Discrimination” at Complicit Israeli University (February 4, 2026)

Read it here

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https://bdsmovement.net/news/palestinians-call-boycott-orwellian-conference-opposing-racial-discrimination-complicit

PALESTINIANS CALL TO BOYCOTT ORWELLIAN CONFERENCE “OPPOSING RACIAL DISCRIMINATION” AT COMPLICIT ISRAELI UNIVERSITY

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Palestinians Call To Boycott Orwellian Conference “Opposing Racial Discrimination” At Complicit Israeli University

- Published4-02-2026
- Author infoPalestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)
- TagsPACBI Statement Academic Boycott

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) calls on all principled scholars to boycott the conference “Opposing Racial Discrimination: Historical Struggles and Legal Perspectives” to be held at Hebrew University, May 11-12, 2026.

How can a conference purporting to address the role of international law in confronting racial prejudice be held at an institution complicit in grave crimes such as apartheid and genocide?

During Israel’s ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, Hebrew University has openly declared it has provided “diverse logistics equipment to several military units” serving in the genocide.

As legal scholars have noted, Hebrew University is partially built on land illegally expropriated from Palestinian owners in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem.

Hebrew University has additionally offered its campus buildings to Israeli forces for the express purpose of oppressing the surrounding occupied Palestinian communities. Hebrew University itself hosts a military base on campus to offer academic training to Israeli soldiers, including during times of genocide.

Hebrew University embodies absolute disregard for international law, racial justice and equality.

In the current era of might-makes-right, where universal principles are being shredded, we cannot allow, or afford for international law to be hijacked by those working to undermine it. This includes rogue states and their complicit institutions.

We call on principled scholars to boycott the conference and to work for accountability by ending institutional ties with Hebrew University and all complicit Israeli institutions.

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Hebrew University’s absurd conference on “Opposing Racial Discrimination” (11-12 May) must be boycotted

Hebrew University’s absurd conference on “Opposing Racial Discrimination” (11-12 May) must be boycotted

admin 1 week ago 02 mins

5 February 2026

How can a conference purporting to address the role of international law in confronting racial prejudice be held at an institution complicit in grave crimes such as apartheid and genocide?

As legal scholars have noted, Hebrew University is partially built on land illegally expropriated from Palestinian owners in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem.

Hebrew University embodies absolute disregard for international law, racial justice and equality.

We call on principled scholars to boycott the conference and to work for accountability by ending institutional ties with Hebrew University and all complicit Israeli institutions.

Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism and “Zionophobia”: Media Narratives and the Question of Qatari Influence

11.02.26

Editorial Note

On January 26-27, the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism held the Second International Conference on Combating Antisemitism, titled “Generation of Truth.” The global event in Jerusalem addressed contemporary manifestations of antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and the challenges posed by evolving political and social dynamics in Europe and North America. Participants included academics, policymakers, parliamentarians, and media professionals.

Among the themes discussed were the rise in antisemitic incidents in several Western countries, the relationship between contemporary political movements and antisemitic rhetoric, and the growing debate over the boundaries between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. The question of how migration patterns in Europe intersect with antisemitic incidents was explicitly raised, reflecting data published by European security services and independent monitoring bodies documenting significant increases in reported antisemitic attacks in recent years.

In this context, Professor Judea Pearl has proposed the term “Zionophobia” to describe hostility directed specifically at the Jewish state as a collective expression of Jewish self-determination. In his recent volume, Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl, 2002–2023, Pearl argues that contemporary hostility toward Israel often reproduces classical antisemitic motifs in updated political language. Whether or not one adopts his terminology, the conceptual distinction between antisemitism and political opposition to Israeli policy remains central to current academic and policy debates.

The question “How did immigration to Europe lead to a rise in antisemitism?” is based on statistical reports of a dramatic increase in antisemitic attacks in several Western European countries — security services and academic studies have found that individuals from Muslim backgrounds have carried out most of the assaults on Jews. This demographic, mostly younger men, has been influenced by radical Islamist narratives or intense identification with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. It should be emphasized that Islamist propaganda incorporates antisemitic tropes, including variations of the notorious fabrication, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For instance, the British Jewish Community Trust recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents in the first half of 2025, many linked to the Israel-Gaza conflict, including assaults, threats, and harassment of Jewish individuals. In Western Europe and the United States, Muslim background students played a large role in harassing Jewish and Israeli students.

The Jerusalem conference itself became the subject of critical coverage by Middle East Monitor (MEMO), a London-based outlet frequently described as aligned with Qatari perspectives. In its reporting, MEMO characterized the conference as an effort by European leaders to “scapegoat migrants and Muslims.” MEMO wrote, “Austria, a country with a documented role in the Holocaust, is now promoting the claim that anti-Semitism in Europe is largely… driven by migrants and left-wing groups.”

MEMO also portrayed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism as “highly controversial.” It stated that President Isaac Herzog “used the conference to urge governments to adopt the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. The IHRA has criticized for conflating anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of Israeli policies.”

However, the IHRA Working Definition, adopted by numerous governments and institutions, explicitly states that criticism of Israel comparable to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. At the same time, it provides illustrative examples in which discourse about Israel may cross into antisemitism when it employs classical tropes, collective blame, or denial of Jewish self-determination. Scholarly debate continues regarding both the utility and the limits of this framework, yet its widespread institutional adoption makes it central to contemporary policy discussions.

MEMO reiterated that “Throughout the event, immigration and Islam were repeatedly framed as core threats to Jewish communities.”

Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based media network, has also published commentary highly critical of Israel’s demographic and security policies. In a recent analysis, Professor Neve Gordon argued that Israeli state policies reflect what he characterizes as a belief in Jewish exceptionalism and demographic engineering. Such arguments form part of a broader academic discourse that frames Israeli policies within paradigms of settler-colonialism and racialized governance. Critics, however, contend that certain formulations risk aligning with IHRA examples concerning denial of Jewish self-determination or the application of double standards. Whether one agrees with this critique or not, the debate illustrates the contested terrain between academic analysis and political advocacy.

Gordon suggested, “The glue holding all of the demographic strategies Israel deploys together is the belief in Jewish exceptionalism and supremacy. The genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank are justified through the dehumanization of Palestinians; the neglect of the murders and crime in Palestinian communities within Israel is informed by racial discrimination that has been ongoing since 1948; and Israel is weaponizing racism against Jews to curb negative migration. The ultimate objective is to guarantee the racial-religious character of Israel as exclusively Jewish, while the dream is a pure Jewish state.”

Gordon, originally a peace activist, was sponsored by Prof. Nezar AlSayyad to produce his 2005 anti-Israel book, Israel’s Occupation. In the book, Gordon had some obscure observations. Under the title “Setting up the Means of Control in the Occupied Territories,” Gordon listed Israeli efforts to improve the standards of living of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 victory. He wrote, “In the health field practices were introduced to encourage women to give birth at hospitals (a means of decreasing infant mortality rates and monitoring population growth) and to promote vaccinations (in order to decrease the incidence of contagious and noncontagious diseases). Palestinian teachers were sent to seminars in Jerusalem, where they were instructed in methods of ‘correct’ teaching. A series of vocational schools were established to prepare Palestinians who wished to join the Israeli workforce, and model plots were created to train farmers. Many of these controlling devices aimed to increase the economic productivity of the Palestinian inhabitants and to secure the well-being of the population.” For Gordon, these were all negative means of control.

Gordon, a former professor at Ben Gurion University who now teaches at Queen Mary University of London School of Law, has been in high demand among those who try to delegitimize Israel in the international community. By being Jewish, he deflects accusations of anti-Semitism. Not surprisingly, Gordon is a bitter critic of the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, since, as noted, he is considered an antisemite according to the Definition.

Recently, Qatar has come under criticism for its decades-long anti-Israel campaign on American campuses. The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) has published multiple reports and data analyses linking foreign funding from Qatar (often through foundations such as the Qatar Foundation and the Qatar National Research Fund) to patterns of campus politics and rhetoric that critics say have aligned with anti-Israel sentiment.

Their project “Follow the Money” documents large, sometimes undisclosed, donations to U.S. universities and argues these funds correlate with shifts in discourse and campus dynamics.

Taken together, these developments point to an increasingly interconnected ecosystem: rising antisemitic incidents; contested definitions of antisemitism; media narratives that challenge or reinterpret those definitions; and the role of foreign state funding in shaping academic and public discourse. Whether described as antisemitism, anti-Zionism, or “Zionophobia,” the debate underscores the importance of careful conceptual distinctions, empirical rigor, and institutional transparency.

Sustained scholarly engagement—grounded in evidence rather than polemic—is essential. Equally important is regulatory clarity concerning foreign funding in academia, ensuring that commitments to academic freedom coexist with transparency and accountability. Only through such measures can institutions preserve both intellectual integrity and public trust.

REFERENCES:

https://www.generationtruth.co.il/

The International Conference on Combating Antisemitism – Generation of Truth is the leading global event dedicated to confronting antisemitism and Holocaust denial in today’s world.

Held for the second consecutive year in Jerusalem, the conference convenes international policymakers, parliamentarians, academics, and media professionals to discuss core issues and explore innovative ways to confront antisemitism and preserve the memory of the Holocaust.

Join us for the conference at Jerusalem’s Binyaney Ha’uma Conference Center on January 27th, 2026, as well as other mind-provoking and inspiring sessions and events.

The 2026 international conference on combating antisemitism features a series of events, meetings, and discussions for designated target audiences, such as parliamentarians and policymakers, academics, media, and influencers.

This year’s agenda will address the most pressing challenges in the global fight against antisemitism, such as:
•   Why has Holocaust denial become unexpectedly accepted, and how can we fight both the conversation and its dangerous effects?
•   Can we eliminate antisemitic conspiracy theories that thrive in the rhetoric of political movements?
•   How did immigration to Europe lead to a rise in antisemitism, posing a serious threat to Jewish communities?

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https://www.gov.il/en/pages/airlift-to-israel-jewish-leaders-diplomats-community-heads

International Summit “Generation Truth” to Convene in Jerusalem to Combat Global Antisemitism

Dozens of world leaders, diplomats, and heads of Jewish communities will arrive via an “airlift” for the second international conference led by Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli

Type:

News

Publish Date:

22.01.2026

Dozens of world leaders, diplomats, and heads of Jewish communities will arrive via an “airlift” for the second international conference led by Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli.

Prime ministers, ministers, and lawmakers from around the globe will land in Israel next week for the “Generation Truth” conference. The summit, scheduled for January 26-27, coincides with International Holocaust Remembrance Day and is part of a strategic government decision to lead a global, open, and unapologetic fight against antisemitism.

The conference will include a state gala attended by the Prime Minister, a day of discussions in the presence of the President of the State, and a special day of proceedings at the Knesset with the participation of the Speaker of the Knesset.
The three central events will be conducted under the leadership of the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism and produced by the Prime Minister’s Office, the National Ceremonies and State Events Unit.

The conference will open on Monday morning, January 26, with an official event at the Knesset of Israel, led by Minister Amichai Chikli, in the presence of Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana, and with the participation of members of parliament from more than 15 countries from Europe, Latin America, North America, and additional countries, including Austria, France, Poland, Spain, Brazil, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Romania, Cyprus, Albania, and Portugal.

The conference will include roundtable discussions dedicated to the central challenges in the global fight against antisemitism, including legislation, Holocaust education, and addressing foreign political interference.
A state gala will be held on Monday evening, January 26, at the Jerusalem International Convention Center (Binyanei HaUma), in the presence of Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Amichai Chikli, with the participation of hundreds of senior officials, diplomats, members of parliament, and Jewish leaders from around the world.

At the center of the event, the traditional “Government of Israel Award for Combating Antisemitism,” previously awarded to British author Douglas Murray two years ago and Australian journalist Erin Molan last year, will be presented by Minister Chikli to Leo Terrell, head of the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism in the Trump administration.
In addition, a special award of recognition will be presented in memory of Charlie Kirk to Rob McCoy, his personal pastor, to preserve the memory of Kirk’s work and to recognize McCoy’s efforts on behalf of truth and the fight against antisemitism.

The evening will also include a memorial torch-lighting ceremony for victims of antisemitic attacks worldwide, with the participation of Rabbi Ulman of Australia, who lost his son-in-law and many members of his community in a terrorist attack in Sydney approximately one month ago, and the parents of Yaron Lischinsky, who was murdered together with his partner, Sarah Milgram, of blessed memory, in a terrorist attack at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

The evening will be hosted by Shiri Givati, an activist in the field of Israeli public diplomacy on the global stage.
The main conference will take place on Tuesday, January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, at Binyanei HaUma in Jerusalem, led by Minister Chikli and with the participation of President of the State of Israel Isaac Herzog, who will deliver remarks.

The conference will include sessions, panels, and closed-door discussions aimed at developing operational tools and international cooperation to combat antisemitism.
The conference will focus on addressing three central branches of modern antisemitism:

Violent Islamist antisemitism, which views Jews and the State of Israel as legitimate targets for attack
Progressive antisemitism, which adopts the language of human rights while in practice working to delegitimize Israel, exclude Jews from the public sphere, and legitimize boycotts
Far-right antisemitism, which has intensified in recent years and gained renewed legitimacy, at times also from opinion leaders and influential platforms

Among the central guests expected to attend are: Edi Rama, current Prime Minister of Albania; Sebastian Kurz, former Chancellor of Austria; Scott Morrison, former Prime Minister of Australia; Mariano Cúneo Libarona, Minister of Justice of Argentina; János Bóka, the current Minister for European Union Affairs in the Government of Hungary; Flávio Bolsonaro, Brazilian senator and presidential candidate; Mike Huckabee, U.S. Ambassador to Israel; and Gad Saad, researcher and author—alongside leading thinkers and senior representatives from Europe, Latin America, and North America.

The conference will take place against a grave global reality: since October 7, there has been a sharp and unprecedented rise in antisemitism and violence against Jews worldwide. In 2025 alone, 20 people were murdered in antisemitic terrorist attacks, including a mass-casualty attack at a Hanukkah event in Australia, as well as murders outside synagogues and in public spaces in the United States and Europe. At the same time, university campuses have become arenas of incitement. According to data from the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, 78% of Jewish students reported that they had concealed their Jewish identity at least once, and more than one-third know a peer who experienced a physical threat.

The fight against antisemitism and delegitimization is supported by broad governmental action. Since October 7, the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism has led unprecedented activity, including the operation of a national command center for monitoring antisemitism and incitement, which has issued thousands of early warnings; the publication of dozens of in-depth research reports on organizations, incitement networks, and delegitimization efforts; international campaigns with hundreds of millions of views; strengthening the communal resilience of Jewish communities; training senior security officials and police leadership from around the world in combating antisemitism and terrorism; advancing new regulation against international organizations found to have ties to terrorist entities; and cooperation with civil society organizations to combat antisemitism.

Amichai Chikli, Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism: “Over the past year, antisemitism has crossed a red line, as dozens of people around the world have been murdered simply for being Jewish. It is time to stop focusing solely on defense and move to offense- an offense against the enemies of the free world, first and foremost radical Islam. Israel is committed to and will continue to fight antisemitism without compromise, but it cannot do so alone. This is precisely the purpose of the conference, which will host dozens of strong leaders from around the world: to form an international coalition of partners who see reality clearly and understand that antisemitism is a murderous ideology that endangers the entire free world. Together, we will fight this threat – with determination, courage, and without apologies.”

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https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260128-ignoring-their-nazi-past-european-leaders-use-israeli-anti-semitism-forum-to-scapegoat-migrants-and-muslims/

Ignoring their Nazi past, European leaders use Israeli anti-Semitism forum to scapegoat migrants and Muslims

Austria, a country with a documented role in the Holocaust, is now promoting the claim that anti-Semitism in Europe is largely an imported phenomenon. Speaking at an Israeli government-hosted anti-Semitism conference in Jerusalem, former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz alleged that Europe faces a wave of “newly imported anti-Semitism” driven by migrants and left-wing groups.

The remarks were made during the second annual International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism, held on International Holocaust Memorial Day and organised by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry. The event, which took place at the International Convention Centre in Jerusalem, drew government officials, diplomats, religious leaders and political figures, with a notable presence of European nationalist and far-right representatives.

According to Haaretz, Kurz referred to the phenomenon of anti-Semitism as “totally new” and warned of an alliance between Muslim migrants and progressive movements such as “Queers for Palestine”. He previously governed in coalition with Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ), a far-right group known for its Nazi origins and controversial history.

READ: Weaponising anti-Semitism: MEMO in Conversation with Rachel Shabi

The FPÖ emerged in 1955, initially drawing much of its support from former National Socialists (Nazis) after World War II. Its first leader, Anton Reinthaller, had been a senior officer in the SS, Adolf Hitler’s paramilitary organisation, and other early members were former Nazis.

Kurz’s remarks were echoed by Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the Sweden Democrats, a party founded by neo-Nazis. Åkesson claimed that anti-Semitism was “accepted” in Sweden by the political left and blamed immigrants for promoting hate. However, data shows that anti-Semitic hate crimes are attributed to a range of actors, with far-right groups consistently responsible for a significant portion of incidents.

Hungarian EU Affairs Minister János Bóka described anti-Semitism as stemming from cooperation between “radical political Islam” and the “woke movement”. Belgian MP Sam van Rooy, from Vlaams Belang, a party with fascist roots, claimed Muslims were replacing Jews in cities like Antwerp. Polish MEP Dominik Tarczyński of the Law and Justice party advocated for “zero illegal migrants” entering Europe.

These positions align with the widely discredited “great replacement” theory, which has been linked to violent white nationalist attacks globally.

READ: Islamophobia unites Israel and Europe’s far-right

In a video message, Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders claimed a “new Holocaust is in the making” due to what he called rising Islamic anti-Semitism. Wilders pointed to Islamic texts and communities as the source of the threat, though monitoring reports from European bodies highlight far-right movements as a major and consistent driver of anti-Semitic incidents.

President Isaac Herzog used the conference to urge governments to adopt the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. The IHRA has criticised for conflating anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of Israeli policies. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli said “Islamist fanaticism”, which he claimed is influenced by Nazi ideology, is today’s main threat to Jews.

Other speakers included former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who called for stricter regulation of Islamic institutions; Brazilian senator Flávio Bolsonaro, who accused Brazil’s president of anti-Semitism; and U.S. ambassador Mike Huckabee, who described the UN as “the largest anti-Semitic organisation in the world”.

Throughout the event, immigration and Islam were repeatedly framed as core threats to Jewish communities. However, studies by institutions such as the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights continue to identify far-right actors as key sources of anti-Semitic violence.

Jerusalem Post editor Zvika Klein, who moderated a panel featuring far-right European figures, commented, “We need all the allies we can get”.

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https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250316-israel-invites-western-far-right-figures-to-conference-on-combatting-anti-semitism/

Israel invites Western far-right figures to conference on combatting anti-semitism

March 16, 2025 at 9:17 am

Israel is inviting Western far-right figures and parties to a conference against anti-semitism, amid Tel Aviv’s ongoing grooming of the political conservatives.

According to Israeli media outlets, the ‘International Conference on Combating Antisemitism’ being held in the occupied city of Jerusalem this month – organised by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry – has invited far-right and conservative figures from across Europe and the West for attendance.

Such figures include Jordan Bardella, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, Argentina’s president Javier Milei, MEP Hermann Tertsch from Spain’s far-right Vox party, MEP Charlie Weimers from the far-right Sweden Democrats party, French MEP Marion Maréchal, and MEP Kinga Gál from Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party.

Also invited are right-wing religious figures and thought leaders, including the UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy.

READ: Zionists have captured Jordan Peterson and are hijacking western conservatism

Scheduled to take place at the end of this month, on 26 and 27 March as part of Diaspora Week, the conference on combatting anti-semitism also consists of a program providing activities such as a choice of guided tours to either Judea and Samaria or the Gaza border, a gala evening at the Israeli president’s residence, and roundtable discussions and panels on a variety of topics.

The Diaspora Affairs Ministry’s invitation of the far-right figures and parties to the conference notably comes at a time when Israel continues with its campaign to attract, collaborate with, and co-opt conservative movements throughout Europe and the wider West, apparently viewing them and their supporters as viable supporters of Israel and Zionism.

The list of those figures has even reportedly caught Israel’s president Isaac Herzog by surprise, with the outlet Haaretz being told by the president’s residence that it was “surprised to hear who the invitees are”, particularly due to the conference focusing on combating anti-semitism.

Dark hours ahead: Why Europe’s far-right supports Israel

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https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/2/5/heres-why-israel-is-allowing-record-murder-rates-in-its-palestinian-towns

Here’s why Israel is allowing record murder rates in its Palestinian towns

Israel is tolerating violence against its Palestinian citizens to push them out, while weaponising anti-Semitism to pull Jews in.

Neve Gordon

Neve Gordon is Professor of International Law at Queen Mary University of London.

Published O 5 Feb 2026

While the international media has rightly focused on the genocide and enormous displacement in Gaza alongside the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, the 300 murders inside Israel in 2025, 252 of whom were Palestinian victims, garnered little to no media coverage outside Israel. Yet last year marked the deadliest year on record for murders among Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up 21 percent of Israel’s population but sustain 80 percent of the murders. That is one murder every 36 hours.

The international media have also covered the rise in anti-Semitism across the world, even as there has been little to no media coverage of how Israel has been exaggerating and instrumentalising a Zionist notion of anti-Semitism to create moral panic among Jews everywhere. Indeed, when I speak to Jewish friends in Israel, they often ask how I, who live in London, cope with anti-Semitism. As consumers of Israeli news, they can be forgiven for thinking that Jews across the world are in imminent danger.

These two phenomena – the crime epidemic within Palestinian communities inside Israel and the weaponisation of anti-Semitism to amplify Jewish fear – might seem totally unconnected. Yet there is a clear thread linking them, and it is called demographic engineering.

The foundational acts

Demographic engineering has been at the heart of the Zionist project. During the 1948 war, about 750,000 Palestinians were displaced in what Fayez Sayegh called “racial elimination”. As part of this process, Palestinian cities were depopulated, and about 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed. By 1951, the Palestinians who had become refugees had been “replaced” by a similar number of Jewish immigrants, both Holocaust survivors from Europe and Mizrahi Jews from Arab countries, thus transforming the state’s racial composition without altering its overall population size.

In the wake of the war, Israel not only disregarded United Nations Resolution 194 affirming the right of Palestinians who had been made refugees in 1948 to return to their homes, but in 1950 it passed the Law of Return, bestowing “on Jews worldwide the right to enter Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship regardless of their countries of origin and whether or not they can show links to Israel-Palestine, while withholding any comparable right from Palestinians, including those with documented ancestral homes in the country”.

Over the past two years, a number of Israeli politicians and influencers have characterised what Israel has been doing in the territories it occupied in 1967 as completing the job left undone in 1948: “A second, real Nakba, to finish [former Israeli Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion’s work,” one journalist quipped. Simultaneously, within Israel, a different kind of demographic strategy is unfolding, even as the overall objective remains the same.

Crime as an impetus to leave

Itamar Ben-Gvir is surely not the first minister of national security to have allowed criminal gangs to terrorise Palestinian communities. But on Ben Gvir’s watch, the murders have reached record levels. And 2026 seems to be following the trend, with 31 more Palestinians murdered during the first month.

On the one hand, Israel has used the soaring crime to portray Palestinian citizens as uncivilised and barbaric, extending the dehumanisation from stateless Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to its own citizens. On the other hand, it has enabled criminals to terrorise Palestinian towns.

Indeed, the police have solved only 15 percent of the murders within the Palestinian community while doing little, if anything, to stop criminals from collecting “protection fees” from businesses – fees that extract an estimated two billion shekels ($650m) a year from the community.

On January 22, Palestinians launched the largest demonstration since 2019, waving black flags while chanting slogans accusing the police of total abandonment. The following day, the organisers called a general strike, with one of the organisers, Mohammed Shlaata, making it clear that responsibility for the violence lies with the authorities: “We are in a state of emergency,” he said. “We have a clear finger of accusation – we blame the police.”

Talking to Palestinian friends, some tell me they fear for their children’s lives and want them to leave the country, while others have packed their bags and left. Admittedly, the number of those leaving is low, but Palestinian citizens are reaching a boiling point.

Anti-Semitism and negative migration

At the same time that the government does nothing to quell criminal activity and lawlessness within Palestinian communities in Israel, it exaggerates and instrumentalises a Zionist notion of anti-Semitism to continuously reassert Jewish victimhood.

While much has been written on the use of a false notion of anti-Semitism – that conflates criticism of Israel and Zionism with anathema towards Jews – to silence Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices, much less has been said about the mobilisation of anti-Semitism to address Israel’s problem of negative migration.

Since 2023, more Jews have been leaving the country than entering. In 2024, the number of citizens leaving Israel was 26,000 higher than the number of immigrants entering it; in 2025, the gap was about 37,000 Israelis. In other words, negative migration has jumped by more than 42 percent, and Israeli officials are worried that this trend is taking root and even accelerating.

Accordingly, both the Israeli public and the Jewish diaspora are told again and again that anti-Semitism across the globe has gone rampant. Jews are told that the horrific Bondi massacre in Australia is an indication of a new global trend, that in the United Kingdom anti-Semitism has been normalised, and that in Europe Jews are afraid to wear kippahs.

Anti-Semitism has undoubtedly soared over the past two years, and there is obviously a kernel of truth in these articles. But in contrast to the very real panic among Palestinian citizens, which the state has ignored, in the case of anti-Semitism, the state dramatically exaggerates and instrumentalises the evidence to produce a moral panic. The message is clear: Jews across the world should fear for their lives, and therefore those who live in Israel should be wary of leaving, while the only way diasporic Jews can be safe is by migrating to Israel.

Supremacy as glue

The glue holding all of the demographic strategies Israel deploys together is the belief in Jewish exceptionalism and supremacy. The genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank are justified through the dehumanisation of Palestinians; the neglect of the murders and crime in Palestinian communities within Israel is informed by racial discrimination that has been ongoing since 1948; and Israel is weaponising racism against Jews to curb negative migration. The ultimate objective is to guarantee the racial-religious character of Israel as exclusively Jewish, while the dream is a pure Jewish state.

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Click to access JP-Intro-Draft-Final.pdf

Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl, 2002–2023, Forthcoming

Winter/Spring 2024–25 DRAFT: XIII (Final) 7/17/24

1 Introduction, or Why I Wrote This Book

What compels me, today, to share my writings of the past 22 years with readers troubled by the madness of 2024? The simple answer is that the madness did not start today, but at least 22 years ago. More specifically, as we are grappling with the worldwide surge in anti-Westernism, antisemitism, and anti-Zionism in the wake of October 7, we must understand the latent forces that had been fueling these convulsions for decades before they exploded into our view. Most people know me as the father of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and murdered by al-Qaeda terrorists in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2002. Danny’s horrific death, along with the last words he spoke in front of his abductors’ camera, captured the headlines and turned him into a symbol: millions of people worldwide came to see him as a true citizen of the world, an embodiment of Western values, and an icon of Jewish pride. As people became hungry to hear from Danny’s family about who he was and what we can learn from his tragedy, I, too, was thrust into the public eye as a speaker and writer for audiences outside of my usual scientific activities. In scientific circles, I am known as a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence (AI), human cognition, and the philosophy of science—three fields in which I have solved some longstanding problems, especially in reasoning about cause and effect. The tragedy of Danny’s death spurred me to step beyond algorithms and equations and directly examine the social and political forces that are shaping our troubled world. This pursuit has led me to produce hundreds of op-eds, essays, and talks covering a wide range of topics, including Jewish identity, the history of Israel, the war on terrorism, the intricate dynamics of East-West confrontations and dialogues, and the puzzling Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this book, I present an edited selection of 45 of these writings, showcasing my principal thoughts on these subjects. The decision to compile these writings into a single volume was inspired by numerous requests from colleagues and friends, who observed that the language, perspective, and logic in my analyses deserved wider exposure to the many people who are trying to understand the complex and pressing challenges of our era. These challenges include the escalating menace of terrorism and extremism; the fundamental aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict; and the barbaric attack and aftermath of October 7. The book opens with “Hope from the Horror of My Son’s Murder” (2002), a personal article I wrote just six months after Danny’s murder. This piece echoes the camaraderie, humanity, and pursuit of truth that Danny embodied throughout his life, as well as the message his killing conveys to us globally. Ultimately, the selection culminates with “Oslo Failed Because It Never Started” (2023), wherein I identify Zionophobia—my preferred term for the obsessive rejection of a Jewish homeland—as the primary catalyst inflaming and prolonging the century-long Arab-Israeli conflict. I explore Zionophobia, its origins, logic, and consequences, in several chapters throughout my journey, because it is universally and unforgivably ignored—it’s the elephant in the room. We see this clearly today. Since October 7, many people have been shocked by the sharp rise of antisemitic incidents in America and Europe, failing to see the root cause: Zionophobia. The rejection of Israel’s right to exist has been gradually and clandestinely intensified in academia and other institutions of the West, and Zionism, the ideological expression of that right, has become synonymous with the most hateful legacies of colonialism. Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl, 2002–2023, Forthcoming Winter/Spring 2024–25 DRAFT: XIII (Final) 7/17/24 2 Naturally, Jews, as the organic carriers of Zionism, have become the direct target of this rising hate. Has my scientific background influenced my analysis of social and political issues? In many ways, yes. In the field of AI, we are trained to imbue brainless robots with human knowledge. This requires a precise language for representing knowledge and a rigorous understanding of its various components: how it is substantiated by evidence and how it should be used to guide actions and policies. This rigor extends to issues of evidence, knowledge, actions, and policies in social and political arenas. It enables AI researchers to precisely distinguish facts from theories, data from models, definitions from assumptions, and, crucially, causes from effects. This principled methodology helps avoid pitfalls and fallacies that often undermine social and political analysis. The logic of cause and effect is often the first victim in the absence of this methodology. My family experience, as well, has shaped these writings. Born to a family that escaped the Holocaust from Europe, and married into a family that fled a major pogrom in Iraq, I have been influenced by a generation of nation-building pioneers, driven by dreams and self-reliance. I witnessed the creation of the modern State of Israel, the Israeli War of Independence and its consequences, as well as Israel’s struggle for survival a decade later while serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). My efforts to foster peace and mutual understanding have led me to participate in dozens of dialogues with Muslim scholars and activists. Similarly, I have engaged with hundreds of Jewish communities across the U.S. and Europe, sharing insights and helping them fight rising antisemitism and Zionophobia in higher education. Most importantly, despite leaving Israel in 1960, I have remained intimately connected to the pulse of its people, the dynamism of its culture, and the ups and downs of its politics. Through my family, friends, teachers, and students in Israel, I have sustained a firsthand understanding of both their deepseated existential anxieties and their profound yearning for peace with their neighbors. So, to return to my opening question: what compels me to share my writings with readers now? To be honest, it is my confidence that these writings reflect a coherent, evidence-based, and compelling worldview that could guide fellow travelers, so many of whom are perplexed by our era’s slogans, doubts, conflicts, misinformation, and moral relativism. In particular, I find great joy in conveying the miracle of the Jewish people, the heroic narrative of Israel’s establishment, and my certitude in the rightness of her struggle for peaceful coexistence. I hope to make this joy contagious.

Judea Pearl Los Angeles, CA July 2024