The War on Palestinian Universities: and not only in Gaza

JVL Introduction

The war on Gaza is not simply a physical war on the people of Gaza and on the Palestinians generally. Israel seems committed to destroying every aspect of Palestinian existence including the cultural fabric and sense of Palestinian identity itself – what Raphael Lemkin classically defined as genocide.

Here Jonathan Rosenhead focuses on one particular aspect of this devastation which has been somewhat neglected in the overall horror: Israel’s assault on Palestine’s educational system which has involved the deliberate, complete destruction of every university in the Gaza strip.

Rosenhead names it: scholasticide.

RK

The War on Palestinian Universities: and not only in Gaza

Jonathan Rosenhead, 5th March 2024

As death tolls inexorably rise, as Israeli violations of the rules of war are perpetrated without number, as ever more consequences of the Israeli acts of lethal revenge proliferate, there is yet more.  Scarcely noticed by mainstream media the war has spread – both to the West Bank, and as a war against knowledge and ideas.

Behind the outrageous genocide in Gaza there lies another atrocity, the complete destruction of every university in the Gaza strip – deliberately, meticulously even. Consider Al-Israa University. It had been cleared of all academic staff and activities and for 70 days served as an IDF barracks and detention centre. When they left, the IDF blew it up. It was the last of Gaza’s universities. There is a name for this: Scholasticide.

Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish legal scholar who defined the concept of genocide and played a key role in its acceptance into international law, saw genocide as an effort to “undermine the fundamental basis of the social order.” A key part of Lemkin’s conception was not just the physical elimination of a people but also the assault on its culture. Israel has translated that into action.

The collection of data lags behind the infliction of death and destruction but by late February it was reported that over 4000 students had been killed in Gaza as well as more than 200 teachers and administrators. Euro-Med Monitor describes Israel’s killing of teachers, including 94 university professors, as the result of “deliberate and specific air raids” on the homes of academic, scientific or intellectual figures.

As the astronomical Gaza death toll rises and rises it is understandable that the deliberate attempted murder of a culture has largely escaped attention. And in turn the Gaza maelstrom itself sucks attention away from the multiple crimes being committed on the West Bank by both Israel’s security forces and its settlers. Yet according to Amnesty International Israel has unleashed unlawful lethal force against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, carrying out unlawful killings and displaying “a chilling disregard for Palestinian lives”.

An unusually forthright Channel 4 news item recently showed the extent of settler physical intimidation and violence, which included the shooting on camera of a Palestinian farmer on his own land.  The consequence for the settler – he had his gun confiscated. But then, the Israeli government is passing guns out to settlers like candies.

Like murder, Scholasticide also is not limited to Gaza. The escalating assault on West Bank Universities is reported by Friends of Birzeit University in these two reports. During three months from October 7^th Israel killed 246 Palestinians on the West Bank, many of them students. In that same period Birzeit recorded 115 of its students as having been imprisoned. Most West Bank universities shifted to online teaching and support over this period to avoid campus invasions by the Israeli army, and students and staff being harassed, arrested, or shot by Israeli soldiers and armed Israeli settlers.

Before 7 October 2023, the number of Palestinian administrative detainees held in Israeli prisons – which means that they are held indefinitely without charge, trial or sentence – was around 1,320. But by late January 2024, this number had nearly tripled to 3,300. This sweep can be seen simply as the tightening of the screw on an already repressive system. But it can also, and plausibly, be seen as the hoovering up of detainees in sufficient numbers that they can then be released in exchange for Israeli hostages in Gaza. But this is not an either/or. This is a regime whose willingness to lie murder and break international laws stinks to high heaven.