Over one thousand Birzeit University students and over 110 of its faculty members signed an open letter in support of the international boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The signatures were collected by the Right to Education Student Committee in the shape of a letter [full text below] thanking the 61 Irish academics who called for a moratorium on EU aid to Israeli universities until Israel abides by international humanitarian and human rights laws. The Committee calls on student groups all over Palestine to take similar action and for students abroad to support Palestinian students by doing the same.
Israeli academia has failed to denounce the illegal occupation, racist policies and war crimes committed in their name by the Israeli state, despite their position of influence and moral obligation to do so.
Moreover, the Israeli occupation stifles the development of Palestinian education through arbitrary checkpoints, arrests, detentions and deportations. Palestinians face ongoing Israeli attacks on their educational institutions and there is a growing clampdown in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. This includes the arbitrary detention of students, the prohibition of Gazans from studying in the West Bank, the harassment of foreign students entering Gaza and the West Bank and the increasing difficulties facing ordinary academic exchange between Palestinians and the outside world.
While the world remains silent in the face of the massacres in Gaza and the colonisation and segregation of the West Bank, the academic boycott is an effective way for the international community to oppose Israeli policy both from the outside and within, by pressuring Israeli academia to take action against their state’s policies of apartheid and unconditional violence against the Palestinian population.
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Open letter in support of Irish academics,
We, the undersigned, members of the Birzeit University’s community of students, teachers, faculty staff and employees, congratulate and thank the group of Irish academics who called for a moratorium on the European Union’s financing of Israeli academic institutions until Israel withdraws from the occupied Palestinian territories and abides by international humanitarian and human rights laws, including the right of return.
The recent attacks and re-invasion of Gaza and Lebanon expose the contempt with which Israel treats the UN, its resolution and its own bilateral agreements. We strongly condemn the death, chaos and destruction inflicted upon Gazans and Lebanese, and call upon the students, academics and staff of universities worldwide to collectively condemn these acts and take action to support us in our struggle to end Israeli military aggression and occupation.
The objective of such military force is to control and subjugate Palestinian society in order to sustain Israel's Jewish demographic supremacy and enforce its unilaterally declared boundaries. As a result, Israel has built an apartheid system of controlling the Palestinian population both inside Israel and under the occupied territories. Economically, the occupied territories served as cheap-labour reserves until the building of the Wall, now it serves to make daily life unbearable so that Palestinians decide to leave, continuing the ‘silent transfer’ of the indigenous population. The Israeli civil and military bureaucracy also obstructs the development of an independent Palestinian economy through its control of borders, immigration, collection of taxes and restriction on movement inside the territories. Racially, Palestinians in Israel are consistently denied equal access to social services, housing and education, and since 2005, denied equal rights to family. In Jerusalem and the occupied territories, Palestinians are segregated by different permits based on their residency at the time of issue, and each ‘category’ is granted different freedoms of movement – at the bottom of this structure are Gaza permit-holders, who cannot move from Gaza to the West Bank, nor inside the West Bank itself. This system of control is parallel to the racial hierarchy and control during Apartheid South Africa.
Israeli academic institutions have close links with the state, and the vast majority of Israeli intellectuals and academics either contribute directly to the Israeli occupation through research that justifies or improves the mechanisms of Israeli apartheid, or are complicit through their silence about it. As Shahid Alam, Professor of Economics at North-eastern University in Boston, has pointed out, "through their links with the military, the political parties, the media, and the economy, they (Israel's universities) have helped to construct, sustain, and justify the Apartheid (policies of the occupation).”
We therefore urge international civil society and the academic community to join our call to comprehensively boycott Israeli academics who contribute or refuse to stand up against the occupation, until: Israel withdraws its military from the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem; removes all its colonies in those lands and agrees to United Nations resolutions relevant to the restitution of Palestinian refugees rights.
Yours faithfully,
1,015 students of Birzeit University, and:
1. Zeyad Munawer, Accounting
2. Dr Abdul Karim Abu-Khashan, Arabic
3. Ahmad Daoud, Arabic
4. Dr. Ibrahim Musa, Arabic
5. Khitam Salman, Arabic
6. Dr Ghadir Kharoubi, Arabic
7. Dr Mahmoud Alatchan, Arabic
8. Salahaldin Alshakhshir, Architectural Engineering
9. Dr Salem Thawaba, Architectural Engineering
10. Dr Ademar Ezzughayar, Biology
11. Jamil Abu Sada, Biology
12. Dr Munir Qazzaz, Biology
13. Dr. Tamer Essawi, Biology
14. Dr. Ahed Abdul Khaliq, Biology and Biochemistry
15. Omar Yaseen, Business Administration
16. Dr. Grace Khoury, Business Administration
17. Rania Jaber, Business Administration
18. Prof. Abdul Hamid Laila, Chemistry
19. Dr. Jack F Mustaklem, Chemistry
20. Dr. Sami Asayrafi, Chemistry
21. Dr Yacoub Ziadeh, Chemistry
22. Dr. Zaki Hassan, Chemistry
23. Belal Ameens, Centre for Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences
24. Dr Jamal Zalatimo, Civil Engineering
25. Suheym Murchad, Civil Engineering
26. Mahmoud Srour, Clinical Laboratory Science
27. Dr Hanna Bullata, Computer Science
28. Dr. Iyad Jaber, Computer Science
29. Muna Khayyat, Computer Science
30. Dr. Wasel Ghanem, Computer Science
31. Dr. Yousef Hassouneh, Computer Science
32. Dr. Abdelrahman Abdelghani, Cultural Studies and Philosophy
33. Dr. Abdul-Rahim Al-Shaikh, Cultural Studies and Philosophy
34. Dr. Islah Jadd, Cultural Studies and Philosophy
35. Dr. George Giacaman, Cultural Studies and Philosophy
36. Lubna Abdul Hadi, Cultural Studies and Philosophy
37. Dr. Mudar Kassis, Cultural Studies and Philosophy
38. Dr Adel Zagha, Economics
39. Dr. Nidal Sabri, Economics
40. Dr Mohamed Nasr, Economics
41. Yasser Abu Hejleh, Economics
42. Adballah Bsharat, Education
43. Ahmad Aljanazrah, Education
44. Dr. Ibrahim Makkawi, Education
45. Haifa Sabassi, Education and Psychology
46. Maurice Bakleh, Education and Psychology
47. Refa’ Al Ramahi, Education and Psyhcology
48. Wafa Aramahi, Education and Psychology
49. Dr. Yusef Abu Samrah, Education and Psychology
50. Dr. Wasfi Kafri, Electrical Engineering
51. Wael Abdin, English
52. Dr. Fahmi Al-Aboudi, English
53. Muna Giacaman, English
54. Murad Hanasheh, Finance
55. Sari Ghanam, Finance
56. Abdul Khalim A. Tomazi, Geography
57. Ahmad Hammad, Geography
58. Dr Kamal Abdulfattah, Geography
59. Musa S. Jamhour, Geography
60. Dr. Othman Sharkas, Geography
61. Dr. Abed Aziz Ayad, History
62. Dr Muhsin Yusuf, History
63. Dr Awad Mataria, Institute of Community and Public Health
64. Prof. Rita Giacaman, Institute of Community and Public Health
65. Dr. Samia Halileh, Institute of Community and Public Health
66. Dr. Asem Khalil, Institute of Law
67. Dr. Firas Melhem, Institute of Law
68. Liana Amin, Institute of Law
69. Reem Al-Botmeh, Institute of Law
70. Dr. Samer Fares, Institute of Law
71. Chivvis Moore, Institute of Women’s Studies
72. Eileen Kuttab, Institute of Women’s Studies
73. Basma Al Omari, Languages and Translation
74. Mahmoud Abed Al-Fateh, Languages and Translation
75. Majdi Abu Zahra, Languages and Translation
76. Muhammad Abuzeid, Languages and Translation
77. Munira Zoroub, Languages and Translation
78. Rabah Ali Ahmed, Languages and Translation
79. Samir Ramaal, Languages and Translation
80. Moussa Abou Ramadan, Law
81. Yusef Shandi, Law
82. Ahlam Awajneh, Mathematics
83. Dr Khaled Tukhman, Mathematics
84. Dr Marwan Aloqeili, Mathematics
85. Prof. Mohammad Saleh, Mathematics
86. Rasem Kabi, Mathematics
87. Allan Tubaileh, Mechanical Engineering
88. Ibrahim Hamad, Mechanical Engineering
89. Dr. Simon Alaraj, Mechanical Engineering
90. In’am El-Obeidi, Media
91. Dr. Nashat A. Aqtash, Media
92. Dr Subhi Hamdan, Media
93. Dr. Wedad Al-Barghouthi, Media
94. Dr Walid Shurefa, Media
95. Rula Halawani, Photography Department
96. Sami Said, Photography Department
97. Kamal Shamshom, Physical Education
98. Sana’ Liftawi, Physical Education
99. Dr Ghassan Andoni, Physics
100.Dr Jamal Suleiman, Physics
101.Tayseer Arouri, Physics
102.Emad Ghayathah, Political Science
103.Dr. Samer Awad, Political Science
104.Dr. Othman Abu Libdeh, Quality Assurance
105.Mayada Albadawi, Public Administration
106. Prof. Simon Kuttab, Dean, Faculty of Science
107. Hasan Ladaduah, Sociology and Anthropology
108. Dr. Ismael Nashef, Sociology and Anthropology
109. Dr. Lisa Taraki, Sociology and Anthropology
110. Mohammad Abu-Hilal, Sociology and Anthropology
111. Dr. Suha Hindiyeh, Sociology and Anthropology
112. Dr. Zuhair Sabbagh, Sociology and Anthropology
113. Vera Tamari, Virtual Gallery Arts Programme
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