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As we write these lines, an eliminatory assault is being waged by the state of Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza. This is not hyperbole. After nearly a week of shelling the strip indiscriminately, including the use of white phosphorus, destroying the Rafah crossing - its only available exit point, ambushing people trying to escape, and cutting all access to food, electricity, water and medical supplies, Israel is now calling on 1.1 million people to evacuate before its ground assault. This is both cynical and brazen. Israel has cut all exits and is bombing the entire territory. Its 18-year long siege has and continues to strangle the 2.2 million people stuck in 365km² - an area barely bigger than Rotterdam. Moreover, Palestinians know what Israeli calls for ‘evacuation’ mean. In both 1948 and 1967, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled by Israeli military assaults and never allowed to return. In fact, nearly 80% of Gaza’s inhabitants are refugees who continue to be denied their right to return. The choice faced by Palestinians in Gaza is now clear: ethnic cleansing or genocide. This situation is not just confined to Gaza. Over the past week in the West Bank, 51 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military and settler militias. Israel has bombed Syria and Lebanon, and the Middle East region now stands on the edge of war.
The death-toll and destruction is increasing by the minute as statements by Israeli officials call for genocidal flattening of the enclave: Likud politician Tally Gotliv is calling for Gaza to be nuked while her colleague Ariel Kallner is demanding a second Nakba, Defense minister Yoav Gallant is describing the strip’s population as ‘human animals’, while military personnel describe the aim of the operation to be ‘damage and not accuracy’. History has heard these words many times. We know where they lead. This is not only the case in Gaza. In the West Bank, the Israeli government is handing out thousands of rifles to a settler population, which has already carried out several pogroms this year.
At the same time, in the West, our own governments are beating the drum of war, while pretending not to see what is unfolding in front of our eyes. This is not Israel’s so-called ‘right to self defense.’ This is mass murder on an extraordinary scale. Both the US and the UK have sent warships to demonstrate their continued active support for Israel’s colonial rule over Palestinians, while the European Union has stated its support for Israel’s assault on the people of Gaza.
As the horror unfolds in front of the eyes of the world, these same governments are launching a wave of repression against Palestinian solidarity - the intensity of which has not been seen in years. France has banned all Palestine solidarity demonstrations, in Germany showing the Palestinian flag was already criminalized, now Berlin has joined the ban on Palestinian protests all together, and Britain appears to be following suit. In the Netherlands, Justice and Security minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius has claimed that to provide historical context to the current round of confrontations is ‘morally reprehensible’, while Prime Minister Rutte called it ‘disrespectful’ to take Israel’s announcements that it is cutting off food and water from Gaza at face value. Dutch far-right leaders are calling for the deportations of those demonstrating their support for the Palestinians. The first response by universities across the Netherlands, instead of encouraging discussion, debate, and informed analysis, was to call on people to refrain from doing so within their communities.
Our governments are not only shielding and green lighting Israel’s genocidal actions, but also justifying their own. For decades, they have blindly supported Israel - militarily, diplomatically, and economically. They have refused to apply basic standards of international law to it, allowed Israel to refuse the return of refugees, allowed it to continue expanding its settlements and grow its settler population, allowed it to build walls, steal land, and murder with impunity, allowed it to hold over 2 million people hostage in the Gaza strip, while limiting their supply of food, fuel, and medicine. Our governments have refused to heed the calls of the Palestinians to impose Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions on Israel (1). They have done so in order to shore up Western power in the region and have had no problem in allowing that power to be built over the backs of millions of Palestinians. The current crisis, the death, the destruction, is as much on their hands as it is on those of the Israeli state. To provide context is to acknowledge their complicity.
Right now, we must act. The priority of every single concerned university worker, student, and others is to mobilize in support of Palestine. We can’t watch this genocidal war happen in front of our eyes in silence. We must pressure our governments to withdraw all support for Israel’s massacre in Gaza and call an end to their complicity. It is our duty, as educators and university teachers, to stand by the tenets of critical inquiry and pedagogy; to facilitate and make spaces for debate that foregrounds truth to power; to situate the violent realities of occupation and settler colonialism in the long history and legacy of Empire. Most importantly it is our duty to amplify the voices and stand with the struggles of the dispossessed for liberation. We call on everyone to join the demonstration in Amsterdam on Sunday 15th October at 2 PM, and to organize institutional statements and motions of concern. We also call on everyone to push their universities, departments, and programmes to endorse boycotts against Israel as per the guidelines of the movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. Our actions matter in whether or not Israel is allowed to continue to flatten Gaza, and expel or murder its inhabitants. As academics, we are particularly concerned about the welfare of Palestinian universities and their faculty. According to reports, the Islamic University of Gaza has been severely damaged by Israeli bombardment, possibly destroyed. We reject any attack on Palestinian universities, their staff and students. We express total solidarity with Palestinian academics and educators, during this time of extreme duress.
We cannot return to business as usual and wait for the next catastrophe to hit us. We must organize for a robust and long term movement in the Netherlands, in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom. There can be no justice under apartheid, no justice under colonial rule, no justice behind the barbed wire of an open air prison. We, Dutch Scholars for Palestine, express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people and their liberation. We call on everyone to redouble our collective efforts to end the violent realities that Palestinians face, to increase the pressure on our institutions and governments, in order to hold Israel accountable for its crimes, and to end its colonial regime. We call on all of you to join us, and organize.
(1) 15/10/2023 12.00 hrs. An explanation and reminder of the BDS guidelines: In harmony with international law, the nonviolent BDS movement defends the right of the Indigenous Palestinian people to resist Israel’s decades-old regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid and military occupation “by all available means, including armed resistance,” as mandated by numerous UN resolutions, including UNGA Res. 37/43 and UNGA Res. 45/130, with strict adherence to the principle of prohibition against targeting non-combatants. The use of force against civilians is strictly prohibited, whether from the oppressor or the oppressed side–despite the massive power imbalance and, crucially, the just as massive moral asymmetry between the colonizer and the colonized.
We ask students and those working in the higher education and/or cultural sectors in the Netherlands to publicly sign this statement to express their solidarity with the Palestinians and to make the Dutch government and other institutions aware of the Dutch support base for Palestine. Sign the statement via this form.
If you're not comfortable with filling in certain fields you could put only initials for your first name or leave out university, role etc by putting an 'x'. If you want your name, affiliation or role corrected, please contact dutchscholarspalestine@gmail.com.
So far over 2000 people have signed the statement. See the list of signatories here.
