#Palestine / This is what ethnocide looks like: Israel deliberate destruction of Palestinian academia.
On January 17th, the last remaining intact university in Gaza, Al-Aqsa University, was bombed and completely destroyed by the Israeli military. The bombing of #Gaza's universities is not collateral damage, but part of Israel's deliberate policy to destroy Palestinian academic and cultural life.
Israeli academic institutions have not spoken out against this destruction and its consequences.
Over the past 40 years, Palestinian universities have faced systematic harassment by #Israel, including campus closures and restrictions on faculty, students and academic cooperation.
Since October 7, the situation has severely intensified. In the occupied West Bank, most studies are online due to restrictions. In Gaza, all academic institutions have been destroyed, along with schools, libraries, archives and other educational sites.
Hundreds of students and faculty members have been killed in the bombings. At least 94 university staff members in Gaza are reported dead. Prominent academics have been specifically targeted and killed.
This represents an almost complete destruction of Palestinian academic life that will take years to rebuild. Surviving students and staff are traumatized, grieving and displaced.
Palestinian intellectual life is critical for society. Israel's systematic targeting of #academia is aimed at erasing not just physical infrastructure but Palestinian cultural and spiritual life.
Dr. Anat Matar (ענת מטר): "As Israeli academics, we must raise our voices against the killing of students and colleagues, mass arrests, and the annihilation of education in Gaza."
[cont’d] Academia in Gaza ‘has been destroyed’ by Israeli ‘educide’
[…] Recent figures from Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor indicate that Israeli military action has killed at least 94 university professors in Gaza since the country began its retaliation for Hamas’ 7 October attacks, as well as hundreds of lecturers and thousands of students.
[…] The organisation claimed that Israel had “targeted academic, scientific, and intellectual figures in the Strip in deliberate and specific air raids on their homes without prior notice”.