BY NEVE GORDON & JEFF HALPER
Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and
universities who prominently denounced an
effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007
have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s bombardment of the Islamic
University of Gaza on December 28. Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia
University, who organised the petition, has been silent, as have his
co-signatories from Princeton, Northwestern and Cornell universities and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Most others who signed similar petitions,
like the 11,000 professors from nearly 1,000 universities around the world, have
also refrained from expressing their outrage at Israel’s attack on the leading
university in Gaza. The artfully named Scholars for Peace in the Middle East,
which organised the latter appeal, has said nothing about the assault.
While the extent of the damage to the Islamic University, which
was hit in six separate air strikes, is still unknown, recent reports indicate
that at least two major buildings were targeted, a science laboratory and the
Ladies’ Building where female students attended classes. There were no
casualties, as the university was evacuated when the Israeli assault began on
December 27.
Virtually all the commentators agree that the Islamic University
was attacked, in part, because it is a cultural symbol of Hamas, the ruling
party in the elected Palestinian government, which Israel has targeted in its
continuing attacks in Gaza. Mysteriously, hardly any of the news coverage has
emphasised the educational significance of the university, which far exceeds its
cultural or political symbolism.
Established in 1978 by the founder of Hamas – with the approval
of Israeli authorities – the Islamic University is the first and most important
institution of higher education in Gaza, serving more than 20,000 students, 60
per cent of whom are women. It comprises 10 faculties – education, religion,
art, commerce, Shariah law, science, engineering, information technology,
medicine and nursing – and awards a variety of bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Taking into account that Palestinian universities have been regionalised because
Palestinian students from Gaza are barred by Israel from studying either in the
West Bank or abroad, the educational significance of the Islamic University
becomes even more apparent.
Those restrictions became international news last summer when
Israel refused to grant exit permits to seven carefully vetted students from
Gaza who had been awarded Fulbright fellowships by the state department to study
in the United States. After top state department officials intervened the
students’ scholarships were restored – though Israel allowed only four of the
seven to leave, even after appeals by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "It
is a welcome victory – for the students," opined The New York Times and
"for Israel which should want to see more of Gaza’s young people follow a path
of hope and education rather than hopelessness and martyrdom; and for the United
States whose image in the Middle East badly needs burnishing."
Notwithstanding the importance of the Islamic University, Israel
has tried to justify the bombing. An army spokeswoman told The Chronicle
that the targeted buildings were used as "a research and development centre for
Hamas weapons, including Qassam rockets. …One of the structures struck housed
explosives laboratories that were an inseparable part of Hamas’s research and
development programme as well as places that served as storage facilities for
the organisation. The development of these weapons took place under the auspices
of senior lecturers who are activists in Hamas."
Islamic University officials deny the Israeli allegations. Yet
even if there is some merit in them, it is common knowledge that practically all
major American and Israeli universities are engaged in research and development
of military applications and receive money from the Pentagon and defence
corporations. Weapon development and even manufacturing have, unfortunately,
become major projects at universities worldwide – a fact that does not justify
bombing them.
By launching an attack on Gaza the Israeli government has once
again chosen to adopt strategies of violence that are tragically akin to the
ones deployed by Hamas – only the Israeli tactics are much more lethal. How
should academics respond to this assault on an institution of higher education?
Regardless of one’s stand on the proposed boycott of Israeli universities,
anyone so concerned about academic freedom as to put one’s name on a petition
should be no less outraged when Israel bombs a Palestinian university. The
question then is whether the university presidents and professors who signed the
various petitions denouncing efforts to boycott Israel will speak out against
the destruction of the Islamic University.
(Neve Gordon is chair of the department of politics and
government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and author of Israel’s
Occupation, University of California Press, 2008. Jeff Halper is the
director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, ICAHD, and author
of An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel,
Pluto Press, 2008. This article was posted on chronicle.com on
December 30, 2008.)
Courtesy: The Chronicle of Higher Education;
www.chronicle.com
