Scholars Against the War on Palestine is a transnational, cross-disciplinary coalition standing firmly with the Palestinian struggle for liberation and justice. We call for an immediate end to the century-long colonial war on Palestine and its people.
Scholars Against the War on Palestine is a transnational, cross-disciplinary coalition standing firmly with the Palestinian struggle for liberation and justice. We call for an immediate end to the century-long colonial war on Palestine and its people.
"The shocking ability for anyone and everyone to witness much of the merciless carnage as it happens has made crystal clear its logic. This is not about self-defense, or tunnels, or rockets, or Hamas. It is, rather, a brutal colonial war waged on an imprisoned, blockaded, and besieged people who do not care to live on their knees. Let our chants echo straight to Gaza: In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians."
Professor Rinaldo Walcott ,
SUNY Buffalo
"The Palestinian struggle is one of the fundamental struggles to produce the kind of world we so desperately need. A world where we are able to live free and unfettered life beyond colonial designs of domination, extraction and exploitation. A free Palestine is a first step in that urgent and necessary future."
Professor Judith Butler,
University of California, Berkeley
"In the midst of this horrific destruction of Palestinian life, the conditions for life, the destruction of hospitals and homes, schools and universities in Gaza and the terrorization of Palestinians in the West Bank, we must, as academics, not only oppose this ongoing slaughter but defend the collective right to speak out against this injustice. The time is now to end this violence and to demand freedom and justice for Palestine."
Dr. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson,
Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, artist
"Our comrades in Palestine, professors, writers, students and artists have called upon us to do everything in our power to stop the genocide, end the siege, dismantle Israeli apartheid, and end the occupation of Palestine.
This is why we teach. This is why we write. This is why we study.
And in this catastrophic moment, there is no choice but to mobilize."
Professor Rashid Khalidi,
Columbia University
"Israel's long war on the Palestinian people has reached another peak of wanton brutality in the Gaza Strip with a horrendous toll of civilians killed and maimed. Israel's blockade of water, food, medicine, electricity, fuel and other vital supplies and its attacks on medical facilities and murder of hundreds of healthcare workers and UN relief workers are egregious war crimes, as is its destruction of universities, schools, libraries and archives. All people of conscience should demand an immediate halt to this genocidal war."
Professor Salim Vally,
University of Johannesburg
"It is incumbent on scholars throughout the world to urgently take a stand against the genocide and accompanying scholasticide against Palestinians. We can once again form such a global movement, this time against genocidal Israel so that it can join its dear and unlamented late friend – apartheid South Africa. Scholars Against the War on Palestine can contribute immensely to this movement."
Professor Avi Shlaim,
University of Oxford
"‘Operation Swords of Iron’ is the sixth Israeli military offensive in Gaza since 2008 but it is also the most brutal, destructive, lethal in terms of casualties, and vicious in its treatment of civilians. Israel is committing multiple war crimes on a daily basis. It needs to be stopped immediately and to be held to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people."
Professor Frances Hasso,
Duke University
"As a feminist scholar who has published on Palestine and the Arab world for 25 years - and worked and lived in Palestine at various points in my life - I urge the academic community to use all available levers of persuasion to stop the Israeli genocidal war and siege against Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of historic Palestine. We should all insist on and work together toward the liberation of Palestine and the right of all peoples in the world to live dignified lives."
Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
Columbia University
"Let us learn to think of Zionism as an imaginary narrative that suggests that all Jews, everywhere, were born as part of the group that was banished from the 'Holy Land' when Jerusalem fell, leading to the most vicious settler colonialism justified by transforming the Holocaust, a profound occasion of shame for Europe, into a justification for legislated violence."
Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti,
Rice University
"For the tens of thousands of children, women, and men murdered and maimed in Gaza in this latest genocidal war; for the millions of Palestinians struggling against siege, ethnic cleansing, and colonialism for decades; for the many more millions of refugees striving for return; for all the academics across Palestine who have lost their students, colleagues, and university campuses; we stand united in solidarity and love, resolutely calling for freedom."
Professor Ussama Makdisi,
University of California, Berkeley
"Palestine is more than a nationality; it is more than the suffering and traumatized people scattered across the world: Palestine is a moral compass. It is a guide to justice, for equality, for decency, and for freedom. That is why we stand now in unequivocal solidarity with our people. This is not politics. This is basic decency."
Dr. Rafeef Ziadah,
King's College London
"Now more than ever we need to be united in calling for an immediate ceasefire and end to the siege on Gaza. But we also need to remember that this is an ongoing war, ongoing Nakba against all Palestinians. We will not stop organising until our calls for justice are heard."
Judy Rebick Toronto Metropolitan University
"As a teacher, a writer and a Jew, I am horrified by the genocidal violence being inflicted on Gaza by Israel. There can be no excuse for this horrifying violence against thousands of innocent civilians".
Professor Ashraf Kagee
Stellenbosch University
"Israel’s genocidal attacks on the people of Gaza constitute war crimes. An immediate ceasefire is necessary along with humanitarian aid including food, water, medicines, and fuel. I stand with the Palestinian people in their demand for freedom and justice"
Professor Dennis Francis
University of Glasgow
"As scholars committed to social justice, we condemn the current humanitarian crisis in Palestine by Israeli armed forces, sympathise with the people of Palestine who are targeted and persecuted in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, and acknowledge their resilience, strength, and resistance."
Professor David McNally
University of Houston
"Palestine is the defining global justice struggle of our moment, in the same way that Vietnam was for an earlier generation. We must rally the widest solidarity possible with the Palestinian people as they resist this genocidal war. And we must let the world hear our cry: Free Palestine!"
Professor Susan Ferguson
Wilfred Laurier University
"The unspeakable violence in Gaza today is the result not only of the Western-backed Israeli war machine. It comes also from decades of our universities and governments silencing and criminalizing debate and discussion that dares to humanize the Palestinian people. As scholars, we must speak, write and think Palestine. If not now, when?"
Professor Nancy Fraser New School for Social Research
"Scholars Against the War on Palestine’s approach is exactly what is needed now. I’m proud to join and urge others to do so as well."
Professor Himani Bannerji York University
"In these catastrophic times when Israel 's total assault on Gaza fully exposes the genocidal intent of settler colonialism and the sadistic pride that it inspires among its perpetrators, we must raise our voices transnationally in a response of total refusal and total solidarity. Constantly faced with televised civilian murders and pulverisation of all dwellings and infrastructure of Gaza, its reduction into a mass grave in real time we can no longer hide from the truth which threatens to rob the very word 'human' of its meaning. Scholars Against the War on Palestine offers us an insurgent platform from which we join others in a total refusal of such an anti-human ethnic nationalist project
"
Professor Nadine Naber
University of Illinois Chicago
"Because the United States backing of the ongoing Palestinian genocide helps enable U.S. systems of police violence, attacks on migrants, and the militarization of indigenous peoples' lands, we cannot forget that no one will be free if Palestine remains unfree.
"
Professor Robin D.G. Kelley UCLA
"Scholars Against the War on Palestine reminds us of our responsibility to speak up, to resist the war and occupation, to defend Palestinian life and self-determination, and to fight for our very right to criticize Israel’s crimes. To fulfill our responsibility, we must stand together. Join us. Ceasefire Now! End 75 years of colonialism! Free Palestine!
"
Professor Donna Murch Rutgers University
"I have cared about Palestine for as long as I can remember. But witnessing this scale of colonial violence has devastated me. We all need to fight where we have the greatest power, which is often at work.
"
Professor Sherene Seikaly,
UC Santa Barbara
"In this 75th day of 75 years of Nakba, and a hundred years of war, there is a raid every half hour. A Palestinian child dies every ten minutes. Palestine is the place where a world is unmade, a world where the illusions of international law, humanitarianism, the claims of civilization shatter ever further into an inferno of hypocrisies and lies. Today, amidst genocide, we follow the lessons of the Palestinian bakers and the storytellers, kneading dough, crafting narratives, making worlds, even as they face the certainty of their death."
Professor Wadie E. Said,
University of Colorado Boulder
The unprecedented Israeli assault on Gaza - the fifth and most severe in a series of attacks on the besieged Strip over the past fifteen years - is an attempt to strike at the nationhood and unity of the Palestinian people. Despite the invasion not respecting any aspects of international law - such as the principles of proportionality and distinction - the people of Gaza have remained steadfast and resisted heroically. Their struggle requires a ceasefire now and a permanent end to Israeli military occupation and apartheid.
Professor Ilan Pappe University of Exeter
"It’s time for academics to galvanize their communities behind the Palestinian liberation struggle. A transnational campaign is urgent, given the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. It’s our moral duty to stand with the Palestinians, while politicians and the media are silent. But as academies we should demand more. It’s time for the global north to admit its role in the destruction of Palestine that began in the 1920s and continues to this very day. Political elites should condemn the genocidal policies of the past and stop the one occurring at the present. The academic word might not be mightier than the military sword, but it has the power to inform and encourage the world to dismantle a colonial project that poses an existential danger not only to the Palestinians, but to a large number of people in the region and beyond."
Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah Imperial College London and AUB
During the weeks I spent in Gaza under relentless bombardment and siege, I witnessed how Israel destroyed the infrastructure of life to ensure that it becomes uninhabitable even after the ceasefire. It is creating a self sustaining catastrophe which will continue to take Palestinian lives through epidemics and by denying over 50,000 wounded access to treatment until they succumb to their wounds. Solidarity, including on the part of medical scholars and other academics, is essential for saving lives and charting a pathway for freedom.
Professor Ann Phoenix UCL
"There is no justification for the continued daily killings, maimings and starvation of people in Gaza. An immediate ceasefire, followed by the rebuilding of Gaza and provision for Palestinian people to have access to education, healthcare and adequate provisions and self-determination are crucial to peace and social justice."
Professor Karma Nabulsi,
University of Oxford
"The shocking ability for anyone and everyone to witness much of the merciless carnage as it happens has made crystal clear its logic. This is not about self-defense, or tunnels, or rockets, or Hamas. It is, rather, a brutal colonial war waged on an imprisoned, blockaded, and besieged people who do not care to live on their knees. Let our chants echo straight to Gaza: In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians."
Professor Rinaldo Walcott ,
SUNY Buffalo
"The Palestinian struggle is one of the fundamental struggles to produce the kind of world we so desperately need. A world where we are able to live free and unfettered life beyond colonial designs of domination, extraction and exploitation. A free Palestine is a first step in that urgent and necessary future."
Professor Judith Butler,
University of California, Berkeley
"In the midst of this horrific destruction of Palestinian life, the conditions for life, the destruction of hospitals and homes, schools and universities in Gaza and the terrorization of Palestinians in the West Bank, we must, as academics, not only oppose this ongoing slaughter but defend the collective right to speak out against this injustice. The time is now to end this violence and to demand freedom and justice for Palestine."
Dr. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson,
Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, artist
"Our comrades in Palestine, professors, writers, students and artists have called upon us to do everything in our power to stop the genocide, end the siege, dismantle Israeli apartheid, and end the occupation of Palestine.
This is why we teach. This is why we write. This is why we study.
And in this catastrophic moment, there is no choice but to mobilize."
Professor Rashid Khalidi,
Columbia University
"Israel's long war on the Palestinian people has reached another peak of wanton brutality in the Gaza Strip with a horrendous toll of civilians killed and maimed. Israel's blockade of water, food, medicine, electricity, fuel and other vital supplies and its attacks on medical facilities and murder of hundreds of healthcare workers and UN relief workers are egregious war crimes, as is its destruction of universities, schools, libraries and archives. All people of conscience should demand an immediate halt to this genocidal war."
Professor Salim Vally,
University of Johannesburg
"It is incumbent on scholars throughout the world to urgently take a stand against the genocide and accompanying scholasticide against Palestinians. We can once again form such a global movement, this time against genocidal Israel so that it can join its dear and unlamented late friend – apartheid South Africa. Scholars Against the War on Palestine can contribute immensely to this movement."
Professor Avi Shlaim,
University of Oxford
"‘Operation Swords of Iron’ is the sixth Israeli military offensive in Gaza since 2008 but it is also the most brutal, destructive, lethal in terms of casualties, and vicious in its treatment of civilians. Israel is committing multiple war crimes on a daily basis. It needs to be stopped immediately and to be held to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people."
Professor Frances Hasso,
Duke University
"As a feminist scholar who has published on Palestine and the Arab world for 25 years - and worked and lived in Palestine at various points in my life - I urge the academic community to use all available levers of persuasion to stop the Israeli genocidal war and siege against Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of historic Palestine. We should all insist on and work together toward the liberation of Palestine and the right of all peoples in the world to live dignified lives."
Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
Columbia University
"Let us learn to think of Zionism as an imaginary narrative that suggests that all Jews, everywhere, were born as part of the group that was banished from the 'Holy Land' when Jerusalem fell, leading to the most vicious settler colonialism justified by transforming the Holocaust, a profound occasion of shame for Europe, into a justification for legislated violence."
Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti,
Rice University
"For the tens of thousands of children, women, and men murdered and maimed in Gaza in this latest genocidal war; for the millions of Palestinians struggling against siege, ethnic cleansing, and colonialism for decades; for the many more millions of refugees striving for return; for all the academics across Palestine who have lost their students, colleagues, and university campuses; we stand united in solidarity and love, resolutely calling for freedom."
Professor Ussama Makdisi,
University of California, Berkeley
"Palestine is more than a nationality; it is more than the suffering and traumatized people scattered across the world: Palestine is a moral compass. It is a guide to justice, for equality, for decency, and for freedom. That is why we stand now in unequivocal solidarity with our people. This is not politics. This is basic decency."
Dr. Rafeef Ziadah,
King's College London
"Now more than ever we need to be united in calling for an immediate ceasefire and end to the siege on Gaza. But we also need to remember that this is an ongoing war, ongoing Nakba against all Palestinians. We will not stop organising until our calls for justice are heard."
Judy Rebick Toronto Metropolitan University
"As a teacher, a writer and a Jew, I am horrified by the genocidal violence being inflicted on Gaza by Israel. There can be no excuse for this horrifying violence against thousands of innocent civilians".
Professor Ashraf Kagee
Stellenbosch University
"Israel’s genocidal attacks on the people of Gaza constitute war crimes. An immediate ceasefire is necessary along with humanitarian aid including food, water, medicines, and fuel. I stand with the Palestinian people in their demand for freedom and justice"
Professor Dennis Francis
University of Glasgow
"As scholars committed to social justice, we condemn the current humanitarian crisis in Palestine by Israeli armed forces, sympathise with the people of Palestine who are targeted and persecuted in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, and acknowledge their resilience, strength, and resistance."
Professor David McNally
University of Houston
"Palestine is the defining global justice struggle of our moment, in the same way that Vietnam was for an earlier generation. We must rally the widest solidarity possible with the Palestinian people as they resist this genocidal war. And we must let the world hear our cry: Free Palestine!"
Professor Susan Ferguson
Wilfred Laurier University
"The unspeakable violence in Gaza today is the result not only of the Western-backed Israeli war machine. It comes also from decades of our universities and governments silencing and criminalizing debate and discussion that dares to humanize the Palestinian people. As scholars, we must speak, write and think Palestine. If not now, when?"
Professor Nancy Fraser New School for Social Research
"Scholars Against the War on Palestine’s approach is exactly what is needed now. I’m proud to join and urge others to do so as well."
Professor Himani Bannerji York University
"In these catastrophic times when Israel 's total assault on Gaza fully exposes the genocidal intent of settler colonialism and the sadistic pride that it inspires among its perpetrators, we must raise our voices transnationally in a response of total refusal and total solidarity. Constantly faced with televised civilian murders and pulverisation of all dwellings and infrastructure of Gaza, its reduction into a mass grave in real time we can no longer hide from the truth which threatens to rob the very word 'human' of its meaning. Scholars Against the War on Palestine offers us an insurgent platform from which we join others in a total refusal of such an anti-human ethnic nationalist project
"
Professor Nadine Naber
University of Illinois Chicago
"Because the United States backing of the ongoing Palestinian genocide helps enable U.S. systems of police violence, attacks on migrants, and the militarization of indigenous peoples' lands, we cannot forget that no one will be free if Palestine remains unfree.
"
Professor Robin D.G. Kelley UCLA
"Scholars Against the War on Palestine reminds us of our responsibility to speak up, to resist the war and occupation, to defend Palestinian life and self-determination, and to fight for our very right to criticize Israel’s crimes. To fulfill our responsibility, we must stand together. Join us. Ceasefire Now! End 75 years of colonialism! Free Palestine!
"
Professor Donna Murch Rutgers University
"I have cared about Palestine for as long as I can remember. But witnessing this scale of colonial violence has devastated me. We all need to fight where we have the greatest power, which is often at work.
"
Professor Sherene Seikaly,
UC Santa Barbara
"In this 75th day of 75 years of Nakba, and a hundred years of war, there is a raid every half hour. A Palestinian child dies every ten minutes. Palestine is the place where a world is unmade, a world where the illusions of international law, humanitarianism, the claims of civilization shatter ever further into an inferno of hypocrisies and lies. Today, amidst genocide, we follow the lessons of the Palestinian bakers and the storytellers, kneading dough, crafting narratives, making worlds, even as they face the certainty of their death."
Professor Wadie E. Said,
University of Colorado Boulder
The unprecedented Israeli assault on Gaza - the fifth and most severe in a series of attacks on the besieged Strip over the past fifteen years - is an attempt to strike at the nationhood and unity of the Palestinian people. Despite the invasion not respecting any aspects of international law - such as the principles of proportionality and distinction - the people of Gaza have remained steadfast and resisted heroically. Their struggle requires a ceasefire now and a permanent end to Israeli military occupation and apartheid.
Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah Imperial College London and AUB
During the weeks I spent in Gaza under relentless bombardment and siege, I witnessed how Israel destroyed the infrastructure of life to ensure that it becomes uninhabitable even after the ceasefire. It is creating a self sustaining catastrophe which will continue to take Palestinian lives through epidemics and by denying over 50,000 wounded access to treatment until they succumb to their wounds. Solidarity, including on the part of medical scholars and other academics, is essential for saving lives and charting a pathway for freedom.
Professor Ilan Pappe University of Exeter
"It’s time for academics to galvanize their communities behind the Palestinian liberation struggle. A transnational campaign is urgent, given the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. It’s our moral duty to stand with the Palestinians, while politicians and the media are silent. But as academies we should demand more. It’s time for the global north to admit its role in the destruction of Palestine that began in the 1920s and continues to this very day. Political elites should condemn the genocidal policies of the past and stop the one occurring at the present. The academic word might not be mightier than the military sword, but it has the power to inform and encourage the world to dismantle a colonial project that poses an existential danger not only to the Palestinians, but to a large number of people in the region and beyond."
Professor Ann Phoenix UCL
"There is no justification for the continued daily killings, maimings and starvation of people in Gaza. An immediate ceasefire, followed by the rebuilding of Gaza and provision for Palestinian people to have access to education, healthcare and adequate provisions and self-determination are crucial to peace and social justice."
Tracking Scholasticide
Israel has systematically undermined Palestinian centres of education since the beginning of its occupation. Since the beginning of the current war, the bombing and raiding of universities, and targeted wounding and killing of academics and students in Gaza and the West Bank has been unrelenting. Scholasticide has become a dangerous aspect of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people. The figures below represent the scale of Scholasticide in Gaza alone during the first 100 days of war.
0
Academics targeted and killed
0
Educators killed
0
Students killed
0
Students injured
0%
Of bookshops and libraries have been destroyed
0
Palestinian university students cannot attend university in Gaza
0
Schools have been damaged or destroyed
EVERY
University in Gaza has been bombed
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