After more than a month of bombardment by Israel, over 2,000 Palestinians are dead, the overwhelming majority of them civilians. This includes 514 children by the last count, a figure which is almost certain to rise as survivors sift through the wreckage. Entire families have been wiped out. Five Israeli civilians, including one child, and 64 soldiers have died. Gazans have seen their cities reduced to rubble yet again, their infrastructure devastated, with many hospitals, schools, factories and electric plants targeted and destroyed. Israel has destroyed at least 17,000 residential buildings, leaving a significant proportion of Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians homeless. These events occur against the background of decades of Israeli occupation and illegal expansion – and we note that in the last few weeks, with the world’s attention temporarily focused on Gaza, the West Bank has seen a surge of settlement-building. It is this context, as well as the unmistakeable asymmetry of power between the two sides in this ‘conflict’, which makes it so disingenuous to accuse critics of ‘singling Israel out’. As many have persuasively argued over the last few weeks, it is Israel that singles itself out: through its claims to moral impeccability, its celebrated status as a democracy, through its receipt of massive support from the US and other nations, and through its abuse of the memory of the holocaust in order to deflect criticism and to discredit the Palestinian struggle – on this point, we wish to express our solidarity with the more than 300 holocaust survivors and their descendants who have recently called on the world to take action to stop Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.
In our professional capacities as academics, we may emphasise different aspects of the history and current situation between Israel and Palestine. The lawyers among us may point out that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal under international law; that despite the 2005 withdrawal of troops from the Gaza strip, the area is still recognised by the UN as occupied territory, due to Israel’s control of the borders and surrounding land, sea and air space; and that there is no legal right of ‘self-defence’ by an occupying power against the people under its occupation. Philosophers and political theorists among us may emphasise the moral hypocrisy in the apologism for Israel’s crimes, and the distortions involved in the attempt to discredit or silence criticism. Historians may insist that the recent events in Gaza can only be properly understood and evaluated as part of a long trajectory of colonial occupation: the building and continual expansion of settlements (and the theft of land and resources that this entails); the expulsion of Palestinian inhabitants of historic Palestine (beginning with the displacement of hundreds of thousands in the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, and culminating in the current situation in which millions of Palestinian refugees and their immediate descendants are scattered around the globe); and the increasingly violent and discriminatory treatment of those Palestinians who remain in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and in Israel itself.
We, the undersigned, differ not only in our fields of specialism, but no doubt also in our particular analyses of the history of Israel and Palestine, the significance of current and past events, and the most appropriate resolution of the situation. Such differences notwithstanding, we are united on several points: First, we wish to add our voices to those of the Palestinian resistance in appealing for an immediate lifting of the blockade on Gaza. Beyond this most urgent demand, we also believe that no satisfactory end to this on-going humanitarian crisis can be achieved without the realisation of a more far-reaching justice for the Palestinian people, including the displaced refugees, and at the same time the realisation of a situation in which the inhabitants of historic Palestine, whatever their ethnicity, religion, or culture, whether they now live as Palestinians or as Israelis, are able to coexist under conditions of meaningful freedom and equality – equality of civic status, of respect, and of access to land and resources. We believe that a radical change is needed in order to achieve this, and that whatever the substance of this change, it cannot happen without an end to the violence perpetrated by the state of Israel against Palestinians, an end to the siege of Gaza and to the occupation, and an end to the discriminatory and dehumanising treatment of Palestinian citizens within Israel. Finally, as academics, we are concerned by the recent instances of victimisation of students and lecturers, inside and outside of Israel, for speaking out on this issue. We demand an end to the persecution of critics of Israel within academia, and pledge to lend our support to those targeted.
Lift the blockade. End the killing. Justice for the Palestinian people.
28/09/2014
To add your name send an email to campalestinestatement@gmail.com
Signed:
- Dr Maha Abdelrahman, Centre of Development Studies
- Dr Anne Alexander, CRASSH
- Prof Ash Amin, Department of Geography
- Dr Alexander Anievas, Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS)
- Dr Houshang Ardavan, Institute of Astronomy
- Dr Nikos Bamiedakis, Engineering Department
- Prof Zygmunt Baranski, Department of Italian (emeritus)
- Dr Deborah Bowman, Gonville & Caius College / Faculty of English
- Dr Joel Cabrita, Faculty of Divinity/Centre for African Studies
- Dr Adam Caulton, Faculty of Philosophy
- Dr Hero Chalmers, Fitzwilliam College / Faculty of English
- Dr Jean Chothia, Selwyn College / Faculty of English
- Mr Tim Cribb, Churchill College / Faculty of English (emeritus)
- Prof Brad Epps, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
- Dr Lorna Finlayson, King’s College / Faculty of Philosophy
- Prof Raymond Geuss, Faculty of Philosophy (emeritus)
- Dr Hadi Godazgar, King’s College / Dept of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
- Dr Mahdi Godazgar, King’s College / Dept of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
- Mr Martin Golding, Peterhouse College / Faculty of English
- Prof Raymond E. Goldstein, Dept of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
- Sir Prof Jack Goody (Emeritus), St John's College
- Dr Priyamvada Gopal, Faculty of English
- Dr Mia Gray, Department of Geography
- Dr Boris Groisman, Sidney Sussex College / Dept of Applied Math. and Theoretical Physics
- Dr Rachael Harris, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
- Dr Adam Higazi, King’s College / Centre of African Studies
- Dr Edward Holberton, Girton College / Faculty of English
- Dr Michael Hrebeniak, Wolfson College / Faculty of English
- Prof Mary Jacobus, Faculty of English (emerita)
- Dr Ian James, Department of French
- Dr Samuel James, Christ's College/ Faculty of History
- Mr Aylmer Johnson, Department of Engineering
- Dr Dominic Keown, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
- Dr Nayanika Mathur, Department of Social Anthropology/CRASSH
- Dr Malachi McIntosh, Faculty of English
- Prof Juliet Mitchell (Emerita), Politics, Psychology, Sociology and International Studies
- Prof Clément Mouhot, Centre for Mathematical Sciences
- Dr Simon Hendeles Layton, Faculty of History
- Prof Jean Michel Massing, Department of History of Art
- Dr Subha Mukherji, Faculty of English
- Dr Kamal Munir, Judge Business School
- Dr Basim Musallam, King’s College
- Dr David Nally, Department of Geography
- Dr Eva Nanopoulos, King’s College / Faculty of Law
- Dr Rory O’Bryen, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
- Dr Ian Patterson, Queens’ College / Faculty of English
- Dr Adriana Pesci, Downing College / Dept of Applied Math. and Theoretical Physics
- Dr Mezna Qato, King's College
- Dr Surabhi Ranganathan, King’s College / Faculty of Law
- Prof James Russell, Department of Psychology
- Dr Paul Sagar, King's College / Department of Politics and International Studies
- Dr Suchitra Sebastian, King’s College / Department of Physics
- Dr Jason Scott-Warren, Faculty of English
- Dr. Mishka Sinha, Faculty of History
- Peter Sparks, Girton College / Department of Architecture (emeritus)
- Dr Deborah Thom, Robinson College / Department of History and HSPS
- Dr Jeremy Thurlow, Robinson College / Faculty of Music
- Ms Isobel Urquhart, Homerton College
- Dr Bert Vaux, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
- Dr Jennifer Wallace, Peterhouse College / Faculty of English
- Dr Chris Warnes, Faculty of English / Centre of African Studies
- Dr Hanna Weibye, King's College / Faculty of History, Cambridge
- Dr Jessica Wheeler, Department of Psychiatry
- Dr Ian Willis, Department of Geography
- Dr Ross Wilson, Trinity College / Faculty of English
- Dr Waseem Yaqoob, Pembroke College / PPSIS
- Dr Andrew Zurcher, Queens’ College / Faculty of English
