Open letter | Stop Israeli collaborations today
The UvA should choose to suspend the eight Israeli collaborations today. This is what hundred UvA employees wrote in an open letter to the Executive Board. “There can be no meaningful cooperation on compliance when a rogue government openly defies orders by an international court aiming to prevent genocide.”
Dear Rector,
Dear College van Bestuur,
Dear deans,
Esteemed colleagues. The images from sunday night’s attacks on a tent encampment, killing at least thirty people and burning several alive in a designated “safe zone” in Rafah will haunt us for years to come. Extreme, reckless violence inflicted on displaced, terrified and starved people, with weapons provided with the avail of European governments. Illegal violence.
Since the ICJ’s court order of Friday 24 May, Israel operates in Rafah in overt defiance of international law. The failure by Israel’s allies to take a strong stance on what increasingly appears as a genocidal war threatens to destroy what remains in place of the international legal order, with e.g. US lawmakers calling for sanctions on ICC prosecutors and the Biden administration signalling a willingness to act upon such calls.
The latest escalation comes days after images of Israeli soldiers deliberately setting fire to a university library have once more brought to attention the scale of the slaughter inflicted on Gaza’s educational system and its academic community.
Meanwhile, Israel’s civil society unsuccessfully tries to bring its reckless government to care about the fate of the hostages still held in Gaza, currently “coming back in coffins” at a painfully sluggish rate – with the Israeli government having rejected the most recent ceasefire deal just before launching the current attack on Rafah. Teenagers who oppose the war and refuse to join the IDF on conscientious grounds are sent to jail and marginalised. Independent news are shut down, their offices raided. And Israel is still failing to allow independent investigators to access Gaza. This escalates a climate that a UN committee had already in 2023 described as “silencing of civil society”.
The climate of intimidation and silencing of critical voices does not exempt universities: while the IDF has launched a probe into the library arson episode, not one Israeli university appears to have condemned it – or taken position against the complete, deliberate destruction of Gaza’s education infrastructure.
While academics worldwide – including those in Gaza as well as those in Israel – deserve our solidarity and academic friendship in difficult times, the integrity of academic self-government here and now requires our communities to send a message to Israeli institutions: their silence about the ongoing scholasticide, their complacency about the staggering loss of Palestinian lives and the ongoing trauma and cruelty inflicted on a whole population, goes against basic principles of academic cooperation and the search of truth – also when difficult, unpopular or uncomfortable – that academia owes its privileges to.
For this reason, while the general frameworks for cooperation with third parties are reviewed, today is the day to suspend all ongoing research cooperations with Israeli partners, pending a rigorous independent ethical review, democratically supported by our academic community. The review will take care of carefully balancing core principles of academic freedom and the placement of responsibility at institutional – not individual – level. Suspensions, however, are necessary while this careful process takes place. The Memoranda of Understanding of the University of Amsterdam with three Israeli universities are currently already suspended. The University must commit to non-renewal, engaging with its institutional partners to discuss on which terms and under which conditions cooperation can be resumed. Suspension should also include ongoing European projects, which should lead to suspension of Israel’s participation in Horizon Europe until compliance with International law is restored.
There can be no “just mobility for all” when people are continuously forced to move their families from one unsafe location to the next. There can be no meaningful cooperation on compliance when a rogue government openly defies orders by an international court aiming to prevent genocide. Continuing to investigate “States’ Practice of Human Rights Justification” through intersectional lenses rings disquieting and ultimately untenable against the backdrop of last night’s cruelty. This is without mentioning the obvious problems with cooperations in the field of technology, where such technologies have been mobilised to entrench pervasive surveillance and target suspected terrorists at unprecedented scale with overt acceptance of collateral victims.
We firmly believe in dialogue and debate as crucial to all forms of academic life, and because of this we are aware that sometimes such dialogue requires firmness – today is the day to tell our Israeli partners that this must stop. Over the longer arc of history we are failing both our Palestinian colleagues and the Israeli ones if we do not make the right call. You can make this call.
On behalf of our University, you can suspend the UvA’s participation in the eight projects that we are part of today. In doing so, you must promise involved colleagues on precarious contracts that their positions will not be jeopardised. Tomorrow, you can start the necessary conversation with our Israeli institutional partners to discuss how they can end their silence – but this will take us breaking that silence first.
At a time where academic freedom in the Netherlands is under obvious and growing pressure, we need your leadership to be able to face an uncertain and somewhat bleak future with some confidence. Surviving academics in Gaza and those trying to act with integrity and humanity in Israel and the West Bank, however, need our support even more urgently.
Today is the day to act.
Sincerely,
UvA Staff Members
Abhiraj Goswami
Adrian Kreutz
Agustin Ferrari Braun
Ali Hamdan
Andrea Leiter
Andro Rilovic
Anna Greszta
Annerienke Fioole
Anushka Mittal
Aylin Kuryel
Bengi Zeybek
Bethany Crawford
Bogna Bochinska
Brian Droop
Brunilda Pali
Bruno Bottega Pergher
Camille Faber
Casper Kurpan
Charis Papaevangelou
Chiara de Cesari
Colin Sterling
Danny Steur
Dimitris Bouris
Divya Nadkarni
Eleri Connick
Enzo Rossi
Erella Grassiani
Eva Peters
Gionata Bouché
Grace Coert
Gulzaar Barn
Haitian Ma
Hanna Muehlenhoff
Hao Nguyen
Hendrik de With
Houda Lamqaddam
Houssine Alloul
Hülya Ateş
Ildikó Plájás
Isabella Banks
Jacob Engelberg
James Pearson
Jamil Fiorino-Habib
Jan Teurlings
Jef Ausloos
Jeff Diamanti
Jenia Khristoforova
Jill Toh
Joe van der Eerden
Johanna Waldenberger
Jolijn van den Hout
Josh Gilmore
Julie McBrien
Kanad Bagchi
Lana Askari
Lars Klute
Laurens Naudts
Liana Saif
Lillian Cicerchia
Lisa Skwirblies
Luc de Groot
Luisa Steur
Margriet van Heesch
Mariana Riquito Pereira
Marie Garnier Ortiz
Marina Tulin
Marta Morvillo
Martijn Dekker
Martina Cossu
Max van Drunnen
Mayke Kaag
Melvin Wevers
Mikki Stelder
Miltos Kofinas
Mriganka Mukhopadhyay
Naomi Appelman
Noa Roei
Paul Raekstad
Paula Helm
Peter Miller
Pınar Türer
Plixavra Vogiatzoglou
Pola Cebulak
Rhys Jones
Rika Theo
Rolando Vazquez Melken
Rébecca Franco
Sarah Bracke
Sarah Vorndran
Shivani Kaul
Sneha Gaddam
Sonja Evaldsson Mellström
Sruti Bala
Stefan Salomon
Stijn Peters
Timothy Yaczo
Valentina Carraro
Vladimir Bogoeski
Yannick van den Berg
Yves Van Leynseele
