So many in the academy will say, ‘We were with you all along...’
A group of students set up a camp in solidarity with Palestinian people and protest against the attacks on Gaza at Helsinki University on May 06, 2024 in Helsinki, Finland [Alessandro Rampazzo/Anadolu via Getty Images]
by Dr Brendan Ciarán Browne
brendancbrowne
January 9, 2025
MEMO
Overcome by the guilt of having been an accomplice in the slaying of the Scottish King Duncan in the well-known Shakespearean tragedy, Lady Macbeth famously bemoans her inability to rid herself of the blood that stains her hands:
“Out damned spot! Out, I say…
Here’s the smell of the blood still.
All perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”.
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1
As the genocide in Gaza continues apace, inconceivably approaching 500 days, for some it appears that a partial “awakening” is happening, including amongst those who have stayed resolutely silent and refused to even countenance the possibility of a boycott as a mode of legitimate resistance, thus providing the liberal apparatus that brings us to this apex moment of wanton destruction.
Writing in the Conversation, Catherine Gegout considers there to be a slight change in tone amongst a number of European governments following the issue of warrants by the International Criminal Court for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Secretary Yoav Gallant. Some private utterances of condemnation have been made public, and it seems that those who stand accused of war crimes will no longer enjoy freedom of movement across the continent from whence their ancestors came.
Of course, condemnation and strong words alone rarely, if ever, equate to meaningful, material change. Arms contracts continue to be honoured, military aid continues to flow, businesses continue to trade with a state that stands accused of apartheid and genocide, and many in the western academy remain wedded to their collaborative research grants with Israeli universities.
And so, whilst for some it may appear that a light bulb (albeit one of those low level, energy saving types that take an age to light up fully) has finally been switched on, it is hard to view this as some kind of road to Damascus moment. If it does appear that there is the beginning of a volte face in terms of support for the Israeli state, one would be reckless to see it as anything other than an act of political expediency, jarring starkly with the almost spontaneous and unequivocal (and very public) declarations of support for the people of Ukraine.
READ: Smotrich calls for full control of Gaza, aid cuts once Trump takes office
Surrounded by sites of learning, endless resources, critical scholastic material and colleagues who have dedicated lives and livelihoods to educating and working on and for Palestine, those of us who implored our colleagues to embrace a full academic boycott as a last resort form of nonviolent resistance to achieve equality, freedom and dignity for our Palestinian colleagues, view the silence of so many in the academy (for the past 460 days, and 76 years) as both perplexing and deeply problematic.
A genocide being live streamed on every available screen by fearless civilians thrust into a media spotlight which they no more wanted, makes a mockery of the refrains “we didn’t know”, “we don’t understand”, or “it’s all really complex”.
There really is no excuse.
Apartheid déjà vu
Within the academy, we’ve been here before.
When anti-apartheid freedom fighter and future South African President Nelson Mandela was incarcerated, languishing in a prison cell on Robben Island, many in the political establishment denounced him as a terrorist. So too were there voices within the academy who refused to join the call for a boycott of South African institutions, all in the pursuit of an illusory version of “academic freedom”.
One can’t help but wonder where we would be if more in the academy had stood up alongside us against this most recent version of apartheid, rather than spending time and energy chastising our aims and tactics.
Would we be having to contemplate a devastating figure such as 10 per cent of the population in Gaza being either killed, declared missing, seriously wounded or detained?
Would we be looking at a situation where over 90 per cent of Gaza’s population have been displaced, many of them forced to flee on multiple occasions?
Would we be having to fathom the fact that the entire civilian infrastructure of Gaza has been decimated, with approximately 97 per cent of the drinking water rendered non-consumable due to contamination?
What about the fact that around 97 per cent of the civilian population are facing acute levels of food insecurity, with humanitarian aid to Gaza being brought to an almost complete standstill, left to rot at the checkpoints encircling the besieged coastal Strip?
Who knows?
Unparalleled destruction
An entirely new lexicon has emerged through which to describe the horror that has been meted out against the Palestinian population of Gaza, what Visualising Palestine define as the “many cides of genocide”. Words such as ecocide, urbicide, scholasticide, domicide and culturicide have become common parlance, evoking devastating images of lives and livelihoods destroyed.
READ: Quaker group pulls New York Times ad over paper’s refusal to call Gaza bombing ‘genocide’
By the beginning of November, 2024, over 85,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on Gaza, surpassing the total amount used throughout World War Two.
Bombs made in the US and used against Palestinian civilians starving and seeking shelter in makeshift encampments.
Alongside material support, political cover has been provided by European accomplices, with prime ministers and presidents alike making public declarations invoking Israel’s purported “right to self-defence”, a right that has never, in fact, existed under international law when it comes to an occupying power exerting colonial domination over a group seeking self-determination, liberty and justice.
Every hospital in Gaza has been destroyed or partially destroyed under false pretences, with staff and patients stripped naked, frog marched away and, in some cases, summarily executed. Premature babies have been left to die on neonatal wards, hospital directors have been arrested and forcibly disappeared inside Israeli prisons. Allegations of unimaginable torture and other gross human rights violations have been made by survivors of Israeli incarceration, including those of a sexual nature, most egregiously rape.
These facts are irrefutable, not least because members of the Israel Occupation Forces have been meticulous in documenting their war crimes for us and sharing the images on social media uploading for the whole world to see.
READ: Doctors Against Genocide demand release of Kamal Adwan Hospital Director
If this doesn’t stir academic colleagues to do all they can to speak up and agitate for a complete dissociation from the Israeli state, and endorse the call for a full academic boycott, I’m at a loss as to what will.
As academics, our profession ought to have been jolted into action much sooner, not least as a result of the complete destruction of the education sector in Gaza. The Palestinian NGO Visualising Palestine has determined that, since the beginning of the genocide, around 650,000 Palestinian children and young people have been denied access to education. Approximately 9,800 students and 409 educational staff have been killed. Every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been destroyed or partially destroyed and 85 per cent of schools have received significant damage as a result of Israeli military bombardment.
Time for institutional realignment
Many of us have long campaigned for our academic institutions to reconsider the connections that they have with an apartheid state, to re-evaluate whether it is wise to have collaborative partnerships with Israeli institutions that stand accused of providing the intellectual apparatus that props up the illegal occupation of Palestine. We have provided the information on boycott, ad nauseam, when trying to convince the sceptics that the full implementation of the academic boycott and a heeding of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) demands is the best means we have at our disposal to realise a freedom-oriented future for our Palestinian sisters and brothers.
Our students have put their bodies on the front lines.
They have set up encampments, to shine light on the partnerships our institutions have, and to demand that the university they receive their education from is one that is based on values of equality, freedom and dignity, and is beholden to principles of international law. The student encampment at my own institution successfully secured a commitment from the university to consider the connections it has with Israeli universities, and to evaluate the ethical viability of engaging in partnerships with Israeli institutions.
In establishing a “task force” designed to “inform current and future links and exchanges between Trinity College Dublin and higher education institutions, commercial enterprises and/or other relevant bodies in jurisdictions involved in armed conflicts and/or where there are violations of international law”, my institution has taken an important and laudable first step.
I welcome this decision warmly, and whilst the remit of the task force is broader than the question of the academic boycott of Israeli institutions, it is an indisputable fact that it was the global student awakening for Palestine, as noted across university campuses the world over, that led us to this decisive moment of consciousness.
As such, in the face of unimaginable tragedy and unfathomable Palestinian loss and suffering, an incredible, and morally imperative opportunity exists.
However, we who are long in this game must remain on high alert.
We must make sure that the legitimate and moral demands that undergird the call for a full academic boycott are not softened by bureaucratic processes and a liberalised attempt at containment and management.
This has been the approach favoured by decades of flawed peacebuilding intervention, promoted by many in the academy, shifting the focus off the oppressor and attempting to advocate a change of consciousness in the oppressed.
As the founders of the Palestinian boycott movement have warned, this approach in no way changes materially the actual experience of those living under occupation; rather it calls for the colonised to change their legitimate, and internationally-recognised, demands for freedom and justice.
We must therefore ensure that institutional reviews and bureaucratic processes do not delineate the parameters of what is deemed acceptable or attainable. The boycott guidelines are clear and unequivocal. They do not require interpretation, nor should they be negotiated with.
Famed anti-Zionist Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has declared publicly his fervent belief that this is the beginning of the end of the Zionist project. Should this indeed come to pass then those who stayed silent and condemned our demands and tactics will have no other choice but to realise that the tide of history has shifted, irreversibly.
Much like the guilt-ridden Lady Macbeth, one cannot help but conclude that they too will find the stain of Palestinian blood nigh on impossible to wash away. And so many in the academy will say, “We were with you all along…”
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
Overcome by the guilt of having been an accomplice in the slaying of the Scottish King Duncan in the well-known Shakespearean tragedy, Lady Macbeth famously bemoans her inability to rid herself of the blood that stains her hands:
“Out damned spot! Out, I say…
Here’s the smell of the blood still.
All perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”.
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1
As the genocide in Gaza continues apace, inconceivably approaching 500 days, for some it appears that a partial “awakening” is happening, including amongst those who have stayed resolutely silent and refused to even countenance the possibility of a boycott as a mode of legitimate resistance, thus providing the liberal apparatus that brings us to this apex moment of wanton destruction.
Writing in the Conversation, Catherine Gegout considers there to be a slight change in tone amongst a number of European governments following the issue of warrants by the International Criminal Court for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Secretary Yoav Gallant. Some private utterances of condemnation have been made public, and it seems that those who stand accused of war crimes will no longer enjoy freedom of movement across the continent from whence their ancestors came.
Of course, condemnation and strong words alone rarely, if ever, equate to meaningful, material change. Arms contracts continue to be honoured, military aid continues to flow, businesses continue to trade with a state that stands accused of apartheid and genocide, and many in the western academy remain wedded to their collaborative research grants with Israeli universities.
And so, whilst for some it may appear that a light bulb (albeit one of those low level, energy saving types that take an age to light up fully) has finally been switched on, it is hard to view this as some kind of road to Damascus moment. If it does appear that there is the beginning of a volte face in terms of support for the Israeli state, one would be reckless to see it as anything other than an act of political expediency, jarring starkly with the almost spontaneous and unequivocal (and very public) declarations of support for the people of Ukraine.
READ: Smotrich calls for full control of Gaza, aid cuts once Trump takes office
Surrounded by sites of learning, endless resources, critical scholastic material and colleagues who have dedicated lives and livelihoods to educating and working on and for Palestine, those of us who implored our colleagues to embrace a full academic boycott as a last resort form of nonviolent resistance to achieve equality, freedom and dignity for our Palestinian colleagues, view the silence of so many in the academy (for the past 460 days, and 76 years) as both perplexing and deeply problematic.
A genocide being live streamed on every available screen by fearless civilians thrust into a media spotlight which they no more wanted, makes a mockery of the refrains “we didn’t know”, “we don’t understand”, or “it’s all really complex”.
There really is no excuse.
Apartheid déjà vu
Within the academy, we’ve been here before.
When anti-apartheid freedom fighter and future South African President Nelson Mandela was incarcerated, languishing in a prison cell on Robben Island, many in the political establishment denounced him as a terrorist. So too were there voices within the academy who refused to join the call for a boycott of South African institutions, all in the pursuit of an illusory version of “academic freedom”.
One can’t help but wonder where we would be if more in the academy had stood up alongside us against this most recent version of apartheid, rather than spending time and energy chastising our aims and tactics.
Would we be having to contemplate a devastating figure such as 10 per cent of the population in Gaza being either killed, declared missing, seriously wounded or detained?
Would we be looking at a situation where over 90 per cent of Gaza’s population have been displaced, many of them forced to flee on multiple occasions?
Would we be having to fathom the fact that the entire civilian infrastructure of Gaza has been decimated, with approximately 97 per cent of the drinking water rendered non-consumable due to contamination?
What about the fact that around 97 per cent of the civilian population are facing acute levels of food insecurity, with humanitarian aid to Gaza being brought to an almost complete standstill, left to rot at the checkpoints encircling the besieged coastal Strip?
Who knows?
Unparalleled destruction
An entirely new lexicon has emerged through which to describe the horror that has been meted out against the Palestinian population of Gaza, what Visualising Palestine define as the “many cides of genocide”. Words such as ecocide, urbicide, scholasticide, domicide and culturicide have become common parlance, evoking devastating images of lives and livelihoods destroyed.
READ: Quaker group pulls New York Times ad over paper’s refusal to call Gaza bombing ‘genocide’
By the beginning of November, 2024, over 85,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on Gaza, surpassing the total amount used throughout World War Two.
Bombs made in the US and used against Palestinian civilians starving and seeking shelter in makeshift encampments.
Alongside material support, political cover has been provided by European accomplices, with prime ministers and presidents alike making public declarations invoking Israel’s purported “right to self-defence”, a right that has never, in fact, existed under international law when it comes to an occupying power exerting colonial domination over a group seeking self-determination, liberty and justice.
Every hospital in Gaza has been destroyed or partially destroyed under false pretences, with staff and patients stripped naked, frog marched away and, in some cases, summarily executed. Premature babies have been left to die on neonatal wards, hospital directors have been arrested and forcibly disappeared inside Israeli prisons. Allegations of unimaginable torture and other gross human rights violations have been made by survivors of Israeli incarceration, including those of a sexual nature, most egregiously rape.
These facts are irrefutable, not least because members of the Israel Occupation Forces have been meticulous in documenting their war crimes for us and sharing the images on social media uploading for the whole world to see.
READ: Doctors Against Genocide demand release of Kamal Adwan Hospital Director
If this doesn’t stir academic colleagues to do all they can to speak up and agitate for a complete dissociation from the Israeli state, and endorse the call for a full academic boycott, I’m at a loss as to what will.
As academics, our profession ought to have been jolted into action much sooner, not least as a result of the complete destruction of the education sector in Gaza. The Palestinian NGO Visualising Palestine has determined that, since the beginning of the genocide, around 650,000 Palestinian children and young people have been denied access to education. Approximately 9,800 students and 409 educational staff have been killed. Every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been destroyed or partially destroyed and 85 per cent of schools have received significant damage as a result of Israeli military bombardment.
Time for institutional realignment
Many of us have long campaigned for our academic institutions to reconsider the connections that they have with an apartheid state, to re-evaluate whether it is wise to have collaborative partnerships with Israeli institutions that stand accused of providing the intellectual apparatus that props up the illegal occupation of Palestine. We have provided the information on boycott, ad nauseam, when trying to convince the sceptics that the full implementation of the academic boycott and a heeding of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) demands is the best means we have at our disposal to realise a freedom-oriented future for our Palestinian sisters and brothers.
Our students have put their bodies on the front lines.
They have set up encampments, to shine light on the partnerships our institutions have, and to demand that the university they receive their education from is one that is based on values of equality, freedom and dignity, and is beholden to principles of international law. The student encampment at my own institution successfully secured a commitment from the university to consider the connections it has with Israeli universities, and to evaluate the ethical viability of engaging in partnerships with Israeli institutions.
In establishing a “task force” designed to “inform current and future links and exchanges between Trinity College Dublin and higher education institutions, commercial enterprises and/or other relevant bodies in jurisdictions involved in armed conflicts and/or where there are violations of international law”, my institution has taken an important and laudable first step.
I welcome this decision warmly, and whilst the remit of the task force is broader than the question of the academic boycott of Israeli institutions, it is an indisputable fact that it was the global student awakening for Palestine, as noted across university campuses the world over, that led us to this decisive moment of consciousness.
As such, in the face of unimaginable tragedy and unfathomable Palestinian loss and suffering, an incredible, and morally imperative opportunity exists.
However, we who are long in this game must remain on high alert.
We must make sure that the legitimate and moral demands that undergird the call for a full academic boycott are not softened by bureaucratic processes and a liberalised attempt at containment and management.
This has been the approach favoured by decades of flawed peacebuilding intervention, promoted by many in the academy, shifting the focus off the oppressor and attempting to advocate a change of consciousness in the oppressed.
As the founders of the Palestinian boycott movement have warned, this approach in no way changes materially the actual experience of those living under occupation; rather it calls for the colonised to change their legitimate, and internationally-recognised, demands for freedom and justice.
We must therefore ensure that institutional reviews and bureaucratic processes do not delineate the parameters of what is deemed acceptable or attainable. The boycott guidelines are clear and unequivocal. They do not require interpretation, nor should they be negotiated with.
Famed anti-Zionist Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has declared publicly his fervent belief that this is the beginning of the end of the Zionist project. Should this indeed come to pass then those who stayed silent and condemned our demands and tactics will have no other choice but to realise that the tide of history has shifted, irreversibly.
Much like the guilt-ridden Lady Macbeth, one cannot help but conclude that they too will find the stain of Palestinian blood nigh on impossible to wash away. And so many in the academy will say, “We were with you all along…”
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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