The panel

Mai Abu Moghli, Centre for Lebanese Studies

V. Badaan, American University Beirut

Rachel Rosen, UCL Social Research Institute

Goldie Osuri, University of Warwick

Moderated by: Jee Rubin, Doctoral Candidate, University of Cambridge

Introduction

As the genocide in the Palestine unfolded from early October 2023, we saw increasing surveillance and clamping down on academic freedoms in higher education and public spaces across the world. The violence in Palestine that is being televised the world over is not a neatly or geographically contained phenomenon. It is a project made possible by a knotted web of government actors, capital interests and ideological groups operating the world over, whose punitive practices for repressing dissent tie colonial centres of power to the global periphery. 

Scholars and students have responded to the violence and genocide in a range of ways, raising new questions around research ethics and the languages of solidarity and more peaceful futures, ethical solidarity versus selective saviourism, fear and the consequences of remaining silent, using privilege to protect the least protected, the moral failure of international and comparative education and development communities in linking theory with praxis, the role of the university in genocide and the military-industrial-education/development complex, hyper securitisation of campuses, the future of education in Palestine and global connections in both discourses of exceptionalism and repression as well as connections of struggles to build resistance against external and internal colonial occupation. 

Following our previous discussions on Myanmar and Iran, and in commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), “Academic Solidarity During the Ongoing Genocide and Surveillance” explored the interconnected nature of the struggles for academic freedom in Occupied Palestine, the UK, Lebanon and  Kashmir, to build a solidarity stretching from the Levant to South East Asia and beyond. The themes covered in the discussion are summarised below. 

The Complicity of Academia in Palestinian Epistemicide and Attempts at Palestinian Erasure

More broadly:

• Epistemicide is the destruction, distortion, marginalisation and silencing of other than Northern knowledges and ways of knowing. Settler colonialism is centred on imposition of normative Western authority over indigenous lands and modes of production with the epistemicide and erasure of the knowledges of indigenous peoples from historical narratives. Colonisers use knowledge and hegemony over knowledge production as a means to rewrite history and to practise epistemicide both on the ground and in knowledge producing institutions, thereby erasing indigeneity and cementing their claims over the land.  

• Epistemicide has been and continues to be practised by the various institutions of the colonial settler state of Israel: from deprivation of sovereignty over water, food, natural resources, livelihoods and right to live of children in particular to destruction of academic institutions, libraries and archives and curbing of Palestinians’ ability to produce knowledge. In the time of the 2023 genocide the intent of this epistemicide is to annihilate Palestinians and continue the colonisation of Palestinian lands. This has been the case even before the Nakba of 1948. The continuous dehumanisation. The killing, maiming, and  imprisonment of Palestinian children and young men, which is endorsed by the West and their complicit media through manufacturing consent by calling Palestinian children as  people under the age of 18 and “immature adults”. The Palestinian Ministry of Education announced the end of the school year in early November as many of the classrooms have no children left.

• All higher education institutions in Gaza have been destroyed. Education is always seen as a threat to the colonial settler project, as it enhances critical thinking, allows for building networks, communities, and it can create spaces for raising political consciousness and transmit the values and tools of and for liberation. The Islamic University in Gaza was also bombed in 2008, 2009 and 2014. The present bombing has also destroyed the Central Archives of Gaza city, which contained thousands of historical documents dating more than 150 years. This destruction of education infrastructure has also been termed as scholasitcide in 2009.

• Outside of the geographical Palestinian context, the epistemicide plays out as anti-Palestine, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism and the denial Palestinian subjectivity and their permission to narrate their histories in public, political and academic discourses among those trying to survive in exile.

Academia is complicit in this epistemicide in many ways:

• Textbooks and academic research replicate and perpetuate colonial narratives through orientalism and Palestinian de-indigenisation.

• Academics engaging with decolonisation and its tools such as revolutionary violence (Franz Fanon: Wretched of the Earth) simply as a theoretical career-enhancing exercise, rather than as praxis on the ground: staying silent or reducing to a two-sided “conflict”, the violent settler-colonial nature of the relationship between Palestine and the coloniser, and reducing the revolutionary violence of the resistance and the armed struggle for liberation to “terrorism”, as highlighted by Palestinian scholars and pro-Palestinian allies. 

• In some UK universities, students are discouraged from working on Palestine, even in classes on human rights and international humanitarian law, which feeds into the process of Palestinian epistemicide and dehumanisation.

Colonial roots of restraints on academic freedom as a duty of HEIs and as collective solidarity-building right of students and scholars

Conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism

The restraint on academic freedom of Palestinian scholars and allies in Western and Western-funded institutions is rooted in the deliberate conflation of critiques of Israel, a nation state and Zionism, a political ideology, with antisemitism, discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews. This conflation functions as a tool for confusing, distorting and attempting to silence critiques of the Israeli state, including its brutal siege, bombardment and starvation of Gaza. Some examples from the UK follow:

• In 2020, the then education secretary Gavin Williamson tried to force British universities to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, threatening them with funding cuts if they failed to adopt it. Note that seven of the 11 examples in the IHRA specifically equate antisemitism with anti-Israel comments.

• In October/November 2023, following a cautionary letter by a government minister in the department of education , the independent academic funding body, the UKRI suspended two scholars who had voiced  fairly mainstream critiques of Israel as well as its Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee, of which they were members.

• The conflation enables Western financial and military and political support for Israel’s genocidal project: the UK parliament voted against ceasefire, tabled an anti-BDS bill, sends millions of pounds of military equipment to Israel. It also disturbingly means that the state of Israel receives support from right wing nationalists at the same time as those same people incite or enact racist violence, including against Jews themselves. In the UK, as the then Home Secretary Suella Braverman labelled the pro-Palestinian marches “hate marches” [and attempted to ban one on Armistice Day, right wing English nationalist groups disrupted the annual Armistice Day event even though the march happened later and followed a different route]. 

Thus the struggle over information to determine definitions, to control the narrative, is not simply a discursive question. The stories we hear and tell shape our actions in the world. Thus this conflation represents an attack on democratic rights, including our right to academic freedom to act in solidarity for goals of freedom, safety and justice. Hence the attacks on academic freedom  run deep and there are profound issues at stake here.

Academic freedom and Palestine (1): in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, and Israeli  Prisons and Universities

Despite the constant attempts at epistemicide, as part of which during the first Intifada in the late 1980s by an Israeli military order all education institutions were forcibly closed. Palestinians continued teaching their youth by creating alternative teaching and learning spaces in their homes, churches, mosques, and community centres, and which the Occupation labels as “cells of illegal education”. 

Over the years of the military Israeli Occupation of the West Bank, Birzeit University has been raided repeatedly, with students arrested from campuses and student unions ransacked by the army. Al-Quds University has been cut in half by the Israeli illegal apartheid wall and is also regularly attacked. 

Funding and partnerships by/from academic institutions globally might be impacted due to the unfounded allegations made by Israeli authorities that the Palestinian curriculum incites violence and is antisemitic. Interactions with the broader academic community, and therefore the bridging and sharing of knowledge are limited because foreign academics can be denied visas or deported while Palestinians  in some cases are barred from travelling to continue studies or participate in conferences or interrogated and arrested on the way.

In the West Bank,  students and academics are regularly delayed and humiliated at check points, interrogated, sexually harassed, shot at, killed and also detained and imprisoned by the Israeli occupation forces, the struggle for right to education is present among Palestinian prisoners as well. After a hunger strike, they succeeded in demanding library, time to conduct classes, and ability to sit for school and university exams, although Israeli military authorities keep weaponising this right by banning any education-related activities usually as a reaction to resistance taking place inside or outside the prison.

Palestinian students living in heartland Palestine, those occupied in 1948 and studying in universities built on Palestinian lands, some on Palestinian mass graves, face similar violations to and stifling of their academic freedoms and are surveilled closely. They can be arrested and tortured for simply browsing certain internet sites and social media for “too long”. This has intensified lately as the Israeli Parliament passed an amendment to their counter terrorism law that introduces the consumption of “terrorist material” as a new criminal offence. As a result as of 31 October 2023, at least 100 Palestinian students in more than 25 universities inside the Green Line – the Palestinian land occupied in 1948 – had been told to suspend their studies.

In the case of faculty, Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian at Hebrew University was the first signatory of an international statement by childhood studies scholars, “Childhood researchers and students call for immediate ceasefire in Gaza”. By 26 October 2023, four days after its release, it had been signed by over 1,500 childhood studies experts. At the same time, Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian received a letter from her university demanding her resignation, and wrote about her in vile and degrading terms. They claimed the definition of genocide applied to the Nazi holocaust and Hamas attack but not the carpet bombing of Gaza. This letter was released publicly and it led to a vitriolic campaign against Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian and her family in Jerusalem.

Academic freedom and Palestine (2): the Lebanon context

Global North universities also have a presence in the SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) region. In the context of Lebanon, although in recent years a more general repression of student activism has been happening, those working in HEIs with colonial roots  generally have space and support for Palestinian-related activism and knowledge production. By law it is illegal in Lebanon for anyone to collaborate in any way with Israel or any of its constituents. The term Nakba, which represents the catastrophe of expulsion of the Palestinians from their homelands in 1948, was coined by an academic in the American University Beirut. However, the colonial-funded administration’s silence at the time of Palestinian genocide and framing the genocide as “current situation” demonstrates the role HEIs play in the maintenance of colonial hegemony and the corresponding limits of Western liberal notions of academic freedom and support for those narrating or standing in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. It also turned a blind eye to an invitation to a Zionist scholar to talk about the “Ethics of War” until it could no longer ignore the protests against it and the talk was cancelled. But then it singlehandedly deactivated the faculty’s listserv, to silence any further support for Palestine. A liberal academic published an article in English and Arabic that demonised the students and faculty members who spoke out against the Zionist lecture, calling them “geopolitical puppets”. It is really important to highlight the role that academic institutions, especially those with colonial roots, play in the maintenance of colonial hegemony and in determining whether we have permission to narrate, or permission to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their liberation.

Academic freedom and Palestine (3): the UK context

Palestinian, Arab, Muslim students and academics and students and academics of colour are repeatedly marginalised, discriminated against and discouraged from working on Palestine even in the fields of human rights and international law, silenced and surveilled, expelled from their jobs, denied tenure, persecuted, demonised, labelled terrorists and dirty little refugees, doxxed, and receive death threats. Students in the UK have reported being burnt by cigarettes, pushed, hit with a bagful of wine bottles, silenced in class by professors calling them angry and emotional. and accused of causing discomfort for others by speaking about Palestine or identifying as Palestinian. In the ongoing genocide, in the UK:

• Very soon after 7 October 2023, several university statements displayed their obvious adherence to the UK government’s position by criminalising the very existence of Palestinians and pro-Palestinian academics and students on campus. For example, one statement highlighted the need for  24/7 hypersecuritisation of campuses but with no acknowledgment of the deep discrimination that creates fear among Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students and students of colour. This amounts to weaponising of the safeguarding duty of universities as there are no protection mechanisms in place for these students, who then often suffer in silence.

• In many statements released by academics working in international development, social justice and decolonisation there was no mention of Palestinians. The use of depoliticised and decontexualised language indicated that concerns for personal careers and fundings trumped solidarity with Palestinians experiencing genocide.

• Palestinian related activities and events were shut down with cracking down on academics and students’ freedom of speech and assembly. 

• Many students have been suspended for speaking out, academics intimidated and smeared on social media, students reported harassment – videos and photos of them taken by people on campus who are not from the university, without their consent and they have been told that these will be used against them.  

There are also many non-Palestinian people, including Jewish allies, active in solidarity movements for Palestine. In the field of childhood studies, one of our panellists was involved in drafting the international statement that Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian had signed The panellist was approached by a UK-based Jewish publication which questioned her Jewishness because the “accusations of deliberate genocide may be perceived by some Jews as antisemitic.” In University College London, a provost selected for their free speech stance has suspended the Marxists Students Society and removed a motion passed by members of the local UCU branch because they used the word intifada.

The interconnected experience of academic freedom of Kashmiris

Our panellist spoke as a scholar of Indian origin in solidarity, noting that the concept of epistemicide as manifested in the Palestine Occupied Territories and beyond for the Palestinian people is also applicable to Kashmir in South Asia, where there has been a longstanding affective solidarity as Kashmiri scholar Ather Zia has put it, with Palestine through the [shared] experience of Occupation and settler colonialism.

The settler colonial strategies deployed by the Indian state include systematically attempting to minoritise Kashmiris within Kashmir, and banning and eradicating Kashmiris’ attempt to voice their narratives and even their memories of their struggle for self-determination for their lands. Many journalists, human rights practitioners, activists and academics have been incarcerated, including under the counter-terror law UAPA.

The Indian state has also been using the discourse of counter-terrorism to clamp down on academic freedom in Kashmir. Discussions of India’s large-scale human rights violations in the Kashmiri struggles for self-determination are being labelled as anti-national, seditious and subject to detention. The Kashmir Law and Justice Project is an excellent resource documenting this current repression and dispossession, as well as the reshaping of curricula, appointing of Indian VCs in place in Kashmiri ones in HEIs, firing of academics, and forcing Kashmiri academic institutions to fly Indian flags on India’s independence Day. 

In 2023, Indian authorities announced the cancellation of passports of journalists, lawyers, political activists and academics with further cancellations pending and no explanations. In August 2023, a Middle East Eye article reported that Kashmiri students outside of India had received notification of the revocation of their passports, meaning an end to their studies, and risk of torture if they returned home. Also UK and European visas are being refused to Kashmiri researchers.

This repression extends to the Kashmiri diaspora, many of whom are in enforced exile. In March 2023, a media report noted that  India’s counter-terror law enforcement agency, the National Investigation Agency had stated that that Khurram Parvez, the globally acclaimed human-rights defender who is in prison, is “known to have established a robust network of anti-India activists across Europe and the US” and apparently these are “Kashmiri men and women pursuing fellowships and higher studies or working in different foreign countries.” These people and their families are always at risk of intimidation and harassment harassed both through external pressure on their institutions and in India. An article authored by Martha Lee, a research fellow with Islamist Watch, in 2020, associated the activities and work of Stand with Kashmir, a diasporic Kashmir campaign group and some Kashmiri academics with terrorism. Islamist Watch is a project of the Middle East Forum. Daniel Pipes, who runs the Middle East Forum, states that they keep “a close watch on North American universities, seeking to end anti-Western, anti-Israel and pro-Islamist biases.” As the Southern Poverty Law Centre has described it, Pipes has made alliances with far-right White extremists in the quest to demonise Muslims. 

On 8 October India banned expressions of solidarity with Palestine  in Kashmir, and speeches on Palestine in Friday prayers and mosques.

Like for Palestine, scholarship on Kashmir is powerfully educative, struggling against epistemicide and changing the vocabulary used by often diasporic Indian academics and Indian media to represent Kashmiris as separatists and terrorists. A good resource is the Kashmir syllabus, hosted by Stand with Kashmir. See also:

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Kashmir Studies (2023)

The Palgrave Handbook of New Directions in Critical Kashmir Studies (2023)

See also Palestine, Israel and Academic Freedom in India, a webinar held jointly by India Academic Freedom Network (IAFN) and International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India).

While Indian scholars are working under the conditions of fascism it is also important to remember that Kashmiri academics, scholars, journalists, HR practitioners and Kashmiris in general face fascism under conditions of settler colonial dispossession. Thus it is important to critique the ongoing but long-standing India-Israel relations, which have deepened considerably through the kinship of Hindutva and Zionist ethno-nationalist racist ideologies and both of which practise epistemicide through projected false “academic discourses”. For example Benjamin Netanyahu has said India [read: Hindutva] and Israel [read: Zionist] are two of the most ancient civilisations on earth. Thus they intend to erase the knowledge of Palestinians and Kashmiris. 

In the context of settler-colonial occupations of Palestine and Kashmir, the India--Israel relationship is about India’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

Calls for Action for Colleagues in the Global South and Beyond to stand in Solidarity with Palestine and the Palestinian Struggle for Liberation

The unified statement by all Palestinian universities describes how academics around the world can stand in solidarity that is neither performative nor conditional. This statement follows the 2019 Manifesto of Dignity and Hope issued by Palestinians when the Intifada of Unity was taking place. This is also called the Palestinian Intifada of Consciousness and is an educational endeavour to build the consciousness for liberation.  

The language of solidarity

It is not a question of conflict: The language we use reflects our solidarity (occupation, apartheid and settler colonialism) or conversely our complicity (the sanitised language of “conflict”) in the epistemicide of Palestinians. Describing decades of dispossession of Palestinians and colonisation of Palestine as two-sided conflict obscures the inherent power asymmetry between the Israeli colonial entity as a major colonial and nuclear power and Palestinians resisting structural colonial violence.

Drop the shackles of fragmentation: Think of Palestinians as a whole and not as divided groups, which serves to keep the occupation and apartheid going.

Counter the “unchilding” of children: Palestinian children are not “people under 18” or “immature Palestinian males”. This manufactures consent to kill Palestinian children with impunity and support from the whole world.

Counter the dehumanising language of the media: Palestinians don’t just “die” in their thousands, they are killed and we need to name the perpetrator. 

“Women and children” are not the only victims: Palestinians men comfort wounded children, pull them out of the rubble with their bare hands, care for the elderly while walking for miles, help keep their homes together while crying for their martyred wives and daughters; take photos and videos to document atrocities. So do not contribute to the dehumanisation of Palestinian men or strip Palestinian women of their agency. They are some of the strongest and most steadfast politically engaged women you can meet. 

Neutrality and impartiality is harmful, particularly in academia: It obscures the current reality of genocide, entrenches the racialised politics of denial. It had to be fought against through intellectual and academic work and connected solidarities. Otherwise we risk that it will be normalised and used systematically against all struggles for justice and liberation, which will be easily framed within safe generalised language and depictions of universalist humanitarianism, charity, saviourist language and obfuscate the politics of ongoing colonialism and White supremacy. 

In the context of Kashmir: Solidarity for Indians, or Indian origin scholars working on Kashmiri requires speaking out about the settler colonial genocide, ethnic cleansing and dispossession in Kashmir and Palestine, and their collective right to academic freedom.

Understand how the word “terrorism” is used: What is designated as terrorism is often a state’s attempt to legitimate their own violence and delegitimate resistance as something associated with extremism. This is their weapon against people who want to speak up for justice and against settler colonialism and occupation, and genocide and ethnic cleansing. This is the ultimate paradox of the state: that it gets to define what is violence and then police that violence and where does that leave all of us. 

Uphold the academic boycott to ensure our academic spaces are not complicit in the Occupation and genocide of the people of Palestine 

Normalisation with Israel refers to the process of establishment of diplomatic, economic, cultural and political relations between Israel and other countries or entities that did not previously have formal relations with the Zionist state. Moreover, educational institutions are a key part of the ideological and institutional scaffolding of Israel’s strategy of occupation, colonialism and apartheid against the Palestinian people. As part of the broader BDS movement, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) guidelines show how academic boycott can also be used as leverage to reject normalisation and thus settler colonialism and the occupation of Palestine. For example the following are suggestions for boycotting: conferences, symposia, talks convened or co-sponsored by Israel or complicit Israeli institutions or their support and lobby groups in various countries; stopping funding from Israel for academic activities, projects; not participating in study abroad schemes in Israel for foreign students and normalisation projects; and publishing in or refereeing for academic journals based in or published with the support of Isreali institutions or refusing them permission to reprint what has been published elsewhere. 

A real-time example in action is the American Anthropological Society that has voted in support of the academic boycott of the Zionist state of Israel and its institutions. This is a cultural and academic space in the US that has some of the heaviest restrictions against Palestinian activism.

Connect academic ethics to academic solidarity

• Think about what the liberal language of ethics, of doing no harm and maximising benefice mean for the people you research with. Speak out about the injustices that they encounter and face on a daily basis, and do not remain silent when occupation and state murder are happening out there. In other words, ethical engagement in knowledge production would entail doing so for changing the world, for standing in solidarity with the oppressed. 

• Be aware of your privilege and your positionality (“political reflexivity”), how you are objectifying people you are working with, how you are feeding into normalisation of violence, how you are contributing to this violence through your research. 

Uplift and foreground Palestinian voices and Palestinian knowledge, Palestinian scholarship

• Read the works of Palestinian scholars, activists and decolonial thinkers

• Include their works and the knowledge they produce in syllabi. 

• Make space for and hear Palestinians narrate their own history and struggle in academic spaces.

Act collectively

Individual students and academics are often threatened around their jobs, visas and can have a fear of repercussions. Those at less risk, such as tenured Northern academics must speak out, in ways that do not silence the voices of Palestinians and Southern activists, even when uncomfortable about it -- to do otherwise is political quietism and complicity. Other ways of taking action is to showcase imagery produced by Palestinian movements, preparing food for protestors and supports of those arrested. 

The attacks on academic freedom run deep and solidarity must not be silenced.

Support students and student associations vulnerable to Zionist bullying, harassment and intimidation

• Acknowledge a sense of duty to support Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students, students of colour and students allies who are active on Palestine as they are equal participants in our struggle within the academy.

• Offering advice or help them organise and strategise.

Do not tie activism and scholarship on Palestine simply to the ongoing onslaught in Gaza and think in terms of connections rather than asserting exceptionalism in relation to Israel

• Palestine has been under settler colonialism and under Occupation since before the Nakba in 1948.

• Regardless of whether a permanent ceasefire is reached, Palestinians in Gaza are still under siege, under a settler colonial reality where Palestinians are killed every day, their land stolen every day, their resources stolen every day so activism should not be tied to this one historical moment.

• Resist the imposition of fragmentation of Palestine as an inevitability by those who promote the Oslo prison or the illusion of peace agreements or the two state solution, which in fact is an apartheid solution Also include Palestinian refugees when talking about Palestinians as a whole Palestinian refugees are also marginalised in funding and academic work So we need to work with Palestinians as a whole and not as divided groups dictated.

• Engage deeply with the words of Lilla Watson and Aboriginal Rights in Queensland, Australia: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” This serves as a timely reminder that safety and freedom can never be won through the oppression of others; and the importance of thinking about in terms of connections, rather than asserting exceptionalism, which so often happens in relation to Israel. So, we might discuss, for example, what Israel’s granting of 12 new oil and gas contracts/licenses off the shore of Gaza in late October 2023, in the first few weeks of the genocide, to companies such as BP, can tell us about our (common) struggles against occupation, environmental destruction, racial capitalism and its profiteers.

• See also “The interconnected experience of academic freedom of Kashmiris” above, which provides several examples of the interconnections between the anti-colonial struggles in Kashmir and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. 

Ensure that any research endeavours related to Palestine and the Palestinian people centres the voices of Palestinians

• Do not take an extractivist or saviourist approach towards Palestine. For example, in the current context of the genocide, we expect psychology to see an uptake on research on trauma and resilience in Gaza.

• How are we treating this research? Are Palestinian voices being centred or is it primarily about advancing individual research agendas and careers? 

Do not conflate antisemitism with anti-Zionism

Most simply, not all Jews are Israelis, not all Israelis are Jews, and  not all Jews are Zionists: there is a long tradition of anti-Zionism among Jews, against a state founded on the dispossession and Naqba, apartheid occupation and genocide of others.

Educate yourself first and then also call on Palestinian colleagues to centre their voices

How do we hold on to centring Palestinians without overburdening them? It is not easy to be part of the genocide while also writing statements against it and feeling that whatever one does it is not doing enough. There is a vast Palestinian and decolonial scholarship, based on a lifetime of thinking, of struggle and activism of Palestinian minds and activists to tap into to do the learning and framing. And learn to use the language of solidarity without needed Palestinians to explain the difference between conflict and genocide. These are not nuanced differences up for debate. 

Use this moment to build long term solidarity

If we keep that conversation and solidarity going we will not have to struggle at the last minute to educate ourselves and burden directly affected colleagues unnecessarily.

Comments from the audience shared in the webinar chat 

“There is a precision according to plan with which the bombings are going on. The most important thing is to say that fact openly. Perhaps speaking of it might help to prevent it. The homes of most Palestinians have been destroyed. Many families have been entirely annihilated. Many more are severely injured or maimed. Israel has destroyed nearly all hospitals and shelters in northern Gaza. It has prevented food, water, fuel, and medicines from entering Gaza. Now Israel is asking them to move further south because bombings and other military operations are happening in southern Gaza. Further south is Egypt. In the coming days the white media will express sympathies with the maimed and famished Palestinians, shed tears for their wounded, and begin a conversation about their immediate non-negotiable humanitarian needs which, they will say, cannot be met in Palestinian lands. They will say it is not up to the Palestinians to decide what they need right now.”

Several messages of appreciation were shared and also of solidarity. We will share the individual messages shortly.

This webinar was co-hosted by:

ASEAN Youth Forum

International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India)

PEER Network

Scholars for Peace

Strengthening Human Rights and Peace Research and Education in ASEAN/Southeast Asia (SHAPE-SEA)