Address to the UCU Congress
May 27-29, 2009
By Amjad Barham
President, the Palestinian Federation of Unions of 
University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE)

General Secretary Sally Hunt, fellow academic trade unionists, colleagues,

I come to you as the president of the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, an association of over 6,000 Palestinian university staff at 13 institutions of higher education in occupied Palestine.  Before I share with you our vision of international solidarity with Palestinian academics and their beleaguered institutions, I would like to express my and my Federation’s profound appreciation for the courageous positions the UCU membership has taken in support of Palestinian rights at its previous Congresses and the current one. In light of yesterday’s session and the passing of the Palestine motions, I would like to salute you and express my deepest respect for your principled stance in the steps you have taken towards ending the injustice which we have endured for over 60 years.  

What does the Palestinian academic community expect from international colleagues? I would like to state clearly here that while we value academic and institutional forms of support, such as academic exchanges, which are at the heart of the academic enterprise, we feel that this is not enough. I would like to explain why. 

Since its establishment on the ruins of Palestinian society 61 years ago, Israel has routinely violated fundamental Palestinian rights with impunity. Israel continues to deny millions of Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right to return to their lands and maintains a system of institutional racial discrimination, reminiscent of South African apartheid, against its own Palestinian citizens.  For the last 41 years, Israel has maintained its harsh military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza and has systematically colonized Palestinian land with the goal of gradually emptying the land of its original inhabitants. Despite the ‘peace process’ which began 16 years ago, Israel routinely violates the Palestinians’ most fundamental human rights with impunity, as documented by local and international human rights organisations. Israel extra-judicially kills Palestinian leaders and activists; keeps over 11,000 Palestinians imprisoned, including numerous members of parliament; subjects all Palestinians under occupation to daily humiliation, intimidation and military violence; and continues to construct its colonial Wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice at the Hague in 2004. By 2008 Palestinians had become imprisoned in eight major population enclaves demarcated by Israeli checkpoint terminals out of which Palestinians cannot exit without an Israeli permit. 

Only a few months have passed since Israel’s latest and most brutal attacks on the Palestinians in occupied Gaza, which left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, of whom 431 were children, and injured another 5380. [1] The 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, the overwhelming majority of whom are refugees who were expelled from their homes by Zionist forces in 1948, were subjected to three weeks of relentless Israeli state terror, whereby Israeli warplanes systematically targeted civilian areas, reducing whole neighborhoods and vital civilian infrastructure to rubble. This Israeli war of aggression came 18 months after an ongoing, crippling, illegal Israeli siege of Gaza which has shattered all spheres of life, prompting the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights to describe it as ‘a prelude to genocide’. International human rights organizations and the UN have called for a war crimes investigation into Israel’s military assault on Gaza. [2]
 
Israel’s occupation and apartheid regime has had a devastating impact on education. During its latest indiscriminate and willful campaign of destruction launched on the Gaza Strip, Israel bombed the headquarters of the University Teachers Association-Palestine as well as the Islamic University. This wanton attack of violence against higher education institutions is far from being an exception. It is only the latest episode in what Oxford University academic Karma Nabulsi has termed ‘scholasticide’, [3] or Israel’s systematic and intentional destruction of Palestinian education centres. In its current war on Gaza alone, Israel has bombed the ministry of education, the Islamic University of Gaza, and tens of schools, including at least 4 UNRWA schools, after having largely destroyed the infrastructure of teaching throughout the year and a half of its illegal and criminal siege, which has crippled all realms of life in the Gaza Strip, including education.

Since 2004, Israel has totally prohibited the Palestinian residents of Gaza from studying in the West Bank. In 2006, a ruling from the Israeli High Court also forbade 10 Palestinians from accessing Bethlehem University to study Occupational Therapy. Today, travel abroad is totally restricted for Gaza residents. The Israeli colonial policy of segregating, confining Palestinians and controlling their movement has left students in Gaza with no option except to restrict themselves to the few fields of academic study available in the Gaza Strip. In 2000 there were 350 Gazan students at Birzeit University; many were deported, others stayed in the West Bank 'illegally' and risk being deported at any moment. By 2005 there were only 35 Gazan students at Birzeit. Today there are none. [4]

Israeli policies of repression routinely target Palestinian universities, exposing students and staff to ongoing military harassment, arbitrary arrests and severely disrupting academic life. The number of students from Birzeit University incarcerated from November 2003 until April 2009 reached 411. From 1979 to 1992, Birzeit University was closed 60% of the time by Israeli military orders. [5] In Hebron University, currently there are approximately 47 students and 3 faculty members incarcerated in Israeli prisons. Israeli soldiers invaded Hebron University on 17 occasions between 1980 and 2005. On July 26th 1983, several settlers entered the campus and shot 3 students dead and wounded 37 others. [6] 
  
A study conducted at An-Najah National University indicated that 64% of its students had been physically abused at Israeli military checkpoints; and virtually all reported feelings of anger and nervousness at checkpoints. These emotional factors give an indication of the state of mind of students who are forced to pass through checkpoints to access higher education, which in turn has an impact on their ability to concentrate and study once they reach home. [7]

As the state of Israel controls the borders and population register of the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), it has de facto control over which students and teachers can access universities. Since the beginning of 2006, many thousands of Palestinians with foreign passports, as well as foreigners, have been denied entry to visit, work, or study in the oPt. In Birzeit University, for example, there was about a 50% drop in staff holding foreign passports - from 52 in May 2006, to 27 in September 2006 - and revenues received from overseas students dropped significantly. [8]
In light of the overlapping forms of oppression Israel is exercising against the Palestinian people, we believe that the most effective form of solidarity with Palestinians, academics and others is direct action aimed at bringing an end to the Israeli occupation and regime of apartheid in Palestine.  Isolating Israel in the international arena through various forms of boycott and sanctions, and forcing it to obey international law and respect Palestinian rights, is one of the most important and morally sound strategies open to international civil society, including members of the academy.  This is why our Federation was among the first signatories of the Palestinian civil society's call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it fully complies with international law and basic human rights. [9]
Let me be clear, what we are asking for is moral consistency: if it was acceptable for British academics to support the academic boycott of South Africa with a view to ending the system of apartheid, then the same should apply in the case of Israel, an occupying and colonizing power that also practices apartheid. In the South African case, the inclusion of the academy in the boycott was never questioned. While we do not have the resources of the Israel lobby in the UK, we have the moral power to assert our rights and urge effective solidarity to attain them. We think that fair-minded British academics will be willing to listen to our case and give it thoughtful consideration.  Truth is stronger than power. 

It is widely acknowledged that Israeli academic institutions are deeply embedded in the system of oppression and domination practiced by the Israeli state.  Israeli universities and research institutions cooperate closely with the security-military establishment through research and teaching activities. Israeli universities have never dissociated themselves from the occupation regime, despite the more than four decades of the systematic stifling of Palestinian education, even when the Israeli occupation shut down Palestinian universities and schools for long periods – reaching four years in the case of Birzeit University. Israeli universities have also never condemned the entrenched and institutionalized system of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel within the Israeli polity, society and even the academy.

We urge you to do everything within your means to make sure that you are not condoning or rewarding colonial domination and the grave violation of international law. Israel and its supporters have argued that the Palestinian call for institutional boycott runs against the universal principle of academic freedom, the principle of the free exchange of ideas. Palestinians find this argument insensitive, biased and in fact offensive – not to mention based on false premises. The privileging of academic freedom above other, more fundamental, rights flies in the face of the idea of universal human rights. How can the academic freedom of a sector of Israeli society be more important than the basic right to a free and dignified life for all Palestinians, academics included? Is upholding the academic freedom of Israeli academics a loftier aim than upholding the freedom of an entire people being strangled by an illegal occupation? Do Palestinian universities somehow fall outside the purview of the ‘universal’ principle of academic freedom? Israeli academics who argue for the protection of their access to international academic networks, grants, visiting professorships, fellowships and other benefits of the academic system, have paid scant attention to the total denial of the most basic freedoms to Palestinians, academics or otherwise. 
I would also like to address the issue of ‘constructive engagement’ with the Israeli academy, which has been suggested to us, the Palestinians, and our supporters around the world, as a more effective mechanism to address the long lasting injustice inflicted upon us by Israel. We have tried this method only to realize that as long as the terms of the relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians are those of occupier and occupied, the ‘engagement process’ only results in normalising the occupation on the ground and whitewashing Israeli atrocities abroad. I can give you an example from my own personal experience.  Once, as I was crossing one of the many hundreds of checkpoints on my way to my university, I was stopped by an Israeli army soldier who as it turned out was a fellow mathematician at an Israeli university.  But our collegiality ended here: from his position of power, he told me that I could cross the checkpoint if I was able to answer a mathematics question correctly! I would only ask you: what kind of engagement can be possible here?
It is crucial to reiterate that the Palestinian boycott call is institutional; it simply does not target individual Israeli academics and cannot, therefore, be “discriminatory” in any real sense of the term. Moreover, being enshrined in universalist values and principles, the boycott call, adopted by an overwhelming majority in Palestinian civil society, categorically rejects all forms of racial discrimination and racism, including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.
I end by asking you, on behalf of my fellow academics in Palestine, to support our struggle for justice and peace through further actions that aim at forcing Israel to respect international law. Let me assure you that the Palestinians, and its academy, are heartened by the solidarity we received yesterday in Congress. The passing of the resolutions on Palestine is a testimony to the moral consistency, the upholding of just principles and a necessary step towards ending Israel’s disregard for international law. 

Finally, I would like to thank you again for extending this invitation to me, and commend you for supporting our struggle and the universal principle upon which it is based: that all people have the right to live in freedom and dignity. 

[1] http://www.ochaopt.org/gazacrisis/index.php?section=3
[2] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1001
[3][url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/10/gaza-schools]http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/10/gaza-schools[/url]
[4] http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/news/article495
[5[http://www.countercurrents.org/cattori260208.htm
[6]  http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/news/article495
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid. 
[9] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869