by One hundred and thirty publicly owned research groups and scientific centers have published an open letter in which they urge universities “to take the appropriate measures to respond effectively and urgently to these demands, specifying and materializing the commitment to peace, justice and the defense of international humanitarian law referred to in the CRUE statement of May 9.” That day the conference of rectors committed in a (non-binding) document to review agreements with Israeli universities and break ties with those that are not committed to peace. This document from the scientists will be presented to the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. In parallel, this Tuesday, one day before Spain, Ireland and Norway announced the upcoming recognition of the State of Palestine, the Israeli rectors – meeting at the Association of University Heads-VERA – responded to their Spanish counterparts with a letter.
In its letter VERA maintains: “We understand that those who advocate academic boycotts against Israeli universities seek to protect and improve the lives of Palestinians and end the crisis in Gaza. The truth is that we too mourn the loss of innocent lives in this horrible conflict and want a better future for both Palestinians and Israelis. However, academic boycotts are dangerous and can cause more harm than good.” The CRUE refrains from making statements in response to VERA. Predictably, he will respond privately to the Israelis.
There is no official list of the universities that have broken agreements, but at least the dismissals of the public universities of Barcelona, Granada, Jaén, Pablo Olavide (Seville) and Oviedo, and those of the Basque Country and the Public University of Navarra has not found agreements, committed not to sign any while the conflict lasts. The figure is small if one takes into account that the conference consists of 50 public and 27 private campuses. The National Autonomous University of Mexico, the giant UNAM, announced on May 18 that it would also inspect its agreements.
Andalusian public universities are being the most active. Pablo Olavide will not receive or send students and workers within the Erasmus mobility framework with the Levinsky College of Education and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with which it will not renew its expired agreement. In their cooperation plan they will give, like others, “highest priority” to collaboration with Palestinian universities. Granada, for its part, has suspended the teaching and summer course agreements signed with the University of Bal-Illan and Tel Aviv and Erasmus mobility. Nor will they cooperate with Israeli institutions in the research consortia promoted by the European Commission in which they participate. While the University of Jaén has broken ties with the University of Tel Aviv, the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and a technology center.
The University of Barcelona has also announced that it will break with the University of Tel Aviv “immediately and indefinitely” and has assumed the “precautionary suspension” of companies linked to the conflict, according to the list made public by the Investigation and Transparency Committee of Universities with Palestine.
The University of Oviedo no longer has ties with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and now the institution’s ethics commission has to issue a resolution on a defense project, financed with community money, of a consortium in which they participate together with a company later bought by an Israeli group, they explain from their press department. The UNIOVI statutes prevent research for war purposes, but scientists assure that it is a technology project to detect anti-personnel mines.
The University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) acted very soon, at the end of April, but its vice-rector for teaching staff, Guillermo Quindós, explains that they have reviewed the agreements and do not have any active ones with Israel. Currently, they are launching a cybersecurity chair and, although they considered collaborating with two professors from Tel Aviv University, researchers from Ireland and Estonia are finally participating. Now, like other academic institutions, they are in dialogue with the United Nations agency for the Palestine refugee population in the Middle East (UNRWA) with the aim of seeing how they can collaborate by hosting students from Gaza or covering the needs of those who are in Euskadi.
Conciliatory tone from Israeli rectors
The tone of the response to the CRUE is much more conciliatory than that used by VERA last October, when after the murder of 1,200 people at the hands of Hamas and the kidnapping of 250 people, it issued a very harsh statement: “It is ironic that the The very halls of enlightenment in the United States and Europe, seemingly the bastions of intellectual and progressive thought that are their campuses, have adopted Hamas as the cause célèbre while demonizing Israel. “Universities, as centers of enlightenment and rational discourse, must take responsibility for the opinions they perpetuate.”
In its new letter, VERA emphasizes that its campuses raised their voices last year against the attempted judicial reform in Israel because they feared the weakening of democracy and added: “We agree with you that the situation in Gaza is tragic. We ask you to also keep in mind what Israel has experienced. (…) Contrary to false accusations, we do not punish our students or staff members for expressing pro-Palestinian opinions,” they clarify.
However, some teachers have felt censored for their opinions. Like a Palestinian professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, who made headlines after being expelled for saying in an interview that Israel was committing “genocide.” She returned to her post and the police opened an investigation. Or 100 university students, almost all Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who have suffered disciplinary measures since the attack. Eight of them were even temporarily suspended by the University of Haifa for “inciting” violence for their social media posts.
Lillia Matas, 19 years old, camped in the General Library of the University of Malaga, speaks on behalf of her camp to make it clear that the letter released by the Israeli representatives seems contradictory and incoherent to them. “They reflect a false commitment to peace to justify genocide. In the first point of her statement they say they defend democracy, freedom of expression and human rights in Israel. They focus only on their territory because they only conceive the idea that they are the only State.” She considers it irrational that they do not mention the figure of “more than 40,000 Palestinians murdered in eight months.”
The Israeli rectors insist in this new letter that their academic world is independent of the Government and the army. “Others suggest that our universities are to blame, since our students are soldiers. As you should know, the majority of young people here are required by law to enlist in the army at the age of 18,” they clarify. Furthermore, they highlight that 18% of their enrollees are Palestinian Muslims and Christians, “a figure that faithfully reflects their percentage in our population” and they enjoy study aid.
Matas denies his version and from his camp they affirm that these campuses are politically and militarily married to Israel: “Their universities collaborate with Elbit System, an international military technology company and defense contractor, and are linked to the manufacture of Hermes 900 military drones. The Israel Institute of Technology itself is related to the Iron Dome, a mobile air defense system, and to The Scream, an acoustic mechanism designed to torture entire populations with unbearable sounds.
For this reason, the camps continue in A Coruña, Santiago de Compostela, Oviedo, Santander, Zaragoza, Madrid – it has reached its maximum capacity -, Cuenca, Ciudad Real, Lleida, León, Salamanca, Málaga, Seville, Jaén, Cádiz, Tenerife , Palma de Mallorca, Logroño and Castellón. The only autonomy in which the tents have not been set up is Extremadura. In Alicante, Granada, Álava, Vizcaya, Gipuzkoa, Barcelona and Granada they have already lifted the camps.
“Weakening the Israeli academic world would undermine the country’s democratic foundations and harm the community itself that fights to protect human rights and establish a more inclusive society,” concludes the new statement issued from Israel, after explaining that the university is, times, “the first opportunity for positive interaction between Jews and Arabs.” A promise that Matas defines as a joke: “Enough of falsehood and whitewashing.”
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