The Gaza ghetto is still burning
The Gaza ghetto is still burning.
Since Israel began its invasion of Gaza, 40,000 Palestinian women and men have been killed, including more than 7,000 children. All universities and 80% of schools have been razed to the ground. Before the Israeli attack on Gaza, there were 12 universities there. All of them were razed to the ground by Israel. Bombs dropped on the universities by the Israeli army turned all the academic units into ruins. Until recently, students walked the corridors of these buildings. They talked, laughed, read books. Now the typical noise of a university can no longer be heard in Gaza’s universities. There are no corridors, no lecture halls. There are no universities – they were destroyed by bombs. But they destroyed not only the infrastructure: they destroyed dreams, ambitions and plans. They killed students, they killed lecturers. Three rectors and almost a hundred deans and professors are dead, and these are just the ones we know about! This is not a coincidence. Academics are not only killed in bombings. They are also being followed and deliberately killed. The Israeli army is carrying out planned assassinations against them.
This was also the case during the Nakba. It was also so in the subsequent war against Palestine, in 1967. Killing intellectuals and teachers, bombing schools and universities, and murdering students are Israel’s constant tactics. Under international law, the systematic destruction of a nation’s or ethnic group’s education is genocide. In Gaza, universities, libraries, museums are being deliberately destroyed. Even elementary schools! More than 600 teachers are dead. More than 7,000 students are dead. Everyone is being killed in Gaza, regardless of age. Yet university chancellors around the world, including the chancellors of Polish universities, allow this while continuing to cooperate with Israel and do not condemn the killing of thousands of students? We, the male and female students, will not allow it. We will not remain silent!
Open letters have been sent to rectors and chancellors at universities and colleges across Poland, demanding that they condemn the genocide and sever relations with institutions that support it. Clear positions on the issue of genocide in Palestine and an appropriate response to it are expected by the student communities of Poland’s largest university centers at fifteen universities:
University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznań / prof.dr hab Bogumiła Kaniewska
University of Wrocław / prof. dr hab.Robert Olkiewicz
University of Gdańsk / prof.dr hab.Piotr Stepnowski
University of Łódź / prof.dr hab.Elżbieta Żądzińska
Silesian University in Katowice / prof.dr hab. Ryszard Koziołek
Uniwersytecie Rzeszowskim / prof.dr hab.Sylwester Czopek
Uniwersytecie Marii Skłodowskiej-Curie w Lublinie / prof.dr hab. Radosław Dobrowolski
Uniwersytecie Medycznym w Łodzi / prof.dr hab.n. med.Radzisław Kordek
Uniwersytecie SWPS / prof.dr hab.Roman Cieślak
Politechnice Warszawskiej / prof.dr hab. inż. Krzysztof Zaremba
Szkole Głównej Gospodarstwa Wiejskiego / prof.dr hab.Michał Jerzy Zasada
Państwowej Wyższej Szkole Filmowej.Telewizji i Teatralnej w Łodzi / dr hab.Milena Fiedler
Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Gdańsku / dr hab.Adam Świerżewski
Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie / prof.Błażej Ostoja Lniski
Akademii Sztuk Pięknych w Krakowie / prof.dr hab. Andrzej Bednarczyk
In response, the Conference of Rectors of Polish Universities (CRUP) and the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland (CRASP) signed a joint appeal on May 18, calling on “both sides of the conflict to cease hostilities.” Significantly, the appeal of the rectors and rectors was translated into English and Hebrew, but no longer into Arabic.
We also object to the portrayal of the state of Israel and the Palestinian people as equivalent parties. The current events are not a conflict in which two sides can decide on a cease-fire. We are dealing with a bloody genocide and an attempt by the state of Israel to destroy the Palestinian people. This tragic process did not begin on October 7 after the Hamas attack. Nor did it begin after the end of the Six Day War in 1967. Ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people has been going on for 76 years, since the first Nakba, during which some 15,000 Palestinians were killed and 750,000 were driven from their homes.
On June 12, 2024, the UN Human Rights Commission Report was released, which stated that Israel had committed crimes against humanity, including extermination, murder, gender-based persecution, forced population displacement, torture and inhumane and cruel treatment.
Israel’s activities have been described as “violent, unlawful occupation and denial of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. This is manifested in the continuous forcible displacement, dispossession, earning and exploitation of natural resources, the use of blockades, the establishment and spread of illegal Israeli settlements, systemic discrimination and oppression of Palestinians.”
The report confirmed further crimes committed against Palestinians. The displacement of more than 1.7 million civilians, the murder with direct intent of defenseless and unarmed people – the elderly and children – with direct sniper attacks. Millions were cut off from access to drinking water (all municipal infrastructure was destroyed), electricity, medical aid. Hospitals and schools were bombed, attacked and besieged.
The actions of the state of Israel also have disastrous consequences on the educational, scientific and cultural levels. Universities, libraries, schools and museums are being destroyed. Israel’s attacks have already affected all universities in the Gaza Strip, with Al-Israa University being the latest to be blown up by the Israeli army on January 17. Along with it, the museum run by the university was looted and razed, joining a number of other museum facilities destroyed or damaged by Israel. Since October 7, at least 95 academics, 5497 students and pupils, 261 teachers and school administration staff have been killed, and at least 625,000 school-aged children have been denied access to education for several months. At least 60% of educational facilities, including 13 public libraries, were destroyed or damaged. 212 schools were directly bombed, including 165 located in territory designated as “safe” by the Israeli army.
It should be stressed that Israeli universities are complicit in the persecution of the Palestinian people and armed actions. They maintain close ties with the Israeli army and work to perfect weapons, tools of oppression and surveillance. The universities also systematically discriminate against students on the basis of their non-Jewish identity and directly participate in the colonization of Palestinian land.
We believe that in the face of such tragic events, concrete decisions should be made to put pressure on a state that is murdering tens of thousands of civilians. That is why student communities across the country have decided to address the rectors of their universities with demands to condemn Israel’s atrocious crimes and to break academic institutions and companies that support Israel’s colonial regime until the occupation of Palestine ends, to recognize the right of Palestinians to equality and self-determination, and to recognize the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Unfortunately, our demands have been completely ignored.
Faced with a lack of response, an occupation strike was declared at Warsaw University and Jagiellonian University on May 24, and on June 3 the occupation also began at Wroclaw University. With our own bodies, we occupied the university space and demanded action. Like any movement that violates the status quo, ours also faces repression. University authorities regularly intimidate us, ignore us, and in some cases, cut off our access to water and electricity. We are regularly accused of anti-Semitism, terrorism, collaboration with foreign regimes and acting in the interests of external capital. These actions culminated in the dispatch of police to those on strike in Warsaw by Rector Alojzy Nowak on June 13, 2024. For the first time, since 1989, armed police entered the university grounds to attack and arrest peaceful students. Shocked and horrified by this tragic event, we want to unequivocally condemn the actions of the University of Warsaw and express our solidarity with those affected. We do not condone such treatment of peaceful occupiers who, like us, are acting out of a higher moral necessity by opposing genocide.
