[News] Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon12312008.html
December 31, 2008


Targeting Islamic University


Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?

By NEVE GORDON and JEFF HALPER

Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American 
colleges and universities who prominently 
denounced an effort by British academics to 
boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 
have raised their voice in opposition to Israel’s 
bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza 
earlier this week. Lee C. Bollinger, president of 
Columbia University, who organized the petition, 
has been silent, as have his co-signatories from 
Princeton, Northwestern, and Cornell 
Universities, and the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology. Most others who signed similar 
petitions, like the 11,000 professors from nearly 
1,000 universities around the world, have also 
refrained from expressing their outrage at 
Israel’s attack on the leading university in 
Gaza. The artfully named Scholars for Peace in 
the Middle East, which organized the latter 
appeal, has said nothing about the assault.

While the extent of the damage to the Islamic 
University, which was hit in six separate 
airstrikes, is still unknown, recent reports 
indicate that at least two major buildings were 
targeted, a science laboratory and the Ladies’ 
Building, where female students attended classes. 
There were no casualties, as the university was 
evacuated when the Israeli assault began on Saturday.

<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520255313/counterpunchmaga>Virtually 
all the commentators agree that the Islamic 
University was attacked, in part, because it is a 
cultural symbol of Hamas, the ruling party in the 
elected Palestinian government, which Israel has 
targeted in its continuing attacks in Gaza. 
Mysteriously, hardly any of the news coverage has 
emphasized the educational significance of the 
university, which far exceeds its cultural or political symbolism.

Established in 1978 by the founder of Hamas ­ 
with the approval of Israeli authorities ­ the 
Islamic University is the first and most 
important institution of higher education in 
Gaza, serving more than 20,000 students, 60 
percent of whom are women. It comprises 10 
faculties ­ education, religion, art, commerce, 
Shariah law, science, engineering, information 
technology, medicine, and nursing ­ and awards a 
variety of bachelor’s and master’s degrees. 
Taking into account that Palestinian universities 
have been regionalized because Palestinian 
students from Gaza are barred by Israel from 
studying either in the West Bank or abroad, the 
educational significance of the Islamic University becomes even more apparent.

Those restrictions became international news last 
summer when Israel refused to grant exit permits 
to seven carefully vetted students from Gaza who 
had been awarded Fulbright fellowships by the 
State Department to study in the United States. 
After top State Department officials intervened, 
the students’ scholarships were restored ­ though 
Israel allowed only four of the seven to leave, 
even after appeals by Secretary of State 
Condoleezza Rice. “It is a welcome victory ­ for 
the students,” opined The New York Times, and 
“for Israel, which should want to see more of 
Gaza’s young people follow a path of hope and 
education rather than hopelessness and martyrdom; 
and for the United States, whose image in the 
Middle East badly needs burnishing.”

Notwithstanding the importance of the Islamic 
University, Israel has tried to justify the 
bombing. An army spokeswoman told The Chronicle 
that the targeted buildings were used as “a 
research and development center for Hamas 
weapons, including Qassam rockets. 
 One of the 
structures struck housed explosives laboratories 
that were an inseparable part of Hamas’s 
research-and-development program, as well as 
places that served as storage facilities for the 
organization. The development of these weapons 
took place under the auspices of senior lecturers who are activists in Hamas.”

Islamic University officials deny the Israeli 
allegations. Yet even if there is some merit in 
them, it is common knowledge that practically all 
major American and Israeli universities are 
engaged in research and development of military 
applications and receive money from the Pentagon 
and defense corporations. Weapon development and 
even manufacturing have, unfortunately, become 
major projects at universities worldwide ­ a fact 
that does not justify bombing them.

By launching an attack on Gaza, the Israeli 
government has once again chosen to adopt 
strategies of violence that are tragically akin 
to the ones deployed by Hamas ­ only the Israeli 
tactics are much more lethal. How should 
academics respond to this assault on an 
institution of higher education? Regardless of 
one’s stand on the proposed boycott of Israeli 
universities, anyone so concerned about academic 
freedom as to put one’s name on a petition should 
be no less outraged when Israel bombs a 
Palestinian university. The question, then, is 
whether the university presidents and professors 
who signed the various petitions denouncing 
efforts to boycott Israel will speak out against 
the destruction of the Islamic University.

Neve Gordon is chair of the department of 
politics and government at Ben-Gurion University 
of the Negev and author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520255313/counterpunchmaga>Israel’s 
Occupation (University of California Press, 2008).

Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli 
Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and 
author of 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/0745322271/counterpunchmaga>An 
Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, 
Redeeming Israel (Pluto Press, 2008). He can be 
reached at <mailto:jeff at icahd.org>jeff at icahd.org.




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