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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon12312008.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon12312008.html<br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">December 31,
2008<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Targeting
Islamic University <br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By NEVE GORDON
and JEFF HALPER <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">N</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>ot 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520255313/counterpunchmaga">
Virtually all the commentators agree that the Islamic University was
</a>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.”<br><br>
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.”<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Neve Gordon</b> is chair of the department of politics and government
at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and author of
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520255313/counterpunchmaga">
Israel’s Occupation</a> (University of California Press, 2008).<br><br>
<b>Jeff Halper</b> is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions (ICAHD) and author of
<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/0745322271/counterpunchmaga">An
Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel</a>
(Pluto Press, 2008).</font><font size=3>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=2>He can be reached at
<a href="mailto:jeff@icahd.org">jeff@icahd.org</a>. <br><br>
<br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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