Free Speech and Palestinian Liberation
Fighting Crackdowns on Palestine Solidarity
Since the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023, Palestinian students in Israel have come under brutal attack. On 28 October, thirty Palestinian students were locked in their rooms in Israel’s Netanya College, while their dormitories were stormed by Israeli students chanting “Death to Arabs.” Since then, over 74 students at 25 academic institutions across Israel have faced disciplinary action merely for liking tweets and authoring posts expressing sympathy for family members in Gaza.
At the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, eminent professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian faces the termination of her employment after signing a petition stating that “there is no moral justification whatsoever for continuing” the brutal war on Gaza and calling for an immediate ceasefire.
In a letter that was published online on 28 October, the president and rector of Hebrew University reprimanded her. “It is most appropriate that you consider leaving your job,” he told her and threatened her with termination if she did not. The university president then took the extraordinary step of releasing the letter to the Israeli press.
The result was predictable: death threats against Shalhoub-Kevorkian and her family, and fear, not just for her livelihood but for her life. In correspondence with me, Shalhoub-Kevorkian stated that, during her many decades of activism, she had grown accustomed to receiving “letters of criticism based on the university’s need to protect the state and its funders.” This time, however, she perceives something different and more dangerous: “due to the painful war, and the sharing of the letter to the public, I sense danger. I am not leaving the house, knowing that settlers, soldiers or the police can attack me at any moment.”
Judith Butler and others have written to the university in support of her, and the USA Palestine Mental Health Network has called for a letter-writing campaign.
On 23 October, physics professor Imad Barghouti of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem was arrested by the Israeli military. IDF soldiers surrounded Barghouti’s house and threatened him and his family to demolish it if he did not surrender. The soldiers never informed Barghouti or his family what he had done to merit arrest. He was transferred to the Ofer Prison detention centre and still awaits his day in court.
As an Israeli academic told me, these relatively high-profile crackdowns in Israeli academic and universities in the West Bank coincide with “a wave of firings of less well-known Palestinian college teachers in Israel for fairly innocuous Facebook posts against the bombings of Gaza.” The mere expression of sympathy for the people of Gaza, including by Palestinian Israelis with family members there, is treated as a crime.
Suppressing critical voices in the UK
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The lethal crackdown on Palestinians’ academic freedom that is taking place across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories has been mirrored across Europe and North America, albeit with a lesser intensity. As academics around the world rally in support of Palestinians, government ministers and influential donors are creating a toxic atmosphere that treats all support for Palestine as suspect and which favours the suppression of free speech.
In the UK, Michelle Donelan, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, wrote to the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the largest funder of research in the country, to express her outrage at the posts of two academics on their Advisory Group on equality, diversity, and inclusion. One academic, Kate Sang, had simply criticised UK-anti-terrorism legislation, calling the government’s crackdown on Hamas support “disturbing.” The second, Kamna Patel, had retweeted posts condemning violence on both sides and referencing Israel’s “genocide and apartheid.”
Donelan was outraged that these academics had been permitted to serve on the UKRI advisory group and insisted that the director “immediately close this group and undertake an urgent investigation into how this happened.” UKRI speedily complied with this request, and three days later agreed to suspend the equality, diversity, and inclusion group and to launch an investigation.
UKRI’s bureaucratic response did not clarify why they thought any of the social media posts merited investigation. There was never any allegation of a crime. All that was alleged was that two board members expressed concern over government policy. Considering that the independent advisory group is designed to be set apart from the government, this would have been par for the course under normal conditions. Indeed, one might say that an advisory group that did not express concern over government policies was not doing its job. But in times of war, censorship becomes second nature for certain politicians.
The posts that Donelan found outrageous are entirely within the academic mainstream. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have formally described Israel as an apartheid state since 2021. As for the charge of genocide, one need look no further than the pronouncements and actions of Israeli politicians themselves.
Soon after the 7 October attacks, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced a complete siege on Gaza, that would cut off access to water, fuel, and food. He justified these drastic measures on the grounds that Israel was “fighting human animals.” A few days later, Netanyahu ominously stated in a now-deleted tweet that Israel’s war on Gaza was “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.” During an address to the Israeli people on 28 October 2023, Netanyahu drew on the language of the Old Testament to clarify Israel’s aims. Invoking 1 Samuel 15:3, he declared: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”
These statements are clear declarations of genocidal intent, as over 800 scholars of international law, conflict studies, and genocide studies around the world have recognised. Genocide scholar Raz Segal has called Israeli declarations of war on Gaza “a textbook case of genocide.” Even though many Western powers contest the claim of genocide, this is also the language now used by many UN employees. In this context, it is disturbing that a government minister would seek to attack academics who speak truths that politicians are unwilling to utter.
Donelan doubled down on her comments in an interview with Sky News .