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Targeting Islamic University
December 31, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon12312008.html
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.
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
Israel’s Occupation (University of California Press, 2008).
Jeff Halper Jeff Halper is the Director of the
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and author
of
An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming
Israel (Pluto Press, 2008). He can be reached at
jeff@icahd.org.
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