By Fadi Zatari

This book is superb, a very informative and well-argued, a detailed historical documentation of the complicity of all Israeli universities and research centers.

Amidst the uproar of news pouring in about the genocide in Gaza, the news of the martyrdom of Shaima and her family in the Nuseirat area of the Gaza Strip passes as if nothing happened, as if she were just a number added to a list of numbers.

Shaima Akram Saidam achieved a 99.6% average in the 2023 general secondary school examination, which earned her the title of top student in the literary branch at the level of Palestine. After that, she enrolled in the Islamic University, majoring in English.

Who killed her? With what weapon? Where did the killer’s Zionist identity and ideology take shape? And with what justification? Perhaps these are questions that lead us to a place many overlook: Israeli universities, where the minds of the occupation army are honed. It is the place where many security and military apparatuses that monitor, kill, and torture Palestinians are developed. It is also the place where weapons, propaganda, and the justification for destruction are manufactured.

In fact, Israeli universities and research centers are one of the most important pillars of the Zionist movement and the Jewish state. 

These academic institutions build Zionist identity and propaganda, contribute to weapons manufacturing, and work to institutionalize Israeli policies, entrenching apartheid, Israeli aggression, and violations of Palestinian rights through academic frameworks, research papers, and discussions among experts to find the most effective means to solidify the occupation, entrench settlements, marginalize and refute Palestinian identity, and train units of the army and intelligence in various specialties.

These Israeli institutions not only practice discrimination, oppression, and repression against Palestinians, but also against any individual, even if Jewish, who defends Palestinian rights and freedoms.

In light of these and other facts, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) was established in 2004, with the aim of calling for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions due to their central role in the oppression and violation of Palestinian rights and freedoms.

The newly published book “Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom” by Maya Wind is a distinguished and important contribution in this context, aiming to prove the involvement of Israeli universities as a foundation and a major driving force behind violations of Palestinian rights and freedoms, and even considering the policies of Israeli universities as part of a system that entrenches Israel’s racist and settler policies.

The book centers around the question: “Are Israeli universities complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights?” (Page 16). She seeks to answer this question by revealing how Israeli universities are deeply intertwined with Israeli systems of oppression.

The researcher distinguishes herself in this context, as she states, by being a white Jewish Israeli citizen, which allowed her easy access to the archives and military libraries of the Israeli government. Thus, she was able to read official documents, memos, and political reports, as well as unpublished studies such as master’s theses and doctoral dissertations approved by Israeli universities. In addition to conducting interviews with Palestinian and Jewish students and academics working in Israeli universities.

The book consists of two parts, each with three chapters, in addition to an introduction, a conclusion, and a closing remark by Professor Robin D.G. Kelley.

 Nadia Abu El-Haj from Columbia University introduces the book and reminds the reader that Israel is a settler-colonial nation-state founded on the expulsion of nearly 750,000 Palestinians from their land. It is a state built on organized ethnic cleansing. Therefore, Israel should not be described as a democratic state (Page 6).

Rather, the structure upon which the State of Israel was and continues to be built is a racist structure based on the denial and exclusion of non-Jews. For this reason, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – in addition to the Israeli human rights organizations B’Tselem and Yesh Din – declared in 2021 and 2022 that Israel is an apartheid state.

In her introduction to the book, Nadia Abu El-Haj emphasizes that there is no “democratic Israel” that can be separated from the Palestinian issue. Israel is a settler-colonial state. Its founding commitments and actions, its deep-rooted Zionist political vision, and the workings of its institutions and even its liberal and non-liberal political parties alike, are racist and anti-democratic to the core.

This foundational racist and exclusionary structure of Israel explains the silence of the vast majority of Israeli academics, and even university administrations and presidents, where there is no institutional defense of academic freedom when it comes to Palestine.

The author Maya Wind reiterates these ideas in the book’s introduction, pointing out that university campuses throughout the territories under Israeli rule are not safe places for Palestinian students. These universities are not independent but rather an extension of the violence of the Israeli state and its repressive institutions. The writer emphasizes that the Israeli apartheid regime cannot be fully dismantled without recognizing it as a settler-colonial system.

Therefore, academic boycott is considered the fundamental step towards ending this colonialism. As this book illustrates, all eight Israeli universities operate directly in the service of the state and perform vital functions in supporting its policies, thereby constituting fundamental pillars of Israeli settler-colonialism.

The University in Service of the Israeli Government

For example, Israeli universities collaborate with Israeli weapons companies to research and develop technology used by the Israeli army and security services in the occupied Palestinian territories. This technology is later sold abroad as field-tested or “battle-proven.”

The author began the first part of the book, “Complicity”, by discussing “Expertise of Subjugation”, how Israeli academic disciplines developed to serve the Israeli government and the security state, and how they continue to provide material support for state projects. The author states that leading departments and professors in Israeli universities, across various disciplines, are intellectually and theoretically subject to the requirements of the Israeli state, as evidenced by the focus on three disciplines.

The first discipline: Archaeology. All Israeli universities conduct excavations at archaeological sites managed by Jewish settler organizations or regional settler councils. This academic discipline focuses on erasing Arab and Islamic history and is dedicated to expanding Jewish settlements and confiscating Palestinian lands.

For example, Israeli universities conduct excavations in Susya in the southern West Bank, thereby directly seizing these Palestinian areas.

Israeli archaeology also emerged ostensibly as an academic discipline to affirm a continuous ancient Jewish presence in Palestine. At the same time, archaeological research was used to erase any Palestinian and Arab claims or evidence of presence on this same land.

The author also mentions that these excavations constitute a direct violation of international laws and conventions. Despite this, Israeli archaeologists and universities continue to participate in excavation work throughout the Palestinian territories under the protection of the Israeli army. Thus, archaeology structurally facilitates Israel’s theft of Palestinian antiquities and lands and facilitates their ongoing illegal seizure.

The second discipline: Legal Studies. The author clarifies that Israel considers the occupied Palestinian territory its laboratory. Due to its illegal rule over the Palestinian people through military occupation for decades, it has developed a set of laws and legal interpretations to justify its permanent military regime.

Israel has established the legal infrastructure to justify extrajudicial killings, torture, and the deployment of what is considered disproportionate force against civilian populations, which amounts to war crimes. Maya Wind states that legal studies and the ethical philosophy upon which they are built were created to justify violations of Palestinian rights and freedoms.

The third discipline: Middle Eastern Studies. The researcher shows that with the establishment of Israel’s military government in the occupied Palestinian territories in 1967, opportunities for academic cooperation with the state were renewed. For example, Hebrew University professors Menachem Milson, Amnon Cohen, Moshe Sharon, and Moshe Maoz served as advisors on Arab affairs to the Israeli army and government (page. 48).

Milson also held the position of the first head of the Civil Administration, the Israeli military administration in the occupied Palestinian territories, and oversaw the forced closure of Birzeit University starting in 1981. Cohen, Sharon, and Maoz served with the rank of colonel and worked with the army throughout their academic careers.

Similarly, Middle Eastern Studies departments offer academic programs in regional expertise for active-duty soldiers in elite military units and courses specifically designed for security agencies. The Hebrew University offered a bachelor’s program in Middle Eastern Studies for the General Security Service (Shin Bet) as part of its staff training.

Thus, Israeli disciplines in the humanities and social sciences were mobilized to support Israeli settler-colonialism. Archaeology, legal studies, and Middle Eastern studies developed concurrently with and through the Israeli military occupation.

The author then moved on to study a number of Israeli universities, considering that “Universities: Settlement Outposts” were founded and designed to serve as strategic settlement outposts for the Israeli state project. The Hebrew University in occupied East Jerusalem; the University of Haifa in the Galilee; Ben-Gurion University in the Nagab; Ariel University in the West Bank: all these institutions constitute fundamental engines for “Judaization” projects in their respective areas.

The author states, for example, that in the period leading up to and during the 1948 war, students, faculty, and administrators at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem actively supported the Haganah military organization and treated the campus as a base, conducting military training and even storing weapons in university buildings.

 The author also argues that for more than a century, Israeli universities have consistently worked to expand and entrench the borders of the Jewish state, the “Jewish sovereignty” over all historical Palestine.

These universities continue to actively and intensively play a central role in expanding settlement outposts on Palestinian lands, and their libraries are repositories of looted Palestinian books, as is the case with the Hebrew University library, which contains many Arabic books stolen from Palestinians.

The researcher moved on to the concept of “the scholarly security state,” showing how the development of Israeli universities was linked to the rise of Israeli military industries. These universities were designed as state-building institutions and were then mobilized to support Israel’s apparatuses of violence shortly after their establishment.

After the establishment of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1918, the Zionist movement founded two additional institutions of higher education in Palestine: the Technion Institute in Haifa in 1925 and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot in 1934. 

The Hebrew University was the Zionist movement’s first comprehensive university dedicated to research and teaching across disciplines; the Technion was designed to be a center for engineering; while the Weizmann Institute was committed to scientific research for state-building (page 88).

The researcher shows how Israeli universities and research centers serve as an academic arm of the Israeli security state. Institutes and universities serve the state through research and policy recommendations that aim not only to maintain Israeli military rule but also to undermine the Palestinian rights movement on the international stage.

For example, the daily work of soldiers in the Israeli Military Intelligence violates Palestinian human rights, as stipulated in international law and the Geneva Conventions. Many soldiers who graduated from specially designed graduate programs at the Hebrew University serve in Unit 8200, the largest and most central unit of Military Intelligence. 

Unit 8200 is the army’s central collection unit, responsible for gathering all intelligence communications, including phone calls, text messages, and emails. The author concludes the chapter by emphasizing that far from striving to become civilian institutions, Israeli universities continue to expand their operations not only as military training bases but also as weapons laboratories for the state.

The second part of the book, titled “Repression,” begins with the author addressing the idea of “epistemic occupation” and explaining how Israeli universities systematically prevent critical academic research, teaching, and discussion of Israeli settler-colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid.

The author mentions the expanding list of topics prohibited in Israeli universities with the increasing influence and political power of the extreme right over the past two decades. Recently, any criticism of the army or Israeli soldiers has become taboo in Israeli universities. 

For example, Maya Wind explains that the University of Haifa has two deep-rooted traditions in Israeli academia: erasing the production of Palestinian academic knowledge and undermining evidence-based research that reveals the crimes of the Israeli state (page 119).

Israeli universities have allied with far-right groups and the Israeli government to restrict and monitor research and discourse related to the Nakba, for example. By extension, critical study of Israeli occupation, apartheid, and settler-colonialism is described as prohibited.

Consequently, fundamental critical discussions have been excluded from Israeli academia, as Israeli universities define research and discussion about the historical and ongoing violence of the Israeli state as “illegitimate.” Thus, they deprive faculty and students not only of academic freedom but also of the opportunity to discuss and intervene in current and future injustices.

The author then moves on to the topic of the siege imposed on Palestinian students and revealed the restrictions imposed on the rights of Palestinian students to study, express themselves, and protest in Israeli universities.

She reveals how university administrations constantly restrict the presence of Palestinian students on their campuses and how they cooperate with the Israeli government to deprive Palestinian students, especially active students, of basic academic freedoms. The author asserts that since enrolling in Israeli higher education, Palestinian students have been subjected to criminalization, surveillance, and targeting by their universities in collusion with the state.

 Academic freedom in Israeli higher education does not apply to Palestinian students. University administrations have long shown themselves to be subordinate to the state, cooperating with it to protect it from criticism and accountability for its military occupation and apartheid regime. The government imposes increasing censorship on any discussion of the Nakba and the radical injustice practiced by the State of Israel, whether against Palestinians under military rule in the occupied Palestinian territories or those it considers its citizens.

In the end, the author clarifies the academic complicity with the state against Palestinians, and that there is currently no movement in Israeli universities calling for severing ties with the Israeli army and the Israeli security state due to their repeated violations of the inalienable Palestinian right to education and other human rights.

Even progressive organizations working in Israeli universities – such as “the Joint Democratic Initiative” or “Academia for Equality,” which includes Jewish Israeli and Palestinian (citizen) faculty and students – largely fail to meet the demands of Palestinian universities. These activist groups have so far refused to endorse Palestinian calls for holding Israeli universities accountable for their complicity in Israel’s violations of international law.

Israel considers Palestinians armed with education who challenge the apartheid regime without hesitation a threat. Therefore, Palestinian students are subjected to disciplinary hearings, interrogations, and arrests in Israeli universities, in addition to kidnappings, torture, military arrests, and even killings in Palestinian universities. Israeli universities are fundamental pillars of this system.

They not only conduct research, train, and collaborate with Israeli security forces that maintain the military occupation, but also work alongside the Israeli government to suppress Palestinian students in their universities.

Ultimately, Israeli universities have played a direct role in the Israeli state’s suppression of Palestinian student movements for liberation – and in depriving Palestinians of academic freedom – for more than seventy-five years.

In the book’s conclusion, the author emphasizes that Israel established and built Israeli higher education institutions on Palestinian land and designed these institutions to be tools for Jewish settlement expansion and the displacement of Palestinians, founded on the approach of land-grab universities.

Israeli universities not only actively participate in the Israeli state’s violence against Palestinians but also contribute their resources, research, and scholarships to maintain, defend, and justify this oppression. In the end, the author calls for a boycott of Israeli universities and insists that there is no academic freedom until it is applied to all.

In his concluding remarks, Professor Robin D.G. Kelley of the University of California affirms that the aim of the boycott is to end the occupation, dismantle the apartheid regime, respect the rights of Palestinian refugees as stipulated by the United Nations, expand civil rights to include everyone, end military arrests, repeated incursions and surveillance of Palestinian institutions, and the deliberate disruption of the educational process.

The Israeli apartheid regime would not have lasted without the massive financial support, political legitimacy, and legal protection provided by the United States. The annual military funding of $3.8 billion (and Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in history) contributes to funding ongoing state violence, repression, and inequality without the slightest accountability (Page 189).

Thus, Professor Kelley mentions that the Israeli apartheid regime could not have persisted without liberal silence in America. He perfectly utters that “The truth is, there will never be genuine academic freedom in the region without a free Palestine, and there cannot be a free Palestine so long as universities are under occupation or remain bastions of Zionism and settler colonialism. 

And as long as the majority of Israeli intellectuals remain silent or fail to grasp that their own freedom is bound up with the freedom of Palestine, we will continue to boycott Israeli institutions. Silence = Complicity” (page 192).

This book is superb, a very informative and well-argued, a detailed historical documentation of the complicity of all Israeli universities and research centers, without exception, in the Israeli apartheid system. Indeed, they are one of the most important arms of the state in justifying its policies that violate international standards and international laws.

The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Palestine Chronicle.