“Scholasticide” – the systematic destruction by Israeli forces of centres of education"
(RIGHT2EDUCATION, Birzeit University, Jan 10, 2009): click here.
A new word emerged from the carnage in Gaza this week: “scholasticide” – the systematic destruction by Israeli forces of centres of education dear to Palestinian society, as the ministry of education was bombed, the infrastructure of teaching destroyed, and schools across the Gaza strip targeted for attack by the air, sea and ground offensives. “Learn, baby, learn” was a slogan of the black rights movement in America’s ghettoes a generation ago, but it also epitomises the idea of education as the central pillar of Palestinian identity – a traditional premium on schooling steeled by occupation, and something the Israelis “cannot abide… and seek to destroy”, according to Dr Karma Nabulsi, who teaches politics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

Nick Riemer: “Scholasticide: The Relentless Attack on Palestinian Universities"
(The Wire, January 1, 2019): click here.
Israel’s efforts to cripple higher education in occupied Palestine continued relentlessly in 2018, with Israeli universities acting as key tools of the occupation. The systematic punishment inflicted on Palestinian academics and students didn’t attract anything like the global attention of Gazans’ March of Return, but it deserves to be documented and organised against for what it is: a slow, sadistic crushing of learning, and a stifling of the life opportunities it provides. A selection of the manifestations of this “scholasticide,” all drawn from local reports, is catalogued in this article, along with some brief indications of Israeli universities’ collaboration in it. This suggests the full violence of Israel’s siege on higher education in Palestine – and the urgent necessity of an effective response on the part of people of good conscience around the world, including those who work in universities.

• « Israeli Court Approves Palestinian School Demolition near Bethlehem » (The Palestine Chronicle, March 6, 2023): click here.

  An Israeli occupation court ruled on Monday in favor of the demolition of a school in the Jub Al-Dhib community, near Bethlehem, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported. The coordinator of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Hassan Brijiyeh, said that the Central Israeli Court issued a ruling in favor of the demolition of the al-Tahadi 5 School in the southern occupied West Bank village, effectively accepting a petition submitted by the Regavim settler group to demolish the structure.

• « Palestinian Students under Suspended Detention » (AURDIP, Feb 25, 2023): click here.

  The Israeli occupation authorities systematically and persistently target Palestinian university students for arbitrary arrest and detention. This practice, amounting to a form of collective punishment, violates Palestinian students’ rights both to education and to freedom of association, assembly, and expression, all protected under international legal standards. Each year, the Israeli occupation authorities viciously arrest and detain dozens of Palestinian students, often under the pretext of involvement with student groups deemed “illegal” under Israeli military orders. Though the Israeli occupation authorities target students and student groups across Palestine, students at Birzeit University have been subjected to the most consistent, systematic attacks, raids on campus, arbitrary detention orders, and torture and ill-treatment.

• HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: « West Bank: New Entry Rules Further Isolate Palestinians. » Israel's Guidelines Impede Visiting, Studying, Working (HRW, January 23, 2023): click here.

  Israel's Guidelines Impede Visiting, Studying, Working. Jerusalem – New Israeli guidelines on access to the West Bank for foreigners threaten to further isolate Palestinians from loved ones and global civil society, Human Rights Watch said today.
  Israeli authorities have long made it difficult for foreigners to teach, study, volunteer, work, or live in the West Bank. The new guidelines codify and tighten longstanding restrictions, threatening to make it even harder for Palestinians in the West Bank, who already face severe Israeli-imposed movement restrictions, to be with family members who lack a West Bank ID and to engage with foreign students, academics, experts, and others. “By making it harder for people to spend time in the West Bank, Israel is taking yet another step toward turning the West Bank into another Gaza, where two million Palestinians have lived virtually sealed off from the outside world for over 15 years,” said Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “This policy is designed to weaken the social, cultural, and intellectual ties that Palestinians have tried to maintain with the outside world.”

• Shahd Safi: « In Gaza, Students’ Heavy Endeavors are Going in Vain » (The Palestine Chronicle, November 25, 2022): click here.

  From the 1948 Nakba, the Naksa of 1967 to now, many Palestinians have been forced to live as refugees, facing dire social and financial difficulties. Education is their only hope for survival. But so many families can’t afford the expenses associated with college and university.

• Kadoorie University Denounces Israeli Occupation’s Violation Inside its Campus in Tulkarem (AURDIP, November 20, 2022): click here.

  The administration of Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie (PTUK) denounces and strongly condemns the Israeli Occupation forces’ desecrating actions, disrespecting its sanctity and forcing the university staff to open the main gates and the cameras control room to drag out certain records and photocopied clips.

• Committee on Academic Freedom: « COGAT regulations’ impact on international scholar selection » (MESA, October 20, 2022): click here.

  Letter sent on 20 October 2022 to:  Israel PM Yair Lapid, Minister of Education Yifat Shasha-Biton, Minister of Justice Gideon Sa'ar, Brigadier-General Ghasan Alyan, Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Chief Clerk Idit Malul, Supreme Court of the State of Israel.

• Yumna Patel & Michael Arria: « Israeli restrictions on foreign travel into occupied West Bank take effect despite criticisms » (Mondoweiss, October 20, 2022): click here.

  A draconian set of Israeli restrictions on foreign travel into the occupied West Bank take effect today, despite months of condemnations by rights groups and legal efforts to stop them.

• Awdah Hathaleen: "In Masafer Yatta, teachers like me can’t guarantee our students an education" (+972, November 15, 2022): click here.

  With schools facing demolition orders and soldiers detaining students and teachers for hours, obstacles to education are becoming insurmountable.




Continue (July 2022-2005): click here.

• Francesca P ALBANESE & Lex TAKKENBERG: « UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees: Protecting refugee rights while structurally addressing the agency’s financially unsustainable modus operandi. » Refugees Study Centre, Working Paper, Series 138, 27/02/2023, 18p. download here.

  The 73-year-long failure to resolve the Palestinian refugee question, and the discourse around it, especially since Madrid and Oslo, combined with the unsustainability of UNRWA’s current modus operandi – essentially a means to manage the humanitarian dimension of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict – prompt a critical re-examination of the way the Palestinian refugee question has been approached and how UNRWA has interpreted and implemented its mandate over the past decades. This paper calls for a fundamental paradigm shift in the approach to protection of and solutions for the Palestinian refugees...

• John DUGARD, Michael LYNK & Richard FALK: « OCCUPIED PALESTINE: Working Through the United Nations. » Foreword by Francesca Albanese. Clarity Press, 2023, ISBN 978-1-949762-54-9; eBook ISBN 978-1-949762-55-6, 398p., 2023; $32.95 - $22.00. click here!

  This book is the first comprehensive examination of UN efforts to protect Palestinian human rights in the territories occupied by Israel more than 50 years ago in the 1967 War. Working through the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, three top international legal experts – Richard Falk, John Dugard and Michael Lynk – served for six consecutive years as unpaid Special Rapporteurs with a UN mandate to report on Israeli violations of international humanitarian law and human rights standards. Being outside the discipline that controls UN bureaucrats, they enjoyed a high measure of political independence in carrying out their factfinding and reporting missions. Strikingly, despite their differences in background and political outlook, they came to a unanimous consensus confirming the routine and various Israeli violations of Palestinian basic rights.

• Thomas SUÀREZ: « PALESTINE HIJACKED. How Zionism Forged an Apartheid State from River to Sea » . Olive Branch Press, 2023, ISBN 978-1-62371-819-0, 470p., $ 25.00. click here! ─ For a 'Selection of Source Documents cited in Thomas Suárez, 'Palestine Hijacked,' and other writings': click on paldocs.net.

  The Israel-Palestine so-called “conflict” is typically understood to be a clash between two ethnic groups—Arabs and Jews—inhabiting the same land. Thomas Suárez digs deep below these preconceptions and their supporting “narratives” to expose something starkly different: The violent take-over of Palestine by a European racial-nationalist settler movement, Zionism, using terror to assert by force a claim to the land that has no legal or moral basis.