Palestinian knowledge ecosystem under Israeli attack

Amarjit Bhullar

EX-professor, University of Northern British Columbia

ISRAEL’s attack on universities and other educational institutions in Gaza is seen as a deliberate effort to destroy Palestinian knowledge and learning ecosystem. So far, all 12 universities have witnessed aerial strikes. Israel’s targets included Al-Azhar University and the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), resulting in the destruction of years of research by Palestinian faculty, scholars and the students.

Prof Sufian Tayeh, President and Vice Chancellor of the IUG, and his family members were killed in an Israeli attack on the campus. The IUG is Gaza’s leading academic institution, and Prof Tayeh was an internationally acknowledged researcher. Dr Refaat Alareer, a professor of English literature at the IUG, is among 90-odd university professors killed in the ongoing assault.

As per statistics released by the Palestinian Ministry of Education, till January 20, 2024, nearly 4,400 students were killed and 7,800 injured, while 231 teachers and administrators were killed and 756 injured in the attacks along with the complete or partial destruction of 378 state-run schools and those run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza. At least 97 journalists and media workers are among more than 35,000 fatalities since the war began in October 2023.

In the International Court of Justice, the legal representative of South Africa, Blinne Ní Ghralaigh, said: “Almost 90,000 Palestinian university students cannot attend university in Gaza. Over 60 per cent of the schools, almost all universities and countless bookshops and libraries have been damaged and destroyed. Hundreds of teachers and academics have been killed, including deans of universities and leading Palestinian scholars... obliterating the prospects of education of Gaza’s children and young people.”

Many cultural heritage sites, including libraries, archives and museums, have also been wrecked, wiping out the symbols and documented history of the people.

Palestinian intellectuals see it as an effort to ‘erase the Palestinian existence from history’ and ‘erase Palestine from the political map’, as Muhannad Ayyash, Professor of Sociology, Mount Royal University, Canada, describes it in a letter to the Canadian Association of University Teachers. “The devastation of Palestinian knowledge, knowledge producers, and knowledge-producing institutions is nothing short of epistemicide,” says Prof Ayyash.

Epistemicide means the killing, silencing, annihilation or devaluation of a knowledge system. Sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos coined this term and designated it as the “death of knowledge — of a subordinated culture caused by colonisation, oppression and genocide”. It can be both military as well as ideological/epistemological. It involves appropriation/destruction in the name of liberation, aggression in the name of peace, destruction of life in the name of the sacredness of life, and infringement on human rights in the name of the protection of rights.

Rebuilding the Palestinian education system was the topmost priority of the Palestinian educated elite after their displacement to make way for Israel in 1948. They saw education as an engine to rebuild their lives and make progress. Many scholars moved to Gaza from different places with the hope of making it a place of meaningful cultural exchange, scientific advancements, understanding of history, creative literary works and advancing the Palestinian society. Whether they succeeded or not can be debated, but for sure, Palestine is counted among the regions having the highest literacy rate. Palestine’s literacy rate is 97.51 per cent, as per estimates of the World Bank. Palestinians are known as the “world’s best educated refugees”.

Academicians worldwide understand this and that is the reason behind the uprising by university professors and students in the US and other countries. The reverberations of what is happening in Palestinian educational institutions are being felt on campuses abroad.

Encampments have been set up in several universities to protest the US government’s continuous monetary, military, diplomatic and moral support to Israeli aggression. The police were called in at about 10 universities and 645 arrests were made; many of those arrested were released later. Highly ranked Columbia and Boston universities have become hubs of protests; more than 200 arrests were made from the campuses of these two universities. A significant number of faculty members have either participated or supported the call for a ceasefire in Gaza. In some universities, the administrators have cracked down on agitating students, resulting in the expulsion of some of them.

Scuffles have been reported between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel demonstrators at the University of California at Los Angeles and other places.

The world must raise the pitch to save Palestinian education from destructive and divisive misadventures. It takes weeks to destroy the knowledge system but decades to rebuild it.

Sadly, Palestinian universities have faced exclusion in the past, when some universities of countries aligned with Israel showed reluctance to enter into academic exchange agreements with Palestinian institutions. On the other hand, students from universities of Israel were welcomed to enjoy the benefits of international collaboration. Israeli universities have 60 existing academic agreements with post-secondary institutions of Canada. It is time for academicians, faculty associations and unions, especially in the developed world, to introspect and build public opinion to end the war, besides promising support for rebuilding the beleaguered Palestinian system.

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