Israeli academics issue open letter condemning Gaza genocide

Stalin · Jun 2, 2025

There is a long and distinguished history of dissent in jewish intellectual life that the US government is determined to crush...

On Wednesday, 1,200 Israeli university academics and administrators issued an open letter protesting the “war crimes and even crimes against humanity” committed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

The letter—addressed to the Association of University Heads in Israel, the Board of Academic Public Colleges, the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and Academics for Israeli Democracy—is a reaction to the launching of “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” in March, which is employing the mass starvation of the Palestinian population in pursuit of what is now the open policy of the Israeli government: the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

The statement declares:

Since Israel violated the ceasefire on March 18, almost 3,000 people have been killed in Gaza. The vast majority of them were civilians. Since the start of the war, at least 53,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including at least 15,000 children and at least 41 Israeli hostages. At the same time, many international bodies are warning of acute starvation—the result of intentional and openly declared Israeli government policy —as well as of the rendering of Gaza into an area unfit for human habitation. Israel continues to bomb hospitals, schools, and other institutions. Among the war’s declared goals, as defined in the orders for the current military operation “Gideon’s Chariots,” is the “concentration and displacement of the population.” This is a horrifying litany of war crimes and even crimes against humanity, all of our own doing.

As academics, we recognize our own role in these crimes. It is human societies, not governments alone, that commit crimes against humanity. Some do so by means of direct violence. Others do so by sanctioning the crimes and justifying them, before and after the fact, and by keeping quiet and silencing voices in the halls of learning. It is this bond of silence that allows clearly evident crimes to continue unabated without penetrating the barriers of recognition.