Shaima Akram Saidam achieved a score of 99.6% on the 2023 high school exam, earning her the title of first in the literary branch in Palestine. Shaima enrolled at the Islamic University, majoring in English.
Amidst the flurry of news about the genocide in Gaza, the news of the martyrdom of Shaima and her family in the Nuseirat area of the Gaza Strip passes by as if nothing had happened, as if it were just another number added to the list.
Who killed her? With what weapon? Where did the killer form his Zionist identity and terrorist ideology? And with what justification? Perhaps these are questions that lead us to a place that many overlook: Israeli universities, where the minds of the Israeli army are honed. It is also the place where many of the security and military apparatuses that monitor, kill, and torture Palestinians are developed. It is also the place where weapons, propaganda, and justification for destruction are manufactured. Shaima was denied her right to education by an Israeli university structure that produces genocide, apartheid, and the destruction of the Palestinian people.
Israeli universities and research centers are among the most important pillars of the Zionist movement and the Jewish state. These academic institutions build Zionist identity and propaganda, manufacture weapons, justify Israeli policies, apartheid, Israeli aggression, and violations of Palestinian rights, promote settlements, marginalize and refute Palestinian identity, and train army and intelligence units in various specialties.
These Israeli institutions practice discrimination, persecution, and oppression not only against Palestinians, but also against any individual—even a Jew—who defends Palestinian rights and freedoms.
Boycott of Israeli universities
In light of these and other facts, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) was established in 2004 to advocate for a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, as they are a central actor in the suppression and violation of Palestinian rights and freedoms.
Maya Wind's book is a unique and important contribution in this context, demonstrating the involvement of Israeli universities as a primary driver and enabler of violations of Palestinian rights and freedoms, and even considering Israeli university policies as part of a system that perpetuates Israel's racist and settler-colonial policies.
University of California researcher Maya Wind's book centers on the question: Are Israeli universities complicit in the violation of Palestinian rights? She seeks to answer this question by revealing how Israeli universities are deeply intertwined with Israeli systems of oppression. Wind's uniqueness in this context, she says, is that she is a white, Jewish Israeli citizen, which gave her easy access to the Israeli government's military archives and libraries. She was thus able to read official documents, memoirs, and political reports, as well as unpublished studies such as master's theses and doctoral dissertations that were approved by Israeli universities.
In addition to 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 an afterword by Professor Robin D.J. Kelly.
Nadia Abu El-Haj of Columbia University introduces the book and reminds readers that Israel is a settler nation-state founded on the expulsion of approximately 750,000 Palestinians from their land. It is a state built on systematic ethnic cleansing. Therefore, Israel should not be described as a democracy.
Indeed, the structure upon which the State of Israel was established and is based is a racist structure based on the denial and exclusion of non-Jews. For this reason, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International—as well as the Israeli human rights organizations B'Tselem and Yesh Din—declared Israel an apartheid state in 2021 and 2022.
In her introduction to the book, Nadia asserts that there is no such thing as a "democratic Israel" that can be separated from the Palestinian issue. Israel is a settler-colonial state. Its founding commitments and actions, its deeply rooted Zionist political vision, and the work of its institutions and even its political parties, both liberal and illiberal, are racist and anti-democratic to the core.
This racist, exclusionary foundational structure of Israel explains why the vast majority of Israeli academics, and even university administrations and presidents, remain silent, as there is no institutional defense of academic freedom when it comes to Palestinians.
Author Maya Wind confirms these ideas in the book's introduction, noting that university campuses in all territories under Israeli rule are not safe places for Palestinian students, as these universities are not independent but rather an extension of the violence of the Israeli state and its repressive institutions. The author asserts that Israel's apartheid system cannot be fully dismantled without recognizing it as a settler colonial system.
Therefore, the academic boycott is the essential step toward ending this colonialism. As this book demonstrates, all eight Israeli universities directly serve the state and perform vital functions in supporting its policies, thus constituting essential pillars of Israeli settler colonialism.
Academia in the Service of the Israeli Government
For example, Israeli universities collaborate with Israeli arms companies to research and develop technology used by the Israeli military and security services in the occupied Palestinian territories. This technology is then sold abroad as field-tested or "battle-proven."
The author begins by discussing "collusion" and "the experience of subjugation," and how Israeli academic disciplines have been developed to serve the Israeli government and security state, and how they continue to provide financial support for state projects. The author argues that leading departments and professors at Israeli universities, across various disciplines, are intellectually and theoretically subservient to the demands of the Israeli state, as demonstrated by focusing on three disciplines.
First major: Archaeology. All Israeli universities conduct excavations at archaeological sites run by Jewish settler organizations or regional settler councils. This academic major focuses on erasing Arab and Islamic history and is dedicated to expanding Jewish settlements and confiscating Palestinian land.
For example, Israeli universities are conducting excavations in Susya in the southern West Bank, thus directly seizing these Palestinian areas.
Israeli archaeology emerged as an academic discipline ostensibly to assert Israel's continued ancient Jewish presence in Palestine. At the same time, archaeological research was used to obliterate any Palestinian and Arab claims or evidence of presence on this same land.
The author also notes that these excavations constitute a direct violation of international laws and regulations, yet Israeli archaeologists and universities continue to participate in excavations 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 specialization: Legal Studies. The author explains that Israel considers the occupied Palestinian territory its laboratory. Given its decades-long illegal rule over the Palestinian people through military occupation, it has developed a body of laws and legal interpretations to justify its permanent military regime.
Israel has created a legal infrastructure to justify extrajudicial killings, torture, and the dissemination of what amounts to disproportionate use of force against civilian populations, which amounts to war crimes. Maya Wind argues that legal studies and the moral philosophy upon which they are based were created to justify violations of Palestinian rights and freedom.
Third Specialization: Middle Eastern Studies. The researcher explains that with Israel's establishment of a 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 military and government.
Milson also served as the first head of the Civil Administration, the Israeli military administration in the occupied Palestinian territories, and oversaw the forced closure of the Palestinian Birzeit University beginning in 1981. Cohen, Sharon, and Maoz served as colonels and worked with the army throughout their academic careers.
The Middle East Studies Department also offers academic programs in regional expertise for soldiers on active duty in elite military units, as well as courses specifically designed for security services. The Hebrew University has offered a BA in Middle East Studies to the General Security Service (Shin Bet) as part of its cadre training.
Thus, Israeli disciplines in the humanities and social sciences were recruited to support Israeli settler colonialism. Archaeology, legal studies, and Middle Eastern studies developed alongside and through the Israeli military occupation.
The author then went on to study a number of Israeli universities, considering them "universities as settlement outposts," established and designed to serve as strategic outposts for the Israeli state project. The Hebrew University in occupied East Jerusalem; the University of Haifa in the Triangle; Ben-Gurion University in the Negev; and Ariel University in the West Bank—all of these institutions constitute key engines of "Judaization" projects in their respective regions.
For example, the author states that in the period leading up to and during the 1948 war, students, faculty, and administrators at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem actively supported the Haganah military organization, treating the campus as a base, conducting military training, and even storing weapons on university premises.
The author argues that for more than a century, Israeli universities have been expanding and enshrining the borders of the Jewish state and "Jewish sovereignty" over all of historic Palestine. These universities continue to play a central role in expanding settlement outposts on Palestinian land, and their libraries are repositories of looted Palestinian books, such as the Hebrew University Library, which houses many Arabic books stolen from Palestinians.
The researcher then turned to the concept of the "scientific security state," demonstrating how the development of Israeli universities was linked to the rise of Israel's military industries. These universities were designed as state-building institutions and were then recruited to support its violent apparatuses shortly after their founding.
Following the founding of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1918, the Zionist movement established two additional institutions of higher education in Palestine: the Technion 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 in various disciplines; the Technion was designed to be a center for engineering, while the Weizmann Institute was committed to scientific research for state-building.
The researcher demonstrates how Israeli universities and research centers serve as an academic arm of the Israeli security state. These institutes and universities serve the state through research and policy recommendations aimed not only at preserving Israeli military rule but also at undermining the Palestinian rights movement on the international stage.
For example, the daily work of Israeli intelligence officers violates Palestinian human rights, as enshrined in international law and the Geneva Convention. Many soldiers who graduate from Hebrew University's specially designed graduate programs serve in Unit 8200, the largest and most central unit of the Intelligence Corps. Unit 8200 is the army's central collection unit, responsible for collecting all intelligence communications, including phone calls, text messages, and emails. The author concludes the chapter by emphasizing that, far from struggling to transform into civilian institutions, Israeli universities continue to expand their operations not only as military training bases, but also as weapons laboratories for the state.
In the second section of the book, titled "Repression," the author begins by discussing the concept of "epistemological occupation," explaining how Israeli universities systematically prevent critical academic research, teaching, and discussion of Israeli settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid.
The author notes that the list of topics forbidden in Israeli universities has expanded with the rise of the far-right's influence and political power 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 deeply entrenched traditions in Israeli academia: erasing Palestinian academic knowledge production and undermining evidence-based research that exposes Israeli state crimes.
Israeli universities have allied with far-right groups and the Israeli government to restrict and censor research and discourse related to the Nakba, for example. By extension, critical study of the Israeli occupation, apartheid, and settler colonialism is prohibited.
Essential critical debates have thus been excluded from Israeli academia, as Israeli universities define research and discussion of historical and ongoing Israeli state violence as "illegitimate." In doing so, they deny faculty and students not only academic freedom but also the opportunity to debate and intervene in current and future injustices.
The author then turns to the subject of the siege imposed on Palestinian students, revealing the restrictions imposed on Palestinian students' rights to study, express themselves, and protest in Israeli universities. She reveals how university administrations continually restrict the presence of Palestinian students on their campuses and how they collaborate with the Israeli government to deny Palestinian students, especially student activists, basic academic freedoms. The author states that from the moment they enroll 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 demonstrated their subservience to the state, cooperating with it to shield it from criticism and accountability for its military occupation and apartheid regime. The government increasingly censors any discussion of the Nakba and the fundamental injustices perpetrated by the State of Israel, both against the Palestinians it militarily governs in the occupied Palestinian territories and those it considers its own citizens.
Finally, the author clarifies academic complicity with the state against the Palestinians, and that there is currently no movement in Israeli universities calling for severing ties with the Israeli military and security state due to their repeated violations of the inalienable Palestinian right to education and other human rights.
Even progressive organizations operating on Israeli campuses—such as the Joint Democracy Initiative or Academia for Equality, which includes both Israeli Jewish and Palestinian (citizen) faculty and students—have largely failed to address the demands of Palestinian universities. These activist groups have so far refused to endorse Palestinian calls to hold Israeli universities accountable for their complicity in Israel's violations of international law.
Israel views Palestinians, armed with education and unwaveringly challenging the apartheid system, as a threat. Therefore, Palestinian students are subjected to disciplinary hearings, interrogations, and arrests at Israeli universities, in addition to kidnappings, torture, military arrests, and even murders at Palestinian universities. Israeli universities are essential pillars of this system.
Not only does it conduct research, train, and cooperate with Israeli security forces that maintain the military occupation, but it also works alongside the Israeli government to suppress Palestinian students at its universities.
Ultimately, Israeli universities play a direct role in the Israeli state’s suppression of Palestinian student movements for liberation—and in denying Palestinians academic freedom—for more than seventy-five years.
In the book's conclusion, the author asserts that Israel established and built Israeli institutions of higher education on Palestinian land. These institutions were designed to be tools for Jewish settlement expansion and the displacement of Palestinians, and were founded on the model of land-grabbing universities.
Israeli universities not only continue to actively participate in the Israeli state's violence against Palestinians, but also contribute their resources, research, and scholarship to maintain, defend, and justify this oppression. Ultimately, the author calls for a boycott of Israeli universities and insists that there is no academic freedom until it is applied to everyone.
In his closing remarks, Professor Robin D.J. Kelly of the University of California emphasized that the goal of the boycott is to end the occupation, dismantle the apartheid system, respect the UN-enshrined rights of Palestinian refugees, expand civil rights to include all, end military arrests, repeated raids and surveillance of Palestinian institutions, and the deliberate disruption of the educational process.
Israel's apartheid regime would not have survived without the massive financial support, political legitimacy, and legal protection provided by the United States. Annual military funding of $3.8 billion (Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid in history) contributes to the ongoing state violence, repression, and inequality, with little accountability.
Thus, academic Kelly notes that the Israeli apartheid regime could not have persisted without liberal silence in America. He says: The truth is that there will be no true academic freedom in the region without a free Palestine, and there can be no free Palestine as long as universities are under occupation or bastions of Zionism and settler colonialism. As long as the majority of Israeli intellectuals remain silent or do not understand that their freedom is linked to the freedom of Palestine, we will continue to boycott Israeli institutions because, according to Kelly, silence is synonymous with complicity.
This book is of great scholarly value. It is 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 state's most important arms in justifying its policies, which violate international norms and laws.
Therefore, this book can be read as an extension, advocacy, and new testimony to the validity of the claims of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), founded in 2004, which states that Israeli universities are a fundamental pillar of apartheid and Israeli policies that violate international and humanitarian law.
Source: Al Jazeera + websites
