A new petition titled “Sociologists in Solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian People” was posted recently, with some two thousand signatures from students and staff. It includes many Arabs and some Jews, including David Feldman, Professor of Sociology at Oberlin College, and two Israelis, Eliran Arazi from the Hebrew University and Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, and Dr. Eliran Bar-El, Lecturer in Sociology, University of York.

The petition states, “Sociology as a discipline is rooted in a recognition of relationships of power and inequality. As sociologists and human beings, we unreservedly condemn the latest violence against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank at the hands of the Israeli regime. Over the past seven days, the government of Israel has undertaken, in its own words, a ‘complete siege’ of Gaza—the second most densely populated place on the planet, home to 2.1 million residents, of which 1.7 million are refugees.”

Since Israel “claims” its actions are justifiable responses to the Hamas violence against Israeli civilians, “it has targeted the civilian Palestinian population of Gaza, while exhibiting little regard for the loss of human life. Using racist and dehumanizing language.” It then quotes Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, who remarked, “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” Because in just ten days, “Israel has dropped over 6,000 bombs on Gaza, hit the Rafah crossing on the border to Egypt several times, targeted hospitals and ambulances, members of the press, universities, United Nations’ schools and relief offices, and used white phosphorus, a highly flammable munition that the United Nations has banned for use in dense civilian areas. Israeli forces have also cut off water, food, electricity, and medical supplies, which has pushed hospitals to a breaking point. This is an act of collective punishment.”

This, “in contravention of international law threatens the lives of over two million people, half of whom are children, with unimaginable violence and displacement.”

As of writing, ״over 4,385 Palestinians have been murdered, including a staggering 1,756 children, and over 13,561 injured. Israel’s military campaign has also displaced nearly half of Gaza’s population. It has unconscionably demanded that 1.1 million residents relocate from Northern to Southern Gaza in 24 hours, while simultaneously bombing caravans of those attempting to evacuate, and continuing to bomb the Southern part of Gaza. Calls for “evacuation” parallel the military offenses of 1948 and 1967, when Palestinians were forced to leave their homes and never allowed to return. The majority of people in Gaza are long-term refugees, and now again face genocide and ethnic cleansing. At the same time, Israeli settlers across the West Bank, recently armed by the Israeli government with 10,000 assault rifles, have targeted Palestinian civilians, with over 50 already murdered and two villages depopulated in the last week. We are witnessing internationally supported genocide. This latest siege comes as a continuation and escalation of the daily violence Palestinians faced for decades from Israeli colonization; an apartheid regime whose occupation is in clear violation of international law, but persists with the support of powerful governments globally. “

The petitioners are upset that the Western world sides with Israel and protest the “increased harassment of pro-Palestinian voices around the globe. We join people around the world who are raising their voices in protest of this assault on human life.”

They conclude that “As educators, it is our duty to stand by the principles of critical inquiry and learning, to hold the university as a space for conversation that foregrounds historical truths, and that contextualizes this past week’s violence in the context of 75 years of settler colonial occupation and European empire. We are also deeply troubled by the lack of concern and care for Palestinian and Muslim students at many of our universities, as well as efforts to clamp down on student organizing and free speech. We cannot sit back and witness the continuation of this genocidal war. We demand that our governments push for an immediate ceasefire. This stance follows in the tradition of the civil rights movement, anti-war and anti-apartheid protests of decades past. Aligning ourselves with these freedom struggles, we call on all of our colleagues to stand in solidarity with Palestinians and against settler colonialism, imperialism, and genocide.”

The petition is a classic example of the anti-Israeli activists in the academy. First, it decontextualizes the Israeli action from any empirical reality. Nowhere does the petition mention the brutal, ISIS-style attack of Hamas on the civilian population in the border communities. One would not know from the text that the terrorists burned people, raped women, beheaded babies, and kidnapped more than two hundred people to serve as hostages.

Second, Hamas is also hurting the civilian population in Gaza. The organization is in complete control of the enclave and, over the years, siphoned billions of dollars of international aid to build a virtual military fortress replete with missiles, rockets, drones, and miles of tunnel. Most egregiously, many, if not most, of the installations are built in or under public buildings, mosques, schools, and hospitals. This turns the civilians into human shields, a practice strictly prohibited in International Humanitarian Law (IHL). On the other hand, Israel has always tried to comport with IHL, even warning civilians to leave the premises before a strike.

As for the Israeli signatories, Eliran Arazi is a “PhD researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Advanced School in the Social Sciences (EHESS-Paris). He is currently also a research fellow at the Musée du quai Branly. Already in 2012, he signed a BDS petition.

Dr. Eliran Bar-El is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. In 2016, he also signed a BDS petition.

Clearly, by signing the sociologists petition, Arazi and Bar-El are signaling to Arab peers they are on their side, like many anti-Israel Israeli academics who are recruited to Western Universities.

 

References

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wIKLuNYWre8jdV-tqqVJjz_GyM9_WasWjVuV9HSwazs/edit

Sociologists in Solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian People

Sociology as a discipline is rooted in a recognition of relationships of power and inequality. As sociologists and human beings, we unreservedly condemn the latest violence against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank at the hands of the Israeli regime.

Over the past seven days, the government of Israel has undertaken, in its own words, a “complete siege” of Gaza—the second most densely populated place on the planet, home to 2.1 million residents, of which 1.7 million are refugees. While claiming its actions are a justifiable response to recent Hamas violence against Israeli civilians, it has targeted the civilian Palestinian population of Gaza, while exhibiting little regard for the loss of human life. Using racist  and dehumanizing language, Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, remarked, “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”

In just ten days, Israel has dropped over 6,000 bombs on Gaza, hit the Rafah crossing on the border to Egypt several times, targeted hospitals and ambulances, members of the press, universities, United Nations’ schools and relief offices, and used white phosphorus, a highly flammable munition that the United Nations has banned for use in dense civilian areas. Israeli forces have also cut off water, food, electricity, and medical supplies, which has pushed hospitals to a breaking point. This is an act of collective punishment, in contravention of international law, which threatens the lives of over two million people, half of whom are children, with unimaginable violence and displacement. As of writing, over 4,385 Palestinians have been murdered, including a staggering 1,756 children, and over 13,561 injured.

Israel’s military campaign has also displaced nearly half of Gaza’s population. It has unconscionably demanded that 1.1 million residents relocate from Northern to Southern Gaza in 24 hours, while simultaneously bombing caravans of those attempting to evacuate, and continuing to bomb the Southern part of Gaza. Calls for “evacuation” parallel the military offenses of 1948 and 1967, when Palestinians were forced to leave their homes and never allowed to return. The majority of people in Gaza are long-term refugees, and now again face genocide and ethnic cleansing. At the same time, Israeli settlers across the West Bank, recently armed by the Israeli government with 10,000 assault rifles, have targeted Palestinian civilians, with over 50 already murdered and two villages depopulated in the last week.

We are witnessing internationally supported genocide. This latest siege comes as a continuation and escalation of the daily violence Palestinians faced for decades from Israeli colonization; an apartheid regime whose occupation is in clear violation of international law, but persists with the support of powerful governments globally. In 2023 alone, the United States has sent $3.8 billion to prop up the Israeli military and consistently legitimized Israel’s human rights violations on a global stage. The European Union too has brazenly supported Israel’s aggression, while failing to reflect on the historical irony to “never again” commit genocide.

Furthermore, the dehumanizing language used by heads of state, military leaders, and journalists throughout the West, has begun to increase anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim sentiment and violence. This has already led to horrible consequences, like the stabbing murder of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year old Palestinian American child, a hate crime against a Sikh teen, and increased harassment of pro-Palestinian voices around the globe.

We join people around the world who are raising their voices in protest of this assault on human life. As educators, it is our duty to stand by the principles of critical inquiry and learning, to hold the university as a space for conversation that foregrounds historical truths, and that contextualizes this past week’s violence in the context of 75 years of settler colonial occupation and European empire. We are also deeply troubled by the lack of concern and care for Palestinian and Muslim students at many of our universities, as well as efforts to clamp down on student organizing and free speech.

We cannot sit back and witness the continuation of this genocidal war. We demand that our governments push for an immediate ceasefire. This stance follows in the tradition of the civil rights movement, anti-war and anti-apartheid protests of decades past. Aligning ourselves with these freedom struggles, we call on all of our colleagues to stand in solidarity with Palestinians and against settler colonialism, imperialism, and genocide.

Click here to become a signatory.

Signatories

  1. Mary Romero, Professor of Justice Studies and Social Inquiry, Arizona State University

  2. Aldon Morris, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Black Studies Northwestern University

  3. Ruth Milkman, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, CUNY

  4. Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology, Raymond Pace & Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, University of Pennsylvania

  5. Julian Go, Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago

  6. Jessica Halliday Hardie, Professor of Sociology, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY

  7. José Itzigsohn, Professor of Sociology, Brown University

  8. Michael Burawoy, Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, University of California Berkeley

  9. Craig Calhoun, University Professor, Arizona State University

  10. Eric Margolis, Arizona State University

  11. Fatma Müge Göçek, Professor, University of Michigan

  12. Moon-Kie Jung, Professor, University of Massachusetts

  13. David Cook-Martín, Professor, CU Boulder

  14. Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley

  15. Jessie Daniels, Professor of Sociology, CUNY

  16. Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Professor of Sociology and Individualized Studies, New York University

  17. Arathi Sriprakash, Professor of Sociology and Education, University of Oxford

  18. Howard Winant, Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus

  19. Anna Guevarra, Professor and Founding Director,  Global Asian Studies, University of Illinois Chicago

  20. Melissa Weiner, Professor, College of the Holy Cross

  21. Tianna Paschel, Associate Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley

  22. Mara Loveman, Professor, UC Berkeley

  23. Cedric de Leon, Professor of Sociology and Labor Studies, UMass Amherst

  24. William I Robinson, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of California at Santa Barbara

  25. Joe Feagin, Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University

  26. Tanya Golash-Boza, Professor of Sociology at UC Merced

  27. Deborah Gould, Professor of Sociology, UC Santa Cruz

  28. Ranita Ray, Associate Professor, University of New Mexico

  29. Brandon Andrew Robinson, Chair and Associate Professor of Gender & Sexuality Studies, UCR

  30. Ruth McAreavey, Professor of Sociology, Newcastle University

  31. Rebecca Elliott, Associate Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics

  32. Heba Gowayed, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Boston University

  33. Eman Abdelhadi, Assistant Professor of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago

  34. James M. Thomas, Associate Professor, University of Mississippi

  35. Heather Randell, Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota

  36. Shay-Akil McLean

  37. Vaclav Masek, USC PhD Student

  38. Evangeline Warren, PhD Candidate, The Ohio State University

  39. Yannick Coenders, Postdoctoral Fellow/Assistant Professor of Sociology, Washington University in St. Louis

  40. A Johnson

  41. Julien Larregue, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Université Laval

  42. Chen Liang, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Texas at Austin

  43. Jack Thornton, PhD candidate, University of Pennsylvania

  44. Victoria Reyes, Associate Professor, University of California, Riverside

  45. Muhammad Ridha, PhD Candidate, Northwestern University

  46. Gabriel Hetland, Associate Professor, SUNY Albany

  47. Ricarda Hammer, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

  48. Daniel R. Morrison, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Alabama in Huntsville

  49. Christy Thornton, Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University

  50. Cihan Tugal, Sociology, UC Berkeley

  51. Nabila Islam, Doctoral Candidate, Brown University

  52. Andrea Constant, PhD Student, The Ohio State University

  53. Saida Grundy, Associate Professor of Sociology, Boston University

  54. Patricia McIsaac. Elementary Teacher

  55. Irene Pang, Assistant Professor, School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University

  56. Veda Hyunjin Kim, Assistant Professor of Sociology-Anthropology, Ohio Wesleyan University

  57. Shantel Gabrieal Buggs, Assistant Professor, Florida State University

  58. Zachary Levenson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Florida International University

  59. Benjamin Bradlow, Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Princeton University

  60. Raquel Douglas, Ph.D. student, Brown University

  61. Amaka Okechukwu, Assistant Professor, George Mason University

  62. Jamie O’Quinn, Assistant Professor of Sociology, California State University San Bernardino

  63. Shannon Malone Gonzalez, Assistant Professor, University North Carolina-Chapel Hill

  64. Semassa Boko, Graduate Candidate, University of California Irvine

  65. Danielle E. Midgyett, PhD Student, University of Delaware

  66. Daniel Aldana Cohen, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

  67. Katie Kaufman Rogers, Assistant Professor, Regis University

  68. Salma Mostafa, graduate Sociology student at Northwestern University

  69. Pilar Gonalons Pons, Associate Professor University of Pennsylvania

  70. Paloma E Villegas, Associate Professor, California State University, San Bernardino

  71. Yichen Shen, graduate student, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University

  72. Cati Connell, Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University

  73. Karin Yndestad, PhD Candidate, Northwestern University

  74. christina ong, PhD Candidate, University of Pittsburgh

  75. Vivian Shaw, Mellon Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University

  76. Santiago J. Molina, Assistant Professor, Northwestern University

  77. Archana Ramanujam, PhD student, Brown University

  78. Carolina Hernandez, M.A., University of Pittsburgh

  79. Spyros Sofos, Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University

  80. Nicole Jenkins, Assistant Professor Howard University

  81. Madeleine Govia, MSDS

  82. Carilee Osborne, PhD Student, Brown University

  83. Xianni Zhang, PhD Student, University of Michigan

  84. Brett Kellett, PhD Student, University of Michigan

  85. Yeneca Lee, PhD student, University of Pittsburgh

  86. Cat Dang Ton, PhD Student, Department of Sociology

  87. Jean Beaman, Associate Professor, University of California-Santa Barbara

  88. Lanora Johnson, PhD Candidate, University of Michigan

  89. Eyako Heh, Sociology PhD Student, Northwestern University

  90. Erika Kim, PhD Student, University of Michigan

  91. Xavier Durham, UC Berkeley

  92. Georgiann Davis, Associate Professor, University of New Mexico

  93. Katie Jensen, Assistant Professor of Sociology and International Studies, UW-Madison

  94. Sonia Planson, Postdoctoral Fellow, Brown University

  95. Kalyani Jayasankar, Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Southern California

  96. Laura Garbes, Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota

  97. Kelsey Weymouth-Little, PhD Student, UC Irvine

  98. Dr Babalwa Magoqwana- Nelson Mandela University

  99. Mo Torres, Assistant Professor, University of Michigan

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