In solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, we the Pakistan Academics Collective, strongly condemn the genocidal violence being inflicted upon the Palestinian people by the state of Israel. We also want to register our protest against the atmosphere of intimidation and fear being facilitated across university campuses in the United States, against students and faculty expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people and their cause.
We are appalled by the horrific way in which members of the academic community are being targeted through verbal abuse, hate speech, intimidation, public harassment, racism, media smears and doxxing campaigns etc. We find it abhorrent that our colleagues in prominent positions are being publicly vilified, censored and forced out of important academic spaces through official institutional sanction, such as the recent events targeting the President of the NYU Law School’s Bar Association. Many members of our Collective, students and faculty, have shown solidarity and have been actively participating in these protests along with our Palestinian and other colleagues in New York and elsewhere. It is especially unfortunate to hear personal stories about how many institutions have silenced individual students or student groups through censure, criticism and blatant censorship such as indiscriminately removing any mention of Israeli atrocities or Palestinian struggle from official university accounts, including any commentary based on factual and visual evidence. We reaffirm and join in on the demands made by the Student Workers at Columbia SWC-UAW to “identify measures to protect free speech on campus, specifically expressions of support for Palestinians; divesting from all companies involved in the Israeli war effort; and amending statements issued by University administrators”.
We offer our unequivocal support and solidarity to students who are being pushed into a corner or have had their job offers rescinded simply for exercising their right to protest. We also share the concern, highlighted by our colleagues at NYU GSOC-UAW Local 2110 and the Students for Justice in Palestine NYU, in their recent statement which asserts that, “It is unthinkable that, in the midst of genocidal ethnic cleansing of our people, we are being forced to plead for our university administration to address our most basic humanity, and the humanity of Palestinians”. We also denounce the hateful publicly aired calls for violence by Columbia employees against protesters who show solidarity with the Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. These cowardly acts of censorship, seeking to silence voices of the oppressed, are inexcusable and appalling. In the spirit of solidarity, we take inspiration from the ‘Motion of Solidarity with Palestine and academic freedom’ passed recently by the University and College Union at SOAS, London which calls upon academic institutions to uphold and affirm legal and normative commitments to academic freedoms, and to protect staff and students in the exercise of that freedom to dissent and protest , specifically, to defend those who are facing defamatory and hostile media campaigns.
In particular, we denounce spiteful attacks against faculty members, like Professors Joseph Massad at Columbia University and the petition circulating at Yale University calling for the removal of Zareena Grewal. As members of the academic community, we find this assault on academic freedom to be extremely shameful and deplorable. The weaponization of ostensible ‘anti-Semitism’ has become a means to silence criticism of Israeli state policy. In the process, actual racist sentiment and/or action that constitutes ‘anti-Semitism’ (racist or hateful discrimination against Jewish people and/or their communities) becomes trivialized. We join the MESA Committee of Academic Freedom in their condemnation of the way in which Columbia University has responded to this assault on Professor Massad. We would like to point out that these scholars have consistently taken a principled stance against oppression and have been lending their support towards just causes. Earlier this year, they came forward to condemn the state atrocities against innocent civilians in Pakistan and are signatories of the Open Letter put out by Pakistan Academics Collective in May 2023 , calling for an immediate end to political violence in Pakistan.
We will continue to support all efforts by our fellow academics to contest the simplistic, one-sided narrativization of the Palestine-Israel conflict. We uphold the principled stance of our colleagues at the Students for Justice in Palestine at Columbia to affirm that the “weight of responsibility for the lethal destruction of Palestinian people’s lives undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government and other Western governments, including the U.S. government, which fund and staunchly support Israeli aggression, apartheid and settler-colonization”. In doing so, we reiterate the longstanding history of support for Palestine in, and by, Pakistan. Our founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, consistently maintained an anti-imperialist stance on the events and eventual creation of the state of Israel, and was unequivocal in his condemnation and identification of Israel as an imperialist political project that was forced upon the people of Palestine. Pakistan was in fact founded precisely to contest such colonial designs through the political emancipation and self-determination of Muslim communities in the subcontinent. Consistent with this stance, we support Pakistan’s consistent commitment to this cause and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle.
In solidarity,
Pakistan Academics Collective
Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) – Pakistan
Government College Lahore Debating Society
APPAC – American Pakistani Public Affairs Committee
*Note: This statement is supported by 43 Pakistan Students Associations based at various academic institutions in the Pakistan, US, UK and EU. Their location and identity will be kept anonymous due to privacy concerns and the unfortunate lack of institutional support for our students informed opinions.
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Our Statement of Support for the Palestinian People’s Struggle
To the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Pakistan’s missions to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the United Nations (UN):
We, the Pakistan Academics Collective, an international community of scholars of Pakistani origin, express our solidarity with the occupied Palestinian people of Gaza and other Occupied Territories. We urge you, Mr Secretary, to lead from the front on behalf of the Pakistani people in demanding an immediate ceasefire of Israeli bombardment and siege of Gaza. We also call, through your office, on the global community to actively work towards a just and lasting political solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict in line with the UN Resolution 242 of November 1967 for a sovereign Palestinian state on its historic lands.
Our solidarity is rooted in our national values as a people who stand morally, legally and politically against imperialist and neocolonial global designs, as advocated by the father of Pakistan, Quaid-e-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
So we write today out of concern for the people of Gaza, but also the future of our region. As we pen this letter, Israel continues its siege and genocide of 2.3 million civilians confined within the Gaza Strip. This is an urgent and rapidly escalating humanitarian emergency. In addition to Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment in Gaza, it has also cut off besieged Gazans from electricity, food, fuel, and water. All of these are war crimes, which if investigated through fair trial, will easily indicate gross violations by Israel of the laws of war. And then, on 17 October 2023, a nighttime Israeli airstrike on a Gaza civilian hospital killed at least 500 Palestinians, compounding the 4,200+ confirmed deaths already reported since this current war broke out on 7 October.
Thousands of already displaced Palestinians had been seeking shelter and medical treatment on the hospital’s grounds, when they came under attack, a clear war crime. The unprecedented scale of brutality of this latest attack set off a large number of protests in Turkey, Iran and the Middle East, all countries and regions that are a part of Pakistan’s diverse neighbourhood. Many turned violent with incidents of arson and clashes with security forces recorded throughout the night of 17/18 October 2023. Instead of global powers appealing for calm and de-escalation, we witnessed only an extension of last week’s poor global diplomatic outreach: world powers, leading media outlets, and countless other organisations readily condemning (and demanding singular condemnation of) Hamas violence, but failing to evolve the conversation beyond Hamas to demand Israeli adherence to international laws of just war.
We write out of worry because exactly a day before the hospital airstrike, a media report claiming Hamas built tunnels under hospitals added to an already chaotic narrative about militant activities within a densely civilian-populated area of land. Earlier, the same news platform, the BBC, was found ‘apologising’ for having misrepresented and misreported pro-Palestine rallies across the world, especially in Western countries, as ‘pro-Hamas’. These are just some of numerous examples regarding a blatant misrepresentation of the Palestinian people and their plight on mainstream media. It cannot be overlooked, with ramifications ranging from the shocking hate murder of a 6-year-old Palestinian American in Illinois on 14 October to the likely escalation of violence, and failure of war diplomacy, in the Middle East.
We write out of worry because world leaders – US, UK, EU, even our immediate neighbour India – have offered unwavering support and sympathy to the state of Israel following the tragic events of 7 October, but remain outrageously, and selectively, silent as the first major genocide of the 21st century is broadcast into our homes and plays out on our phones.
We, the Pakistan Academics Collective, therefore urge you to use the diplomatic forums of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the United Nations, and all other relevant ones available to the Pakistani Foreign Office to call for:
- An immediate ceasefire of ongoing Israeli bombardment and genocidal action in Gaza and Occupied Territories
- An immediate and safe resumption of supply chains for basic human necessities (water, food, fuel, medical supplies/caregivers and other related humanitarian assistance)
- A global media responsibility to refrain from, and counter, any attempts to dehumanise human beings in a conflict.
- An immediate halt to settlement expansion by the state of Israel on Palestinian lands
- An active return to implementing a just and fair political solution in Palestine under Resolution 242 of the United Nations
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