By Dorit Naaman
On January 19, 2009, at the tail end of the first Gaza War, The Guardian newspaper reported: “A new word emerged from the carnage in Gaza this week: ‘scholasticide’ – the systematic destruction by Israeli forces of centers of education dear to Palestinian society, as the ministry of education was bombed, the infrastructure of teaching destroyed, and schools across the Gaza strip targeted for attack by the air, sea and ground offensives. ‘Learn, baby, learn’ was a slogan of the black rights movement in America's ghettos a generation ago, but it also epitomizes the idea of education as the central pillar of Palestinian identity – a traditional premium on schooling steeled by occupation, and something the Israelis ‘cannot abide… and seek to destroy’, according to Dr Karma Nabulsi, who teaches politics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford. ‘We knew before, and see more clearly now than ever, that Israel is seeking to annihilate an educated Palestine,’ she says.”
Since October 2023 Scholasticide has shifted from systematic destruction to total annihilation of education. It includes the decimation of schools, all twelve universities in Gaza, libraries, museums, archives, publishing houses, cultural centres, activity halls, bookstores, cemeteries, monuments and archival materials.
Scholasticide is part and parcel of other measures in what the Genocide Convention defines as genocidal action: “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” (article II, c). There were 12 universities in the Gaza strip where young Palestinian people expressed their curiosities, their desires to know their history, their stories, their land, and the place of Palestine in the world. In the past year we have witnessed the destruction of most of Gaza’s education system, and 100% of the Gaza strip’s universities.
According to a study released September 25 from Cambridge University and UNRWA, “the current war in Gaza has severely disrupted the education of all the 625,000 students and impacted the lives and livelihoods of the 22,564 teachers (Occupied Palestinian Territory Education Cluster, 2024a). Between October 2023 and July 2024, almost all school buildings in Gaza have been either entirely or partially destroyed following Israeli military strikes (Occupied Palestinian Territory Education Cluster, 2024b). As of August 2024, OCHA reports figures from the Ministry of Health that identify these attacks have killed over 40,000 Palestinians, including 10,627 children and 411 teachers (OCHA, 2024b).”
An earlier United Nations special press release issued in April, 2024, states: “95 university professors have been killed in Gaza, and over 7,819 students and 756 teachers have been injured – with numbers growing each day. … Another 195 heritage sites, 227 mosques and three churches have also been damaged or destroyed, including the Central Archives of Gaza, containing 150 years of history. Israa University, the last remaining university in Gaza was demolished by the Israeli military on 17 January 2024.” By June 8th, the number of schools destroyed had reached 80%. The realities for those who physically survived, are beyond devastating:
1. A long-term impact on the fundamental rights of people to learn and freely express themselves, depriving yet another generation of Palestinians of their future.
2. The eradication of the Palestinian education and cultural institutions of Gaza (including also libraries, museums, archives, publishing houses, cultural centres, activity halls, bookstores, cemeteries, monuments and archival materials) deprives all Palestinians of their own heritage.
3. According to scholar Kevin Chamberlain “The destruction of a people’s cultural heritage amounts to the destruction of a people’s memory, its collective consciousness and identity. In other words it is ethnic cleansing by another name.”
4. In an article published by The Guardian, Chandni Desiai reminds us that “Through the physical destruction of educational and cultural infrastructure, scholasticide obliterates the means through which a group, in this instance Palestinians, can sustain and transmit their culture, knowledge, history, memory, identity and values across time and space. It is a key feature of genocide.”
Barak Hiram, the commander who demolished Israa university without command approval, just because he felt Hamas soldiers might shoot at them, was reprimanded, was six months later promoted to the commander of the Gaza Division of the IDF. In this promotion, the state and the IDF signal that scholasticide is a legitimate war action. Israeli universities, in the meantime, remain completely silent about the scholasticide in Gaza.
“When schools are destroyed, so too are hopes and dreams,” the UN report claims.
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