We, university staff from across the Netherlands, would like to express our full support for the students who have protested for the last three weeks across our campuses to demand an end to our universities’ complicity with the ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as decades of occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing carried out by Israel on the Palestinian people.

It is our students who have transformed our campuses and forced us all to confront the ongoing genocide in Gaza, including our role in supporting it. Now that we are being forced as academic communities to engage with this issue, we note two extremely worrying trends, which we believe are designed to distract from the urgency to take action.

First, discussions within the media, by our politicians, and on our campuses obsess about the nature of the protests which have taken place. Many of our students, especially in Amsterdam and Utrecht, are being smeared as violent and creating unsafe environments, particularly for Jewish students. But this represents a weaponisation of both the language of social safety and antisemitism. It also ignores the fact that a considerable number of those taking part in actions are Jewish staff and students. Other encampments are being praised for remaining 'peaceful'. But both narratives are being used as ways for Executive boards (CvBs) to ignore and refuse to engage with protestors. Escalation of tactics by students, such as occupying buildings, must be seen as a response to being ignored. 

Furthermore, this discussion also distracts from the actual violence taking place. In many protests, extreme police brutality has been sanctioned by our university boards on our students and staff – including, unbelievably, on more than one occasion while negotiations were ongoing. Several students remain in wrongful police detention, facing charges. Furthermore, while our media obsesses over barricades and graffiti, over 1000 more Palestinians have been murdered in Gaza since the first Amsterdam encampment was erected on May 6th. This is the violence which demands our full attention.

The way to stop these protests is to accept the student demands in full and immediately boycott and divest from complicit Israeli and international institutions and companies. 

This takes us to the second worrying trend. University boards are coordinating with each other to offer ethical commissions to create room for further dialogue and evaluate ties with both Israeli and other universities around the world. Students have publicly declared that they will not accept this as a solution.

Ethical commissions which have no decision-making or legal power have been used before in response to demands to cut ties with fossil industries, with no results. We therefore know that this is a tactic used by university administrations to stall and dissipate anger. It is basic scientific fact that Israeli universities are heavily complicit in the current genocide in Gaza, as well as Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid system. As Maya Wind explained on her recent book tour, as well as providing material support for the continued oppression and erasure of Palestinians, they actively create intellectual justification for the Zionist settler colonial project. Our CvBs have seen all the evidence they need. We as staff, as well as students, have presented it to them repeatedly, but they have refused our dialogue. 

Our universities' offer of delaying any decision-making also does not recognize the urgency of the situation, as Palestinians continue to be slaughtered every day. Universities can respond with urgency, as they did when they cut ties with Russian institutions just 7 days after the invasion of Ukraine. Universities throughout the world are also taking the immediate decision to end agreements with Israeli institutions. Thus, like the students, we demand that Dutch universities cut their ties immediately. Any future ethical committee that evaluates ties overall must have decolonisation and anti-racism at its core, and it must have institutional power to effect decision-making. 

Over the past 7 months, according to official figures Israel has killed 36,000 Palestinians, but some estimates put this above 100,000 when people under the rubble and dying of starvation and disease are counted. As well as bombing hospitals, mosques, churches, tents, and aid trucks, Israel has destroyed every university, killed over 100 academics and thousands of students. The plan is clear, to make Gaza uninhabitable and continue their decades long project of driving Palestinians from their homeland. Our universities cannot continue to enable this.

We, as university staff in the Netherlands, therefore call on our universities' Executive boards (CvBs) to stand on the right side of history and boycott and divest from complicit Israeli and international institutions and companies immediately. We also call on them to stop sending police on to our campuses, and immediately drop any charges against students who participated in protests.

Please add your name, position, and university affiliation using the form below the list of signatures. It will not appear automatically, but the list will be updated regularly. If you wish to sign anonymously, put x in the answers. If you wish to sign as a group, email your research group to situatingpalestine@gmail.com. 

Signed by,

Groups:

Dutch Scholars for Palestine

AUC lecturers for Palestine

Commoning UvA Research Group

Eindhoven Staff for Palestine​​​​​​​

Erasmus University Rotterdam Scholars for Palestine

gra.si.staff4palestine (Gerrit Rietveld Academie / Sandberg Institute)

KC Students for Palestine

HvA4Palestine

Leiden Scholars for Palestine

Maastricht Staff for Palestine

NWO-I Staff for Palestine

RUG Staff for Palestine

Situating Palestine Collective / Radboud Staff for Palestine

Solidarity @ Erasmus University College

TUDelft4Palestine

Utrecht University Staff for Palestine

UvA Staff for Palestine

VU Staff for Palestine

Wageningen Staff for Palestine

The full list of signatories can be found here.