Nearly 5,000 staff, students urge Belgium’s universities to cut Israel ties

A letter representing more than 10 percent of the Belgian professoriate calls for end to all collaborations with Israel.

Nearly 5,000 staff, students and honorary degree recipients from across Belgian universities are pushing for their institutions to sever all ties with Israel over its genocidal war on Gaza and attacks in the occupied West Bank.

An open letter titled No Honour in Complicity was published on Tuesday by the group of 4,700 signatories – including 1,100 professors and 50 honorary doctorate recipients – urging Belgian universities to “terminate all institutional collaborations with Israeli institutions involved in violations of international law”.

The move comes as near-daily Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed more than 900 Palestinians and injured more than 2,700 others since an October “ceasefire”, according to the Gaza’s Ministry of Health, and as Israeli army raids and settler attacks have intensified across the occupied West Bank since the start of the genocidal war in Gaza.

“Universities can no longer invoke neutrality or institutional complexity while maintaining collaborations with institutions implicated in occupation, apartheid and genocidal violence,” read the letter.

The list of signatories includes Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory; Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Callamard; climate justice activist Greta Thunberg; Nobel Prize-winning author JM Coetzee; and actor and writer Stephen Fry.

The letter claimed the group represents more than 10 percent of the entire Belgian professoriate, making it one of the largest academic mobilisations in Belgian higher education.

“Since the beginning of the genocide, Israel has systematically destroyed Palestinian universities and killed numerous academics, journalists, artists and human rights defenders. European knowledge institutions must recognise that Israel’s violations of international law have consequences and suspend collaborations with institutions implicated in these violations,” stated Brigitte Herremans, a Middle East expert at Ghent University, in the letter.

According to the signatories, the demands by the group are a legal obligation, following the International Court of Justice confirming the illegality of Israel’s occupation.

“The initiators place the Belgian appeal within a broader international movement of academic institutions, researchers and civil society organisations calling for institutional measures against Israeli apartheid and the destruction of Palestinian educational institutions,”