Committee of Warwick UCU Stands in Solidarity with the Residents of the Issawiyah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem

Please find below an email Warwick UCU Committee has sent to the Hebrew University Administration. This is part of an international campaign headed by Academia for Equality. For more information about the organisation and to read their statement, go here.

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To the Hebrew University administration,

We write as the committee of the Warwick University branch of the Universities and College Union (UCU) to express our objection to the Hebrew University’s involvement in police harassment of residents of the Issawiyah neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.

We were greatly concerned to learn of the Hebrew University’s longstanding involvement in restricting the movement of residents of Issawiyah by requesting a police closure of an entrance to the neighbourhood. More recently, we hear that the Hebrew University has escalated its role in police harassment of Palestinians through permitting police surveillance of Issawiyah from campus.

We unequivocally condemn these actions, which intensify the domination of Palestinians in Issawiyah, make Palestinian staff and students feel unsafe, and have no place in a university. We stand in solidarity with Palestinians in Issawiyah and at Hebrew University, and with our allies in Academia for Equality, which campaigns for access to higher education for all communities in Israel.

Universities should be spaces of openness, dialogue and learning. However, as Warwick students occupying our own Students Union in November reminded us, universities often remain complicit in the discriminatory and violent practices of wider society, and we must work hard to ensure that Universities become juster, more democratic spaces.

We call on the Hebrew University to respect Palestinian rights, end its involvement in police harassment of the residents of Issawiyah, and uphold its mission as an institution of learning.

Sincerely,
Warwick UCU