Drop the collab with Hebrew University immediately

Last week, the University of Copenhagen tried another convoluted rhetoric attempt to maintain a student exchange agreement with a university – the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) – which is in breach of several international conventions and even on the verge of official Danish foreign policy by being located on illegally occupied land.

What trust can we have that they will really evaluate the agreement in the future?

The university’s argument goes like this: The exchange agreement is not active due to the »security situation,« and that therefore there is no need to reevaluate its relevance immediately. We do not find this answer very convincing: if the agreement is not active, it could be removed at no cost. The boycott of Russian and Belarusian universities took five days to be decided, and it concerned active agreements.

READ ALSO: UCPH holds firm on Hebrew University partnership despite minister’s concerns

In reality, this new attempt by the university management can easily be understood as a way to buy an indefinite amount of time: when will the university decide that the security situation has evolved in a way that would end the collaboration with HUJI? What trust can we have that they will really evaluate the agreement in the future?

The answer is simple: none.

Will go down in history

The same day the article was published, we in Academics for Palestine went to a lecture at the UCPH with Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur of the UN on the occupied Palestinian territories. After the lecture, we asked her opinion about UCPH’s agreement with HUJI. She answered the following (watch the video here):

»The International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion has concluded that the occupation that Israel maintains […] is illegal, and this obliges everyone, member states, united nations, and private institutions including universities, not to engage, not to assist in any possible way, the unlawfulness that Israel maintains by oppressing the Palestinian people.

[…] Having ties with, it doesn’t matter which (Israeli, ed.) university, it might be Tel Aviv, or the Hebrew University, might lead to complicity with the crimes that they endorse.

[…] So, this is the time to turn the page and do something good that will go down in history as a principled action, so yes, I think it is about time to cut ties with Israeli Universities.«

Indeed, let us recall the extent of the complicity the HUJI maintains with the Israeli Apartheid system.

Clear expansionist intents

First of all, one of its campuses, the Mount Scopus campus, extends way into territory which was illegally occupied in 1967. The very same year, a committee was set up by HUJI to build the new campus on the Mount Scopus.

This HUJI committee declared that »the development opportunities are limited because of the shortage of land, and thus every future planning will demand the expropriation of land,« and further »empty space in Mount Scopus and its surroundings must be filled. If we will not fill it, someone else will do [it].«

The expansionist intents are evident. Besides, the space in question was not »empty« at all: Most of its expansion has been done at the expense of the Palestinian village of Isawiyah, one of the poorest neighborhoods in the whole Jerusalem area.

90 percent of the village gone

The article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention states that »the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.« However, in 2004, when HUJI undertook one of its illegal expansions to build, among other structures, the Student Village dormitories, the Land Research Center documented in great detail the eviction of many Palestinian families and the seizure of their land during the process.

Academic boycott is a peaceful method to apply international pressure

READ ALSO: Israeli university’s boundary lines a dilemma for the University of Copenhagen

They concluded that »the project which is being currently carried out by the university represents a distinct violation of Palestinian property and rights which are supposed to be honoured according to the Geneva Accords, International Law and Human Rights.« The study also identifies many steps of land expropriation in the village at the benefit of various settlements.

Another study from the Israeli NGO B’Tselem found out that 90 percent of the village has been expropriated, with the university being part of this process, along with the Ofarit military base, the French Hill settlement and the Hadassah medical center. It also outlines a constant and disproportionate repression of the village’s population.

»A community of academicians«

The Mount Scopus campus is also directly connected to the nearby illegal settlement of French Hill, where many faculty members are living. A typical housing advertisement from this settlement, for example, reads: »French Hill is in close proximity – a 10-minute walk – to the Hebrew University, Mount Scopus campus, hence it is largely a community of academicians.«

As a matter of fact, anyone looking at a map of East Jerusalem will see how the Mount Scopus campus is part of a larger settlement project aiming at expropriating and isolating Palestinian villages, while connecting Mount Scopus to West Jerusalem.

Those elements are only a fraction of the HUJI’s complicity with the Apartheid system, which also includes two joint programs with the military: the Havatzalot program on the Mount Scopus campus and the Talpiot program on the Givat Ram campus, or the push to resignment of an internationally known scholar, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, for a political statement last year.

Breaching every principle

The fact that the UCPH seeks to keep its agreement with this sort of institution is beyond any rationality. It places the university in contradiction with The Ministry of Higher Education, The Foreign Ministry, and with its own previous declarations that »if the university has activities on occupied land, we cannot be part of those activities«. And it is in breach of an important ruling of the International Court of Justice, but most importantly in breach of any moral principle.

Indeed, academic boycott is a peaceful method to apply international pressure to countries breaching international law. It has been instrumental in taking down the Apartheid system in South Africa, to cite only the most famous example of its implementation.

READ ALSO: Academics for Palestine: Rectors, talk to us!

Danish universities are already implementing it against various countries like China, Russia, or Belarus, for reasons that largely overlap with what Israeli Universities are accused of. In the past, Danish Universities even found the courage to cut ties with another Israeli University, Ariel University, that is entirely located on illegal settlements.

Now, the UCPH needs to terminate its agreement with the Hebrew University immediately. Not at some undefined point in the future which will never happen.

Signees from Academics for Palestine:

Thibault Capelle, postdoc, UCPH
Kristoffer Willert, postdoc, SDU
Georgios Pappas, postdoc, UCPH
Nikoline Borgermann, administrative staff, UCPH
Vasiliki Angelopoulou, postdoc, UCPH
Denise Utochkin, postdoc, UCPH
Aida Mashaal, PhD student, UCPH
Amila Cirkinagic, administrative staff, UCPH
Salvatore Paolo De Rosa, postdoc, UCPH
Ala Jamal Zareini, PhD student, UCPH
Effimia Valavani, PhD student, UCPH