OVERVIEW
Israel systematically and violently denies Palestinian students the right to education. Israel has bombed and raided Palestinians schools and universities. As part of its genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, Israel has damaged or destroyed all Palestinian universities in Gaza and destroyed hundreds of schools. Over 90,000 college students in the Gaza Strip have lost access to higher education.
This extreme colonial violence has led the heads of fifteen Palestinian universities to call for isolating Israeli universities worldwide. Palestinian student organizations, often at the forefront of popular resistance to Israel’s decades-old regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid and military occupation, have also called on fellow students worldwide to intensify BDS campaigning in response to Israel’s genocide.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the broadest Palestinian coalition in historic Palestine and in exile that is leading the global BDS movement, including the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), has consistently called on solidarity organizers and movements on campuses to:
- Respect and advocate for the comprehensive rights of the Palestinian people (at the very least the three rights listed in the historic BDS Call of 2005); and
- End the academic and financial complicity of universities in Israel’s #GazaGenocide, and in its regime of apartheid, by cutting academic ties with complicit Israeli universities and cutting financial ties with and investments in complicit companies.
Scores of student unions and student governments across the world have organized BDS campaigns heeding both demands as the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle.
In 2024, student encampments on campuses across the world in response to Israel’s Gaza genocide brought to international attention like never before the complicity of their academic institutions in Israel’s genocide and apartheid and played an indispensable role in making university administrations take measures to that end.
Student-led solidarity movements are rapidly growing in North America, Europe, as well as across the Global South, such as in Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil, Chile and Turkey. Student solidarity is helping to build huge support for the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality among an entire generation of young people.
Why students are standing up for Palestinian rights
Israel’s relentless and deliberate attack on Palestinian education, which has been termed scholasticide since 2009, goes back to the 1948 Nakba, when Israel plundered and/or destroyed tens of thousands of books stolen from Palestinians.
This scholasticide, or the “killing of learning,” has reached an unprecedented level during Israel's genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli forces have methodically damaged or destroyed all universities in Gaza, in some cases by placing explosives in empty campus buildings after occupying them as military bases and torture centers. It has also destroyed hundreds of Palestinian schools.
Scholasticide takes several forms. During the first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1993), Israel shut down all Palestinian universities, some for several years, all 1,194 Palestinian schools, and eventually kindergartens, prompting Palestinians to build a network of underground schools.
Israel methodically denies Palestinian scholars and students their basic rights, including academic freedom, and they are often subjected to imprisonment, denial of freedom of movement and even violent attacks. Well before the genocide in Gaza, Israel’s military occupation forces have continuously attacked Palestinian universities and students in the illegally occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, often injuring or even killing students.
In 2014, following Israel’s 50-day massacre in Gaza which killed over 2,200 Palestinians, including 526 children, Israel targeted at least 153 schools, including 90 run by the UN, and the largest university, according to UNICEF.
In October 2015, a new generation of Palestinians rose up against Israel’s brutal, decades-old regime of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid. These mobilizations marked another phase of the popular struggle against Israel’s state terrorism.
Tens of thousands of predominantly young Palestinians joined demonstrations taking place across more than 65 Palestinian villages, towns, cities and refugee camps.
Palestinian students have always played a pivotal role in the popular struggle in Palestine and were at the forefront of these mobilizations. Many demonstrations were organized by student committees.
Students in Palestine are also deeply involved in and often leading BDS campaigning in Palestine, including through student committees across Palestine. Such BDS campaigns include fighting normalization projects, advocating for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel and its complicit institutions, and waging widespread local consumer boycotts of Israeli and complicit international companies.
Student movements across the world play an important role in driving the growth of many progressive movements, and the BDS movement is no exception. In the US, Canada, South Africa, Chile, Brazil, Australia, and across Europe and the world, student groups are building solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and, importantly, calling on their universities to end complicity in apartheid Israel’s colonial crimes against Palestinians.
Successful Palestine solidarity campaigns have fostered lively debate on campus, reaching thousands of young people. Student BDS campaigns have often established intersectional coalitions with other progressive movements on campus, putting Palestine at the heart of student movements, especially during Israel’s Gaza genocide. Israel and pro-Israel organizations are increasingly concerned about campus BDS activism, diverting huge resources to pro-Israel student groups.
In addition to campaigning to end complicity, another key aspect of student BDS activism is popular awareness raising about Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism, apartheid and military occupation, and the difficulties faced by Palestinian youth and students and the political struggles in which they are involved.
