Open Letter to the American Educational Studies Association

Executive Council of the American Educational Studies Association,

AESA’s statement sends a clear message to Palestinians, namely that Palestinian life is worthless whereby Israelis are justified in murdering them with impunity in a so-called “conflict” that assumes two equal forces. The statement does not address or concede that Israel is a settler colonial project, whose explicit goal is the systematic killing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It assigns no responsibility or blame to a nuclear power that has outrightly acknowledged its aim is Palestinian genocide as civilian casualties are assigned the euphemism 'collateral damage.' The statement thus presents the “loss of life” as a result of an apparent conflict that began on October 7^th, 2023. This ahistorical account decontextualizes violence and places full responsibility on Palestinians, as well as flattens the differences between various resistance groups. It ignores the bombing of all universities in Gaza and omits the bombing of schools, hospitals, mosques, and refugee camps, as well as the deliberate targeting of medical and UN staff. It omits the racial, colonial, and dehumanizing discourses and rhetoric justifying genocide and ethnic cleansing (e.g., “children of darkness” and “human animals”).

Although the statement does not specify the Islamophobic trope of human shields, the language alludes to it by pointing to the (passive) loss of life of Palestinians who find themselves in the “crossfire.” This erases the fact that Israel dropped tens of thousands of bombs (as in 25, 000 tons of explosives-the equivalent of two nuclear bombs) before the possibility of the crossfire to which the statement refers. It paints the picture of helpless Palestinians who are held hostage by Hamas. It ignores the substantial evidence shown by Amnesty International (2009) that Israel has previously used Palestinians as human shields^[1], let alone that Palestinians live under military occupation and conditions worse than Apartheid (B’Tselem, 2021).

The vagueness in the proceeding sentences ignores the right to resistance (though supported by international law), suggesting that Palestinians do not have the right to resist settler colonial dispossession, displacement, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. The statement’s authors refer to war crimes and genocide but fail to mention genocide scholars, human rights lawyers, and UN officials^[2] who have collectively agreed that Israel's military campaign in Gaza constitutes documented war crimes that precisely meet the 1948 Genocide Convention's definition of genocide. They fail to mention Israel’s responsibility altogether, leaving it open to interpretation. Consider the following sentence: “Political conflicts, even when they involve grave denials of human rights, can never justify nor be resolved through attacks on innocent civilians, especially the loss of children.” Israel is not simply denying human rights. It is engaged in a genocidal campaign, which has only intensified since October 7th, but this does not mean that thousands have not been displaced, arrested, tortured, purposefully maimed, and killed previously, including thousands of imprisoned children. Important to note is how the statement disregards Jerusalem and the West Bank, where Hamas does not play a role, yet hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, arrested, and displaced since October 7th by ongoing settler violence. Over 2,470 arrestspost Oct.7 have taken place for merely posting (or even liking a tweet) on social media that highlights the plight of Palestine.

While genocide and ethnic cleansing is taking place, this statement is not only apologetic, but it also consumes and colludes in the blatant reproduction of Zionist propaganda. This statement reflects everything Edward Said (1994) warned us about concerning academia and its complicit academics/intellectuals, “Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position, which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. Personally I have encountered them in one of the toughest of all contemporary issues, Palestine, where fear of speaking out about one of the greatest injustices in modern history has hobbled, blinkered, and muzzled many who know the truth and are in a position to serve it. For despite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self-determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken, represented by an unafraid and compassionate intellectual” (p. 100).

Instead of consulting Palestinian scholars, including students, the council wrote a statement that is not only historically inaccurate but is very much skewed toward Israel’s direction. As genocide and ethnic cleansing unfold where nearly 80% of Palestinians have been violently displaced, this statement manifests the worst kind of “solidarity” that should not be exhibited by those who have any kind of human conscience left. AESA’s statement speaks volumes by what it overtly omits and what it artificially hollows out in meaning and language via poorly defined vague terms. On rare occasions, it is best to keep silent, but this is a clear example that superficial forms of solidarity do more harm, as they justify the ongoing massacre of Palestinians by painting an image of them as unworthy of liberation and undeserving of an end to their settler colonial occupation that has lasted over a 100 years.

Millions of people across the world have made it quite clear: What’s happening in Palestine cannot be understood as a “conflict.” It is an ongoing Nakba, a continuing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and occupation, which underlies a history worse than apartheid that did not begin on October 7th. Rather, the settler colonial project in Palestine can be traced back to the 1880s with the emergence of the Zionist movement, and over 100 years of settler colonial domination and expansion in Palestine–including the 1917 Balfour Declaration, 1947 Partition Plan, violent establishment of Israel and start of the Nakba, the 1967 Naksa and occupation, and ceaseless expansion of settlements. As academics we ask for a retraction of this statement and the issuance of a new one befitting of the historical, material, and symbolic gravity if we are to honor our responsibility and role as truth-seekers, knowledge-keepers, and committed intellectuals.

Signed

1. Jairo I. Fúnez-Flores, Texas Tech University

2. Ana Carolina Díaz Beltrán, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

3. Mohamed Abdou, Columbia University

4. Samer Abdelnour, University of Edinburgh

5. Sandeep Bakshi, Université Paris Cité

6. Johnny E. Williams, Trinity College

7. Karishma Desai,  Rutgers University- Graduate School of Education

8. Lorgia García Peña, Princeton University.

9. Sean D. Hernández Adkins, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

10. Brieanna Watters, University of Minnesota

11. Dr. David G. Embrick, University of Connecticut

12. Freyca Calderon Berumen,  Pennsylvania State University, Altoona

13. Xavier Livermon, UC Santa Cruz

14. Lisa Rofel, University of California, Santa Cruz

15. Daniela Faggiani Dias, University of California San Diego

16. Freya Zinovieff, Simon Fraser University

17. Camille Chargois, Texas Southern University

18. Steven W. Thrasher, Northwestern University

19. Giselle Pérez-Aguilar, University of California, San Francisco

20. Holly Olivarez, University of Colorado Boulder

21. Linda Mokdad, St. Olaf College

22. Rowan Gabriel S. Daligdig, Baguio City National High School

23. Marisel Moreno, University of Notre Dame

24. David Polanski, Independent Scholar

25. Ulises Garcia Figueroa, Memorial University of Newfoundland

26. Rosalba Icaza, Erasmus University Rotterdam

27. Kevin Donley, Georgetown University

28. Sabaheta Ramcilovik-Suominen

29. Tazreena Sajjad

30. Nashid Habeeb

31. Naziya Aisha, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India

32. Amira Abdelhamid, University of Portsmouth, UK

33. Aritra, Delhi University

34. Piya Chatterjee, Scripps College

35. Mandy Penney

36. Tara Alami, McGill University

37. Laleh Khalili, University of Exeter

38. Antonio Alcazar III, South/South Movement/Central European University

39. Joshua Makalintal, University of Innsbruck

40. Paula Gilligan, IADT

41. Seerat Fatima,  University of Manchester

42. Pavithra Sarma,  University of Edinburgh

43. Abeer Khshiboon

44. Sarah Bracke,  University of Amsterdam

45. Kerry Sinanan, Univeristy of Winnipeg

46. Rajorshi Das,  University of Iowa

47. Syed Muhammad Omar, University of Kansas

48. Trevor Lies, University of Kansas

49. Jülide Sezer, Utrecht University

50. Ohoud Kamal, American University of Madaba

51. David Klein, California State University Northridge

52. Colin Dayan, Vanderbilt University

53. Tania Saeed, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)

54. Dr Claire M Massey

55. Daniel Perez

56. Zainab Naqvi, Manchester Metropolitan University

57. Gulzar R. Charania, University of Ottawa

58. Sirena Davidson

59. Huseyin Disli, The University of Kent

60. Tom Pettinger, University of Warwick

61. Diego Ballestero, Bonn University (Germany)

62. Sofia Zanforlin, Federal university of Pernambuco , Brazil

63. Isaura Castelao-Huerta, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

64. Ben Vining

65. Thashika Pillay, Queen’s University

66. David Martínez-Prieto, University of Texas Río Grande Valley

67. Fahima Mohideen, Rutgers University

68. Melissa Weiner, College of the Holy Cross

69. Fahmo Rage, K-12 Education Alberta Canada

70. Karlie Noon, Australian National University

71. Alana Lentin, Western Sydney University

72. Kristina Cockle, Instituto de Biología Subtropical-UNaM-CONICET

73. Muhannad Ayyash, Professor of Sociology, Mount Royal University

74. Ankita Shrestha, University of Oslo

75. Kamile Batur

76. Thomas Delahunty, Maynooth University, Ireland

77. Savo Heleta, Durban University of Technology

78. Shirin Assa, University of Bayreuth

79. Stephen Hewer, Ghent University

80. Shehla Khan

81. Evangela Q Oates, University of Minnesota Twin Cities

82. Dr Shaida Nabi

83. Claudia Rankine

84. Jessie Daniels, Professor, Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY

85. Umaya Suliman, American University

86. Salman Sayyid, University of Leeds

87. Jeff Doctor

88. John Pringle, Independent Researcher

89. Rachel Lockart, Michigan State University

90. Alex Allweiss, Michigan State University

91. Raquel Sáenz Ortiz, Southwestern University

92. Adam Miyashiro, Professor of Literature, Stockton University

93. Rachael Hill, Cal Poly Pomona

94. Jasmin Zine, Wilfrid Laurier University

95. Rebeca Gamez

96. Ana Luisa Muñoz, Associated Professor, Chile

97. Mariam Al-Attar, American University of Sharjah

98. Stephanie Zubriski, Dalhousie University

---

^[1] Even before the existence of Israel, British soldiers (100,000) taught Zionists the technologies of colonial violence mastered in Ireland, India, and Africa. For instance, Zionists have used human shields by tying Palestinians to military vehicles to avoid being ambushed during the Great Revolt (1936-1939). The use of the phrase “caught in the crossfire” misleads readers into thinking that the thousands of Palestinians killed could have been by Hamas. Israelis were deliberately  “killed” yet Palestinians lose their lives.

^[2] As the director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner, Craig Mokhiber, stated after his resignation: “The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist colonial settler ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs … leaves no room for doubt….This is text book case of genocide” that violates the Geneva Conventions.