LSE Palestine Solidarity Letter

 [Over 500 individuals from the LSE community, in addition to two groups, have come out in solidarity with Palestine. The staff, student and alumni signatories are signalling a clear rejection of settler colonialism and apartheid, and are making clear demands to LSE to signal its support for Palestinians in their struggle and to end its complicity in the crimes being committed against them. If you are a member of the LSE community, you can still sign the letter here to indicate your support. The full letter and signatories are below.]

We, the undersigned LSE faculty, staff and students, stand with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and liberation, and against the ongoing settler colonialism and apartheid being committed by Israel against Palestinians. We demand an end to all the ways in which LSE is complicit in the crimes Israel is committing.

Conflict, clashes, dispute and many other terms have long been used to describe the settler colonial regime in Palestine. As Palestinian activists and scholars have pointed out for decades, and international organisations have recently recognised, these terms are misleading and problematic as they attempt to present a story of ‘both sides’ and normalise apartheid practices committed by the Israeli state, while glossing over ongoing ethnic cleansing. We reject these narratives that contribute to the dehumanisation of the Palestinian people and are joined by millions around the world when we call for an end to Zionist settler colonialist apartheid.

The most recent atrocities have brought international attention to the most visible forms of oppression and violence that Palestinians are subjected to. The ethnically-based forced expulsions in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem and desecration of the Holy Sites in the attacks on worshippers in Al Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan and in the Church of Holy Sepulchre on the day of the Holy Fire ceremony, and the merciless bombing of the Gaza Strip are recent manifestations of ongoing violence and dispossession. Palestinian citizens of Israel who have been systematically repressed and discriminated against for decades are today facing unveiled and racist mob attacks and lynching against them for joining the protests with Jerusalem and Gaza. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the brutal Israeli military occupation has controlled all aspects of Palestinian life for decades, including natural resources, infrastructure, services, the economy, movement, and even the population registry. Palestinians continue to be dispossessed of their land and homes in the West Bank including Jerusalem to make way for illegal Israeli settlers, in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Gaza Strip has been subject to a 14-year-long merciless siege, which has wreaked devastation in a variety of ways, including electricity shortages, medicine shortages, widespread poverty, infrastructure collapse, and acute water contamination not to mention an alarming mental health crisis. We recognise these as a continuation of the oppression stemming from Israel’s settler colonialism and apartheid as part of the ongoing Nakba of 1948. The fact that Palestinians live under this constant and systemic Israeli violence undermines the racist narrative of Israeli’s right to self-defence, which does not even value the Palestinian right to life.

Palestine is not a case study for academic investigation but a struggle for justice and liberation. We have a role to engage in scholarly activity to understand the world and the systems that govern it, but that only matters when we centre and elevate the needs and aspirations of communities that are oppressed within those systems. As members of the academic community in the West, we have an obligation to support and amplify Palestinian voices and struggles and their experiences living under settler colonialism. We affirm our faculty, staff and students’ right to self-expression, their right and duty to stand with Palestinians and to amplify their voices, and we condemn any attempt to silence and intimidate them.

Last year, LSE stated that “A commitment to exposing and challenging social evils, like racial inequality, is part of our founding purpose. #BlackLivesMatter”. There was also growth of grassroots movements working towards decolonising our institutions and curricula among other actions. Calls to decolonise academia are void if they remain silent on current colonial dispossession across the globe, and in Palestine in particular at this moment. Condemnation of racial inequality is incomplete if it does not extend it to all forms of racism:  the struggles for liberation are interconnected, as was powerfully demonstrated by the solidarity between protesters in Ferguson and Palestine in 2014. We are therefore disappointed by LSE’s silence on settler colonial violence in Palestine and its recent manifestations, and we find its actions unacceptable. LSE currently invests over £4.5 million in companies that are involved in breaches of international law carried out by the Israeli state towards Palestinians.

DEMANDS

1. We call on LSE and all Higher Education institutions to commit to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), issued by Palestinian academics as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. This would ensure that LSE ends its complicity in Israeli crimes and contributes to the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality, by not promoting institutions that contribute to the Israeli oppression of Palestinians, while continuing to uphold LSE’s vital commitment to freedom of expression.

2. On an individual and faculty level, we call on our colleagues active within decolonial initiatives to undertake meaningful decolonial action. We must ensure decolonial research on Palestine conducted by Palestinian scholars is supported and included in the syllabus, especially in disciplines that lack any real engagement with the settler colonial legacy. We must centre and elevate indigenous voices and analyses in teaching and research. We must support students and the wider community in their activism for equality and justice, in Palestine and everywhere else.

3. We call on LSE to provide specialised support for students and staff who are refugees, asylum seekers, or forced migrants. As a starting point, we ask for tangible support for students and staff who are affected by the settler colonialist apartheid violence in Palestine. This includes approving extensions and resits, staff support for assessments, free access to long-term specialised wellbeing support and therapy, and financial support for students who require it.

4. We demand that LSE take a clear position and ends its complicity in Israeli crimes by cutting ties with institutions that contribute to the oppression of Palestinians. First, we demand that LSE issue a statement condemning the apartheid inflicted by Israel on Palestine and Palestinians. Second, we demand that LSE support academics in fulfilling the commitments we outlined above. Third, we demand that LSE end its various unethical investments. These include, but are not limited to, investments in the Israeli banks Bank Leumi Le-Israel (£204,206), Mizrahi Tefahot Bank Ltd (£60,659), Bank Hapoalim BM (£130,051), and Israel Discount Bank (£1,912), which are active in illegal Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land; Airbus (£340,772), Europe’s second largest arms producers, and Elbit (£1,912), Israel’s largest private arms company; and Microsoft (£1,285,208), which has a multi-million dollar investment in AnyVision, whose technology is used in Israeli military checkpoints and in surveillance of the Palestinian population. A full list of LSE’s complicit investments can be found here.

5. We demand that LSE rescind its adherence to the IHRA definition of anti-semitism, adopted in 2017, and which the current Conservative government is pressuring universities to adopt under threat of loss of funding. The IHRA definition falsely conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and has been used to silence and block activism in support of justice in Palestine and curtail free speech. The IHRA fails Jewish students by focusing on criticism of Israel at the expense of the real and pernicious anti-semitism, and by suggesting that Jewish students from all over the world are linked to, or responsible for, the actions or crimes of the Israeli state.

We stand with the Palestinian people in their ongoing freedom struggle, and we are inspired by the Palestinian community in Palestine and all over the world who are rising and who encourage us to fearlessly stand with them. We issue this statement on 19 May 2021, following the Palestinian call for global action to support the general strike in Palestine on 18 May, which was the perfect demonstration of the unified struggle of Palestinians against a single multifaceted oppressive regime.

To add your signature and endorse this statement, please sign below. For academics globally, we would also encourage you to consider signing the Palestine & Praxis letter and call to action (https://palestineandpraxis.weebly.com), issued by Palestinian scholars, and supported by thousands of scholars globally.

Group signatories

Decolonise LSE Collective

Decolonise Sociology

Faculty/staff Signatories

Student Signatories

Alumni Signatories