Reportage. Faculty and students are facing suspensions, threats, complaints going from campuses to police stations, and attacks like the one in late October, with hundreds of Israeli extremists attempting to set fire to the Palestinian student dormitory in Netanya.

written by Chiara Cruciati

Topic Middle East and North Africa

JAFFA, Israel

February 15, 2024

The alarm bells were already ringing, but few heard them. It was the spring of 2021 and the movement to defend the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah had spread like wildfire, going from East Jerusalem to fire up the West Bank and the streets of Israeli cities, after years of quiet.

The Palestinians of ’48 rose up, and Israeli extremism responded in turn: settlers and right-wing groups came armed and clashes took place at night in Led, Ramle, Tel Aviv, Haifa. “At that moment, we realized that something was changing inside Israel.”

Matan Kaminer is an anthropologist and one of the representatives of Academia for Equality, an association founded a decade ago. It has about 850 members, committed to the struggle for democratization and against discrimination inside Israeli academic institutions.

“In 2021 we witnessed a first major crackdown on university campuses. Now we are in crisis mode. In the first two months after October 7, everything fell apart: Palestinians were not allowed to open their mouths, to say anything. What was new in that? We discovered that leftist Jews were also not allowed to open their mouths.”

Faculty and students are facing suspensions, threats, complaints going from campuses to police stations, and attacks like the one in late October, with hundreds of Israeli extremists attempting to set fire to the Palestinian student dormitory in Netanya. All over a Facebook or Instagram post or public statement that “says no to war or points out that there are civilians in Gaza.”

The hundreds of “targeted” students and faculty were subjected to the same process, according to the Adalah Law Center: complaints filed by the Israeli Students Union and other right-wing student organizations directed at the university leadership, which, on the basis of a “zero tolerance” policy, initiated........

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