Dear Faculty of Science,

It has been one year since students put up a tent in front of Science Park 904, and forced a conversation with you, the Faculty's leadership, about the ties this Faculty has with Israeli institutions. It was an attempt to start dialogue after the brutal police violence inflicted on many of us at Roeterseiland Campus. Dialogue that was started in order to work towards a meaningful solution to the ongoing genocide Israel is committing on Palestinian people. A dialogue that in the end you walked way from.

Over the past twenty excruciating months, students and staff across all Dutch universities have protested incessantly, using every possible method to make themselves heard—through teach-ins, lectures, petitions, articles, opinion pieces, sit-ins both silent and vocal, walkouts, disruptions, rallies, encampments, demonstrations, occupations, strikes, and more. We have followed all the official procedures and engaged seriously in every dialogue session, meeting, and public forum you organized. Despite this effort from our side, these countless dialogues have not led to anything meaningful and real for the people in Palestine.

What have you done since then? Nothing. You have cut not a single Faculty tie, organized no public conversation about the role that the natural sciences hold in human rights violations, and no discussion about the very present, but instead neglected the role of politics in natural sciences. You have done nothing to address the worries of students, staff and researchers and kept denying their rightful call to action. We are truly disgusted in your lack of humanity. The situation in Gaza and the West Bank is worse than ever, with Israel openly intensifying its human rights violations, annexing the Gaza strip, starving the entire population of Gaza and fundamentally disregarding the right of the Palestinian people.

Our leaving dean, Peter van Tienderen has done absolutely nothing with the institutional powers granted by his position. We know that the Dean of Science Park can cut ties, yet since last year no tie has been cut. This is a genocide and we demand that you act. Last year you could open dialogue with students, this year you can cut the ties. Therefore we demand that the Faculty of Science:

- in cooperation with the other institutes, companies and AUC, cut their ties with israeli institutions complicit in the genocide and other human rights violations and;

- uses the Faculty's position within Horizon Europe collaborations to advocate for the removal of israeli insitutitions from said program and;

- publicly releases the 4 unpublished ethical comittee reports (https://www.parool.nl/cs-b5f5b96b/) and the Faculty's involvement in this decision and;

- organizes and welcomes academic discussions about the ethics of our research / degrees and the political nature of the natural sciences through talks, workshops and open lecture sessions and;

- speaks out openly against the genocide and the human right violations comitted by israel, and;

- that the Dean calls upon the CvB and the other deans to cut all institutional ties.

We cannot idly stand by and legitimize the genocidal behaviour of Israel at this Faculty. We, the people signing this document, call out the behaviour and demand action. We call on both our leaving and coming Dean, as well as the Faculty board, to act now. It is already to late, and you should have done this 20 months ago. But we are trying, again.