As events in Gaza and the West Bank continue to unfold, we outline our position as self-organising members of staff at Bath Spa University. We encourage fellow staff who endorse this position to show their support by signing the attached form.

The scale of Israel’s attacks on Gaza is unprecedented and has led to the most concentrated loss of civilian life and destruction of critical civilian infrastructure of any military campaign in recent history. Palestinians in Gaza currently face conditions of famine that have been engineered through Israel’s control of Gaza’s borders and the restrictions it has placed on levels of aid, fuel and medicine that have been permitted to enter.

We recognise the conclusion drawn by the International Court of Justice on 28 March 2024 that there is a ‘real and imminent risk of irreparable prejudice’ to the ‘right of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts identified in Article III of the Genocide Convention’. We endorse international law as both a moral framework and a legal mechanism designed to prevent the repetition of the most egregious crimes of human history.

This violence must be seen in the context of a longer history of apartheid, characterised by land dispossession, appropriation and destruction of natural resources, the suppression of human rights, and a widespread campaign of dehumanisation of Palestinians conducted by the Israeli state and its allies. While we stand against every human rights violation and with the civilian victims of such violence, it is particularly urgent to express our outrage at the Israeli state’s assault on Gaza at this moment.

We have witnessed a reactionary turn against free speech and peaceful protest in recent months as those who have spoken in defence of Palestinian human rights have had their livelihoods threatened. Universities are key sites for free speech, as recently legislated in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023. We stand against antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism. We reject the notion that any criticism of Zionism or Israeli state and military policy equates to antisemitism. This elision serves to silence legitimate debate and suppress intellectual and academic freedom.

As academics and professional staff, we are particularly horrified by the ongoing and systematic destruction of the Palestinian education system and the arrest, detention, torture and killing of teachers, students, and staff. The destruction of schools, colleges, universities, libraries, museums and heritage sites, and the loss of the Central Archives of Gaza that documented 150 years of regional history, constitutes an egregious act of ‘scholasticide’. According to independent UN experts reporting to the Human Rights Council, ‘the foundations of Palestinian society are being reduced to rubble, and their history is being erased.’

For these reasons, we reject the UK government’s position of political support for Israel. Through its diplomatic, economic and trade relations with the Israeli state, and specifically through its supply of arms to Israel, our government has been directly complicit in genocide.

We stand in solidarity with the hundreds of university student and staff bodies around the world that are currently taking action to condemn this genocide. These movements give us hope. As such, we call on our university administration to:

1. Join cultural and educational organisations around the world who are calling for an immediate and lasting ceasefire and urging the UK government to stop supplying arms to Israel;
2. Commit to supporting Palestinian scholars and the rebuilding of Gaza’s universities;
3. Protect academic freedom of speech for scholars and students taking critical positions on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict;
4. Defend the rights of scholars and students to participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

We recognise that BSU has an ethical investments policy which ensures the university does not directly invest in arms manufacturers. To make our ethical investments policy even more robust, we ask BSU to:

1. Disclose full details of all university investments, and;
2. Divest from all investments in companies complicit in apartheid and genocide, including Bank Leumi LeIsrael, Barclays, Caterpillar, Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard and Siemens.