Every day we witness the horror of innocent people being killed by an Israeli military supported by the US government and financed by US taxpayers.
Thousands of innocent lives have been lost. Many more will die unless a meaningful ceasefire is put in place, humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza and Israeli apartheid ended.
As the historian Howard Zinn once put it, in times like these “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”
We must all speak out against the genocide.
Yet virtually no one on campus has yet made such a necessary public pronouncement. Most are afraid to do so.
We cannot turn away from reality for, as AIDS activists have taught us, silence equals death.
Today either one supports the genocide or one does not. The killing fields of Gaza must be acknowledged and the psychopathic mass murder by Israel actively opposed.
Let us be reminded we are members of a scholarly community committed to research, teaching and a search for truth.
Our very Higher Education industry purports to value life, free speech, opportunity and liberty for all. Yet few campus leaders have officially denounced the crimes against humanity perpetuated by the Netanyahu war cabinet and Biden administration.
The history is clear: Zionist settler colonialism has long wrought widespread discrimination, dispossession, destitution and death for generations of Palestinians. Read Rashid Khalidi, Ilan Pappé, Lori Allen, Miko Peled, Norman Finkelstein, Linda Sarsour, Max Blumenthal, Hawan Ashrawi and many others. Tune into countless podcasts such as Electronic Intifada and the Grayzone or watch any number of well researched films such as Killing Gaza, Gaza Fights for Freedom, Farha and Tantoura, among others.
The current Israeli assault on Gaza aligns with a larger, intentional program of ethnic cleansing and genocide by the Zionist state apparatus.
War crimes are being committed.
Thankfully, people in Tulsa, the US and the wider international community are condemning Israeli violence. Many others need to do so if we are to prevent further atrocities and avoid wider war.
The time for equivocation is over. We must demand an immediate end to the killing.
Professor of History
Andrew Grant Wood
