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Jordan Times
09-02-2025
- Politics
- Jordan Times
Scholasticide in Gaza: History is screaming to the Present
AMMAN — The American Historical Association (AHA), the world's largest body of professional historians, recently ignited a debate after passing a resolution condemning Israel's destruction of Gaza's education system – only to have its elected council veto the measure. The resolution accused Israel of committing 'scholasticide,' a term coined by Palestinian academic Karma Nabulsi in 2009 to describe the systematic destruction of Palestinian educational institutions. While the resolution gained support at the AHA's annual convention on January 15, the elected council ultimately vetoed it, fuelling an intense ethical and political debate over the role of historians in times of crisis. AHA's Veto : A controversial silence ? Founded in 1884, the AHA has long played a central role in shaping historical discourse. Yet, its leadership's rejection of the resolution underscores the tension between academic neutrality and moral accountability. AHA convention-goers overwhelmingly approved the resolution on January 15, but the association's 16-member elected council vetoed it without allowing a full membership vote. The council could have either accepted the resolution or referred it to AHA's 10,450 members but chose to reject it. In its written explanation, the council condemned the destruction of Palestinian educational institutions in Gaza but argued the resolution fell outside of AHA's mission, which focuses on promoting historical research, teaching, and preservation rather than political advocacy. However, this stance was met with backlash from scholars who believe that remaining silent in the face of destruction is itself a political act. 'Historians who opposed the scholasticide resolution insisted that taking a position would harm the AHA, which is supposedly a 'non-political' organisation. The truth is that our tax dollars have funded 15 months of Israeli annihilation: not taking a stance a position will leave a lasting stain on the association and the discipline. Silence is complicity,' said Sherene Seikaly, Associate Professor of History at the University of California, in an interview with The Jordan Times. 'The task of the historian is to ask hard questions and to take difficult positions, not when the dust settles, but as the fire reigns,' she added. Notably, the AHA's hesitation stands in contrast to its previous actions. In 2022, the association swiftly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine, issuing a statement denouncing Vladimir Putin's distortion of history to justify military aggression. 'The opposition to the scholasticide resolution thus deems the question of Palestine as 'political' and Palestinian lives as less valuable,' Seikaly said. Barbara Weinstein, Professor of History at New York University and former AHA president, emphasised that scholasticide is a recognised phenomenon under international law. 'The right to learn and preserve historical evidence should be included in the broader category of human rights,' Weistein told The Jordan Times. 'And I believe that anyone who is a historian and claims that their work is 'not political' is either a fool or a scoundrel. It is utter nonsense to say that historians should stay out of politics. Every decision we make – what we research, what archives we explore, what histories we choose to amplify, is imbued with a vision of the world that I would describe as political.' As to whether the AHA, as an organisation, should stay out of politics, Weistein said : 'The very defence of history as a discipline is political, the association is engaged in advocacy by its very nature. During my time as a president, the AHA issued a statement severely criticising a move by the European Union to criminalise Holocaust denial, including in work by historians. Needless to say, no one on the AHA executive council was in favour of Holocaust denial, but we argued that his was the sort of issue that should be 'adjudicated' by other – better – historians, and not be a matter for the criminal justice system. How is that not political ?' Erasing Palestinian intellectual heritage While the AHA debates its stance, the reality on the ground in Gaza grows more dire by the day. Since the war broke out in October 2023, Israel's military assault has led to the widespread destruction of Gaza's educational infrastructure. The destruction extends far beyond physical buildings. 'Armed and abetted by the United States, Israel has destroyed 80% of schools and every single university in the Gaza Strip. Israel has targeted and killed scholars from across the humanities, social sciences, and STEM. Israel has destroyed almost every library, archive, and cultural centre in the Strip,' Seikaly said, adding that centuries of endowments, collections, and documents are now gone forever. Beyond destruction, evidence has emerged of Israeli forces repurposing Palestinian schools as military outposts and detention centres. The European-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has documented such cases as the Salah Al-Din Preparatory School in Gaza City, turned into a detention and interrogation facility in February 2024, and other civilian buildings, including schools, being systematically demolished after being used as military headquarters. The Human Rights organisation stated that such actions violate international humanitarian law, which mandates the protection of civilian infrastructure. A generation without education In April 2024, UN experts issued an urgent warning over the pattern of attacks on schools, universities, and the mass killing, arrest, and detention of students and educators. Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, also underscored the severity of the situation: 'The education system in Gaza no longer exists. Children can no longer find a place to learn.' The UNICEF echoed this assessment, confirming the complete collapse of the educational system in Gaza. The consequences of this annihilation are dire. According to UN figures, more than 5,500 students, 261 teachers, and 95 university professors have been killed during Israeli assaults. More than 7,800 students and 756 teachers have been injured. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) confirmed that 60% of educational institutions, including 13 public libraries, have been damaged or destroyed, including 76 schools that were directly targeted, and at least 625,000 students are now left without access to education. The destruction of Israa University in January 2024 marked a grim milestone – the last remaining university in Gaza reduced to rubble. 'Even UN-designated 'safe zones' have not been spared, with schools sheltering displaced civilians bombed repeatedly. The persistent attacks are depriving yet another generation of Palestinians of their future,' the UN statement read. The impact of this devastation extends beyond the present, threatening the very survival of Palestinian culture, history, and intellectual life. 'When schools are destroyed, so too are hopes and dreams,' the experts stated. Scholasticide: a key feature of genocide The term 'scholasticide' describes a deliberate genocidal strategy to dismantle an entire society's ability to document its history and build its future, as well as its right to knowledge. The implications go beyond the immediate loss of human lives and infrastructures. 'The concept of 'scholasticide' is significant both as a means to denounce forms of destruction that wreak permanent damage on the society, but also as a way of thinking about 'repairing' that damage (to the extent possible) when the war finally ends,' Weinstein said. Historically, the destruction of educational institutions has been a hallmark of genocide. From the systematic targeting of schools in Iraq to the mass killing of educators in Gaza, scholars have long documented how obliterating intellectual heritage aims to erase a people's past.
Express Tribune
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
The attack on education in Gaza is a warning for the world
On January 6, 2025, the American Historical Association (AHA) overwhelmingly voted in favour of a resolution titled 'Resolution to Oppose Scholasticide in Gaza'—a move that explicitly condemned the destruction of Palestinian education by the Israeli military. Proposed by Historians for Peace and Democracy, the resolution passed with 428 members in favour, 88 against, and four abstentions. It underscored how Israel's military campaign in Gaza, bolstered by over $12.5 billion in U.S. military aid from October 2023 to June 2024, had effectively obliterated Gaza's education system. UN experts warned as early as April 2024 that Israel's attacks on schools, universities, teachers, and students amounted to a deliberate effort to eradicate Palestinian education—an act defined as scholasticide. Scholasticide is often an overlooked aspect of imperial warfare, but its consequences are complex and long-lasting. The term scholasticide refers to the systematic destruction of educational institutions, scholars, and knowledge systems as a means of suppressing a people's cultural and intellectual future. Coined by the Palestinian scholar Karma Nabulsi, the concept has deep historical roots, aligning with broader frameworks of epistemic violence and cultural genocide. In an interview with Democracy Now, Sherene Seikaly, a professor at UC Santa Barbara and editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, spoke about the AHA conference, declaring that the victory of the resolution represented a moment of resistance against the ongoing obliteration of Palestinian intellectual life. 'Since October 2023, Israel, armed, aided and abetted by the United States, has destroyed 80% of the schools in the Gaza Strip and every single university. And another thing that I think is often put to the side or marginalised, and we really have to centre as historians, is that almost every single archive, library and bookstore have been bombed and destroyed by Israel. And so, this genocide is really attempting to destroy our capacity to narrate our past and to imagine our future.' In Gaza, reports confirmed that by December 2024 more than 230 schools had been destroyed, and at least 140,000 students had been left without access to formal education. The statistics are staggering, with 261 teachers and 95 university professors killed, dozens of universities bombed beyond repair, and nearly half a million students displaced from their learning environments. This is not collateral damage but an intentional war against Palestinian intellectual survival. Schools and universities are deliberately bombed under the justification that they harbour 'militants,' despite being filled with students and faculty members. This mirrors historical instances of colonial and imperialist regimes targeting education as a means of eradicating resistance, identity, and intellectual autonomy. Education has always been a battleground in imperialist warfare. Throughout history, imperialist regimes have deliberately destroyed indigenous education systems to control, assimilate, or eliminate colonised peoples. The term 'epistemic violence' describes how dominant groups erase, suppress, or devalue the knowledge systems of the colonised. British colonialism in India saw the deliberate dismantling of centuries-old learning institutions in favour of English-language education policies, a system formalised in 1835 under Thomas Macaulay's infamous "Minute on Indian Education", a pivotal document in the history of British colonial education policy in India. Macaulay argued for the promotion of English education in India and for the systematic undermining of local languages and literatures. Similarly, in the Americas, the Spanish conquest of the sixteenth century led to the wholesale destruction of indigenous libraries, including the systematic burning of Mayan codices in 1562 by Bishop Diego de Landa, who saw them as heretical. Only a few fragments of these rich intellectual traditions survive today. French colonial rule in Algeria in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries systematically suppressed Arabic-language education, closing Islamic madrasas and replacing them with French-language schools that sought to erase Algerian identity. Similar policies were enacted in West Africa, where France's policy of assimilation ensured that local histories and languages were effectively erased from curricula. For example, in Senegal, the French colonial government imposed a curriculum that was entirely based on French values and history. This meant that the rich oral traditions, local folklore, and histories of the Senegalese people were excluded from education. These historical precedents demonstrate how education is not merely a neutral institution but a deeply political one, weaponised to maintain control over subjugated peoples. In the event of epistemic violence and culture erasure, many scholars are rejecting neutrality. Edward Said reminds us that the major task of the intellectual is to 'reveal the disparity between the so-called two sides, which appear rhetorically and ideologically to be in perfect balance but are not in fact. To reveal that there is an oppressed and an oppressor, a victim and a victimiser, and unless we recognise that, we are nowhere'. Imperial regimes have always targeted centres of knowledge production. When a people's intellectual foundation is destroyed, so is their ability to resist, rebuild, and reclaim their autonomy. In the face of cultural genocide and epistemic erasure, we must focus on restoring and revitalising traditional knowledge systems, which are systematically undermined by colonial powers. This involves not only protecting local languages and cultural practices but also integrating traditional knowledge into contemporary education frameworks. Oral traditions and other community-based knowledge sharing practices should be given due appreciation and funding alongside the formal education systems that have historically marginalised them. Leveraging modern technology also presents an opportunity for historically oppressed communities to bypass traditional barriers to education and knowledge preservation. Digital platforms can serve as modern archives for indigenous knowledge, providing access to resources that have been denied or distorted in mainstream educational systems. Decolonising education is a critical step, which requires dismantling curricula that have long been rooted in Western, colonial ideologies. This isn't just about adding indigenous perspectives but rethinking the very foundation of what is considered valuable knowledge. By shifting from a Eurocentric model to one that equally honours local epistemologies, we must challenge who holds the authority over knowledge, ensuring that threatened communities themselves are the driving force behind initiatives for change.
