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Al Jazeera
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Canadian universities too should be in Francesca Albanese's report
'Universities worldwide, under the guise of research neutrality, continue to profit from an [Israeli] economy now operating in genocidal mode. Indeed, they are structurally dependent on settler-colonial collaborations and funding.' This is what United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese wrote in her latest report 'From economy of occupation to economy of genocide', which documents the financial tentacles of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza and beyond. Its release prompted the United States' governing regime to issue sanctions against Albanese in a move the Italian legal scholar rightly described as 'obscene' and 'mafia intimidation tactics'. The report reveals how universities not only invest their endowments in corporations linked to Israel's war machine, but also engage in directly or support research initiatives that contribute to it. It is not only a damning indictment of the complicity of academia in genocide, but also a warning to university administrations and academics that they hold legal responsibility. In Israel, Albanese observes, traditional humanities disciplines such as law, archaeology, and Middle Eastern studies essentially launder the history of the Nakba, reframing it through colonial narratives that erase Palestinian histories and legitimise an apartheid state that has transitioned into what she describes as a 'genocidal machine'. Likewise, STEM disciplines engage in open collaborations with military industrial corporations, such as Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, IBM, and Lockheed Martin, to facilitate their research and development. In the United States, Albanese writes, research is funded by the Israeli Defence Ministry and conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with various military applications, including drone swarm control. In the United Kingdom, she highlights, the University of Edinburgh has 2.5 percent of its endowment invested in companies that participate in the Israeli military industrial complex. It also has partnerships with Ben-Gurion University and with companies supporting Israeli military operations. While Canadian institutions do not appear in Albanese's report, they very easily could and, indeed, we argue, should. Canada's flagship school, the University of Toronto (UofT), where one of us teaches and another is an alumnus, is a particularly salient example. Over the past 12 years, the UofT's entanglements with Israeli institutions have snowballed, stretching across fields from the humanities to cybersecurity. They also involve Zionist donors (both individuals and groups), many of whom have ties with complicit corporations and Israeli institutions, and have actively interfered with university hiring practices to an extent that has drawn censure from the Canadian Association of University Teachers. This phenomenon must be understood in the context of the defunding of public higher education, which forces universities to seek private sources of funding and opens up universities to donor interference. After calls for cutting such ties intensified amid the genocide, the UofT doubled down on them over the past year, advertising artificial intelligence-related partnerships with Technion University in Haifa, joint calls for proposals with various Israeli universities, and student exchange programmes in Israel. The UofT also continues to fundraise for its 'Archaeology of Israel Trust', which was set up to make a 'significant contribution to the archaeology of Israel' – a discipline that has historically focused on legitimising the Israeli dispossession of the Palestinian people. It also inaugurated a new lab for the study of global anti-Semitism, which is funded by the University of Toronto-Hebrew University of Jerusalem Research & Innovation Alliance. In addition to institutional partnerships, UofT's Asset Management Corporation (UTAM), which manages the university's endowment, has direct connections with many companies that are, as per Albanese's report, complicit in the genocide in Palestine, including Airbnb, Alphabet Inc, Booking Holdings, Caterpillar, Elbit Systems, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, and Palantir Technologies. A 2024 report found that 55 of these companies operate 'in the military-affiliated defence, arms, and aerospace sectors' and at least 12 of UTAM's 44 contracted investment managers have made investments totalling at least $3.95 billion Canadian dollars ($2.88bn) in 11 companies listed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) as supporters of the construction and expansion of illegal settlements in the Palestinian territories. Furthermore, 17 of UTAM's 44 contracted investment managers are responsible for managing around $15.79 billion Canadian dollars ($11.53bn) in assets invested in 34 companies identified by The American Friends Service Committee as benefiting from the ongoing genocide in Gaza. UofT is not unique among Canadian universities in this regard. According to a report on university divestment, Western University, too, promotes ongoing partnerships with Ben-Gurion University and invests more than $16m Canadian dollars ($11.6m) in military contractors and nearly $50 million Canadian dollars ($36.5) in companies directly complicit in the occupation of Palestine and the genocide of Palestinians. The list of complicit companies again includes Lockheed Martin, as well others listed by Albanese like Chevron, Booking Holdings, Airbnb, and Microsoft. McGill University, another top Canadian university, has also invested in Lockheed Martin, as well as notable military industrial companies like Airbus, BAE Systems, Safran, and Thales, which have also been accused of providing weapons and components to Israel. In the context of the ongoing genocide, students, staff, and faculty at such complicit universities – including at each of our respective institutions – have been demanding that their universities boycott and divest from Israel and companies profiting from its warfare. They are not only explicitly in the right according to international law, but are actually articulating the basic legal responsibility and requirement borne by all corporate entities. And yet, for raising this demand, they have been subjected to all manner of discipline and punishment. What Albanese's report lays bare is that university administrators – like other corporate executives – are subject to and, frankly, should fear censure under international law. She writes, 'Corporations must respect human rights even if a State where they operate does not, and they may be held accountable even if they have complied with the domestic laws where they operate. In other words, compliance with domestic laws does not preclude/is not a defence to responsibility or liability.' This means that those administrating universities in Canada and around the world who have refused to divest and disentangle from Israel and instead have focused their attention on regulating students fighting for that end are themselves personally liable for their complicity in genocide, according to international law. We could not possibly put it more powerfully or succinctly than Albanese herself does: 'The corporate sector, including its executives, must be held to account, as a necessary step towards ending the genocide and disassembling the global system of racialized capitalism that underpins it.' It is our collective responsibility to make sure that happens at universities as well. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
Irish Times
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Irish people support Palestinians because they recognise the settler colonial process at play
Settler colonialism describes how imperial states capture a territory, migrate there, displace or eliminate the 'barbarian' indigenous population and dominate its land and resources. Ireland was a pioneer settler colony of England, as was graphically documented in the recent four-part RTÉ documentary series , From That Small Island . Many of the imperial techniques used here in early modern times were replicated by the British Empire in North America, the Caribbean and later in Australia and New Zealand – and by others too, such as the French in Algeria. [ From that Small Island review: Colin Farrell sounds in pain, as if he pressed on despite urgently needing the loo Opens in new window ] But as Jane Ohlmeyer, one of the editors and principal contributors to the documentary points out in her book Making Empire, Ireland, Imperialism & The Early Modern World, 'colonisation was not a single occurrence but an iterative and durable process that impacted different parts of Ireland at different times'. Nonetheless, the agenda of scorched-earth reprisals against resistance, civilising barbarous savages and seizing land for improvement was first practised here – even though many people born in Ireland became soldiers, employees or governing agents of that empire in later times too. Applied to Zionism and Israel , the concept reveals a displacement logic against Palestinians in what one of Palestine 's principal historians, Rashid Khalidi , describes as a radical social engineering project in 'a colonial war waged against the indigenous population, by a variety of parties, to force them to relinquish their homeland to another people against their will'. READ MORE But he too recognises that Zionism 'was and is a very particular colonial project' – like British settler colonialism in Ireland, with which he draws parallels . Zionism relied on successive imperial powers and 'became over time a national confrontation between two national entities, two peoples', amplified by the profound resonance for Jews of the biblical connection to the historic land of Israel. That blinds many Bible-reading Protestants in Britain and the United States to the modernity of Zionism and its colonial nature: 'for how could Jews be 'colonising' the land where their religion began?' [ Jane Ohlmeyer: How Ireland served as a laboratory for the British empire Opens in new window ] This helps explain why settler colonialism is rejected as an explanatory framework by many Israeli historians, politicians and commentators. There are Irish parallels, particularly among unionists who say it distorts the complexities of their role in Irish history. However most Irish people support Palestinians because they recognise a similar process to be at play there as here, notwithstanding the nuances. Critical race theory (CRT) has developed in the US since the 1980s to explain the intersection of law, race and power in US society. It argues that through law, racism is historically embedded there. Like settler colonialism, CRT has been vilified and weaponised mainly by conservative activists who reject its premises and implications for the future of white power. The explicit and implicit links with Zionist defences of Israel against settler colonial theories have become a powerful political force in Trump's US, not least through the same Bible readers. Ireland comes into focus through the links between such offensive academic theories and everyday US politics. Official Ireland must take such arguments seriously since they are part of the explicit US Senate mandate given to the new US ambassador here, Edward Walsh. Jim Risch, the republican chairman of the Senate's foreign relations committee, said Ireland's recognition of the state of Palestine is a mistake , while Senator Ted Cruz attacked Ireland's support for the International Criminal Court's case against Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. [ Fintan O'Toole: Ireland has a proud history of opposing anti-Semitism Opens in new window ] Since objective historical forces place Ireland in this dilemma, there is a limited extent to which canny diplomacy can play a part. The direct experience and memory of imperial violence, coercion and ideology informs Irish perceptions of similar behaviour from Netanyahu's Israel against Palestinians. Our political leaders recognise that, although their actions vary according to contemporary interests and values. Revisionist historians in Ireland applied scientific techniques to Ireland's nationalist historical mythologies of colonial oppression and heroic resistance, concentrating more on those than on the imperial behaviour that gave rise to them. In Israel, revisionist historians similarly interrogated that state's foundational myths. They framed Zionism as a settler colonial project responsible for the forcible expulsion of Palestinians during the 1948 war of independence. Some, such as Benny Morris , defend that as necessary for the Israeli state's survival. Both settler colonial and critical race theory have been validly criticised for portraying the societies they analyse as irredeemably divided – and therefore immune to coalitions of race, ethnic or class interests against the systems of power. Irish historians and citizens have absorbed the revisionist controversy and moved on to fashion a more sophisticated account of imperial power, colonisation and diverse peoples living together in Ireland's history, according to the RTÉ documentary. The same cannot be said for Israel's profoundly polarised debate on its future.
