This letter to President Alger and the JMU leadership was published in JMU's The Breeze on 8 December 2023: https://www.breezejmu.org/opinion/lte-19-faculty-to-alger-be-more-inclusive-in-your-moral-outrage/article_cc34c916-962f-11ee-acc3-93c1ca579104.html
*To add your name see link below
6 December 2023
Dear President Alger and JMU Leadership,
On 11 October 2023, a statement was published on JMU’s website condemning terrorism and Hamas’ attacks on Israel, and in an email to the JMU community dated 13 October 2023, you reiterated your condemnation. Since the publication of those statements, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reports that Israel’s indiscriminate bombing campaign and ground incursion have killed over 16,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children. This number includes 77 journalists and media staff, 112 UN staff members, 198 medical staff, and 26 members of the Palestinian Civil Defense. Approximately 6,000 individuals, including 4,000 children are missing, likely trapped or dead under rubble, and over 40,000 thousand have been injured, many with life-changing injuries. These numbers are climbing by the hour as Israel continues to bomb Gaza.
Like you, we object to the killing of unarmed civilians. We are disappointed, however, that you have yet to voice similar dismay concerning Israel’s retaliatory measures against innocent Palestinian civilians. These measures, according to many human rights organizations and legal experts, violate international human rights law and constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, UN Commission for Human Rights among others), and that along with statements by Israeli officials, may amount to acts of genocide (Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights, and former U.N. human rights director, Craig Mokhiber). As educators, we cannot, and should not, be selective in our moral outrage, especially when our government is implicated. We worry that one-sided condemnation only serves to stoke the flames of Israel’s collective punishment against Palestinians, as well as the rise in anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States.
As a result of Israel’s imposed siege, a colossal humanitarian disaster is underway. Though many Western media outfits refer to the conflict as the “Israel-Hamas” War, Israel’s actions demonstrate not a targeted war with Hamas, but collective punishment measures that have cut the entire population from basic essentials such as food, electricity, fuel, water, and medical supplies. The health sector has nearly collapsed - of the 33 medical facilities in the Gaza Strip, 9 are still functional and only able to treat the most critical trauma cases. According to UNRWA, nearly1.9 million people, 85 percent of the population of the Gaza Strip (already one of the most densely populated areas in the world), are now internally displaced, confining most of the population to an even smaller geographic area. Israel’s bombardment campaign has resulted in the demolition of over 43,000 homes and the partial destruction of another 225,000—collectively, over 45% of homes in Gaza have either been destroyed or partially destroyed.
The collective punishment measures extend to the educational sector. On 2 December 2023, an Israeli air strike killed Sufyan Tayeh, a prominent scientist and president of the Islamic University of Gaza, along with his family. As of 13 November, 3,117 school students and 183 educational staff have been killed. Moreover, 88,000 university students and 625,000 school-aged children will be unable to continue their studies in the foreseeable future. Israel’s bombardment has destroyed or massively damaged all of Gaza’s institutions of higher education, and about 300 school buildings (61 percent of all such buildings in Gaza) are said to have sustained damage.
With international attention turned to the Gaza Strip, Israeli government policies have also led to a dangerous escalation of settler violence in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Since 7 October, over 249 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, including 65 children, and more than 3,325 have been injured. 15 communities, at least 114 families, comprising approximately 1000 Palestinians, have been forcibility displaced by Israeli settlers or new military occupation movement restriction policies.
This conflict did not start on 7 October 2023. It is imperative that we recognize that 75 years of dispossession, 56 years of military occupation, and 16 years of a suffocating blockade on the Gaza Strip have led to tremendous devastation and the loss of lives and suffering to the Palestinian side. Collective punishment measures such as the killing of unarmed civilians, home demolitions, land confiscations, administrative detention (incarceration without charge or trial), are everyday features of Israel’s military occupation policies that are increasingly likened to the racial premises and practices of settler colonial Apartheid in South Africa (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli human rights organization, B’tselem, among others). Between 2009 and September 2023, Israel killed 6,407 Palestinians (mostly unarmed civilians) and injured 152,560. There is no military solution to this conflict, and only recognition of this reality as well as our shared humanity, will move us forward, and hopefully, lead to a just and lasting peace.
The military assault on Gaza has been accompanied by consistent and routine official Israeli statements containing explicitly racist language revealing a barbaric form of xenophobia in service of an ethnic-cleansing agenda that has no place in public discourse or international politics. The uncivil, dehumanizing discourse emanating from Israeli officials about local Palestinians, regional Arabs, and global Muslims is gaining traction across the United States. During Thanksgiving weekend, three university students of Palestinian descent in Burlington, Vermont, were shot and seriously injured in what appears to have been a hate crime. In October, a 6-year-old boy was fatally stabbed in Illinois in what authorities say was an anti-Muslim attack. The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Council on American-Islamic Relations have reported an approximate 200 percent increase in anti-Muslim and anti-Arab (especially anti-Palestinian) incidents in the past seven weeks compared to last year.
As people with deep connections to the region, as scholars of the Middle East, as individuals committed to social justice, and as allies to these communities, we are horrified by what we are witnessing. We, as the JMU community, strive to uphold those values that recognize our interconnectedness, as well as the richness of all individuals and perspectives. A sizeable Muslim community, as well as Arabs and Palestinians, work at JMU and live in Harrisonburg, and these communities should not be ignored or dismissed. We call upon you, President Alger, to be more inclusive in your moral outrage, and to show the same concern for Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip who are now under assault, and for members of the JMU community who have close ties to the region.
Concerned Faculty,
Manal A. Jamal, Professor
Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Professor
Samy El-Tawab, Associate Professor
Yasmeen Shorish, Professor
Sofia Samatar, Associate Professor
Nasser Al Saadun, Instructor
Mohamed Aboutabl, Associate Professor
Samar Fitzgerald, Instructor
Hasan Hamdan, Professor
Israa Alhassani, Instructor
Verónica Dávila Ellis, Assistant Professor
Muhammad Ittefaq, Assistant Professor
Erica Cavanagh, Professor
Reslie Cortés, Assistant Professor
Mohammed Ala-Uddin, Instructor
Karim Altaii, Professor
Ahmad Salman, Associate Professor
Abdelrahman Rabie- Professor Emeritus
Emad Abdurasoul, Visiting Assistant Professor
New Signatories
Valerie Sulfaro, Professor
Jack McCaslin, Professor
Di Hu, Assistant Professor
Suzanne Fiederlein, Associate Professor
Dave Pruett, Professor Emeritus
Robert Bersson, Professor Emeritus
Roger Thelwell, Professor
Lindsay Caesar, Assistant Professor
David Carothers, Professor Emeritus
Robin Teske, Professor Emerita
Christina Kilby, Associate Professor
Elizabeth Brown, Professor
Stephen Poulson, Professor
Mona Rizvi, Associate Professor
*Please note that the order of signatories is random. Also, a number of colleagues had reservations about signing because of possible retaliation, and others expressed interest in signing, but we had time constraints and had to publish this letter before the winter break. Any colleague interested in adding their name, please use this link https://sites.google.com/view/jmufacultyforjustice or email at JMUfacultyforjustice@gmail.com