To Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice Chancellor of the University of Manchester, and to the global sociology community,

We write as 23 academic staff in the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester to call on the University to end its alliances and investments with universities and companies complicit in Israel’s apartheid, settler-colonial occupation, and slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

As sociologists, we will not stay silent and thus assent by our passivity to these atrocities. This letter is a call on the University of Manchester to act. We are also sharing it with our discipline in the UK and beyond, as a call to build and share solidarity action, starting with the demand that our universities end academic partnerships with, and divest from, complicit universities, institutions, and companies. We follow here the example of other sociologists and colleagues in other disciplines, including Sociologists in Solidarity with Palestine [docs.google.com] and Sociologists in Solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian People [docs.google.com], and the united call from over 30 Palestinian trade unions and professional associations [workersinpalestine.org]. Sociology is a critical discipline. We have begun to put anti-racism at the heart of our teaching and research. We have begun to develop decolonial curricula. We are rightly proud of this, even as we know there is more work to be done. But these achievements are undermined if we remain silent on anti-Palestinian racism, if we ignore Israeli settler-colonial occupation and apartheid, if we sit back and do nothing as the bombs rain down on a besieged and defenceless population, half of whom are children.

We are all witness to Israel’s ongoing mass killing of Palestinians, assisted and armed by the UK government. Over nine weeks, Israeli airstrikes have killed over 17,700 Palestinians, at least 8,690 of whom are children [reliefweb.int], and have wounded over 48,000. 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are internally displaced, [btselem.org] packed into an increasingly smaller area in the south that is now itself under military assault. 60% of buildings in north Gaza have been severely damaged or destroyed [ft.com]. Hospitals, schools, universities, mosques, churches, have been blown to pieces. Extreme shortages of food and water, the destruction of sanitation facilities, and the collapse of the health-care system are creating a humanitarian catastrophe, ‘not a side effect of the war, but the direct intended result [btselem.org]’ of Israel’s policies, according to the Israeli human-rights organisation B’Tselem. In the occupied West Bank [reuters.com] in the same period, over 260 Palestinians, including more than 50 children, have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers. Behind these bare facts, the cruelty, suffering, and trauma are unimaginable.

As UN experts warn of ‘a genocide [ohchr.org] in the making’, Israeli ministers and politicians make their genocidal intent clear. Prime Minister Netanyahu [motherjones.com] equates Gaza to the Biblical nation of Amalek, about which the prophet Samuel told Saul: ‘Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants’. A Knesset member [middleeastmonitor.com] of the ruling Likud party calls for a ‘new Nakba’, the military and terror campaign that caused the expulsion and flight of 750,000 Palestinians from historic Palestine in 1948: ‘Right now, one goal: Nakba! A Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48’. As Israel drops tens of thousands of tons of bombs on Gaza, a military spokesperson [theguardian.com] states that ‘the emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy’. We could go on and on with these examples.

The bombardment of Gaza is the latest, horrific phase of 75 years of Israel’s expulsion, occupation, dispossession, brutalisation, humiliation, incarceration without trial including of children, torture, maiming, and killing of Palestinians. This has been meticulously documented by human-rights organisations,p including B’Tselem [btselem.org], Human Rights Watch [hrw.org], and Amnesty International [amnesty.org], and by the UN Special Rapporteur [ohchr.org] on the Palestinian territories, all of whom identify Israel as committing the crime of apartheid, a claim that has long been made by Palestinians themselves.

Israelis have suffered terrible civilian casualties too. The Hamas attack on 7 October included an assault on the belt of military fortifications, watchtowers, and machine-gun and snipers’ nests that have maintained Israel’s devastating 16-year blockade of Gaza. Such targets are legal under customary international law; the United Nations explicitly stipulates the right of occupied peoples to armed resistance (UN resolution 45/130). But the Hamas attack also included atrocities committed against hundreds of Israeli civilians. Nothing we say here is intended to diminish the horror of those deaths and the pain and anguish of the victims’ families and communities. However, such atrocities will not be ended by creating more of the conditions from which they emerge.

We call on the University of Manchester to do the following.

End the joint research fund with Tel Aviv University. Israeli universities play a key role in planning, implementing, and justifying Israel’s occupation of, and military assault on, Palestinian territories, and Tel Aviv University (TAU) is no exception. Across a range of disciplines from mechanical engineering to philosophy, TAU is heavily and openly involved in research and development in weapons and surveillance technologies, and in military strategy and operational theory. It has described itself thus [jfjfp.com]: ‘In the rough and tumble reality of the Middle East, Tel Aviv University is at the front line of the critical work to maintain Israel’s military and technological edge’, noting that ‘much of that research remains classified’. To give one example, TAU is home to the Institute for National Security Studies which takes credit for developing the ‘Dahiya Doctrine’. This is a military doctrine of disproportionate force, illegal under international law, adopted by the Israeli military. As evident in the bombardment on Gaza, it privileges civilian over and above military targets and advocates, as one of its designers at TAU put it, ‘the destruction of homes and infrastructure, and the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people [jfjfp.com]’.

End the exchange agreement with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has a record of involvement in military-security research [eccpalestine.org] and hosts the army intelligence training programme [jta.org] Havatzalot. It also surveilles Palestinians [972mag.com] living in the surrounding neighbourhoods of occupied East Jerusalem.

End the partnerships of the Graphene Engineering and Innovation Centre (GEIC) with GKN Aerospace and Haydale. GKN Aerospace is owned by Melrose Industry, together being the sixth largest arms company in the UK. GKN Aerospace has over 26 export licenses to Israel, granted as recently as 2020, specifically dealing in ML10 goods (defined by the UK government as ‘“Aircraft”, unmanned airborne vehicles, aero engines and “aircraft” equipment, related “goods” and components, specially designed or modified for military use’).Haydale has been developing graphene for use in strengthening carbon fibre composite structures. It has contacts with Airbus, GKN, and BAE Systems, three major arms companies that all have export licenses and substantial ties with the Israeli defence sector. These contracts are focused on creating lightning resistant planes and drones – a clear military application.

Divest from HSBC, Siemens, and all other companies who invest in Israeli weapons, military technologies, and the means of Israeli apartheid. The University has investments of c£1million in HSBC. Research by War on Want in 2017 found that HSBC invests over £830million in, and provides financial services worth up to £19billion for, companies supplying Israel with weapons and military technology. The University has investments of c£1.1million in Siemens. Siemens is complicit in the apartheid domination of Palestinians through its involvement in transport, traffic, and population control in occupied East Jerusalem and the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

These alliances and investments contravene, undermine, and make a mockery of the University’s valued ethical and anti-racist principles. It is obscene and shameful to claim that ‘We at The University of Manchester condemn all racist violence and oppression’ and to assert ‘a role in removing systemic inequities and speaking up for those without a voice’ while supporting an apartheid state which inflicts untold racial cruelty and violence on the Palestinian people. The time is long overdue for the University to end these alliances and investments, just as it ended its associations with apartheid South Africa.

Signed by 23 academic staff in the Department of Sociology, University of Manchester

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