By Dr Marwan Asmar
Norwegian Dr Mads Gilbert says the Israeli army want to eradicate the Palestinian people by destroying their ‘knowledge system’ as in their schools, universities and culture.
https://twitter.com/drmadsgilbert?lang=en
“Did you know the Israeli occupation army has bombed every university in Gaza,” Dr Mads Gilbert, a physician from Norway and a social activist, asks on the X platform.
“All of the universities have been bombed by the Israeli occupation without almost any protests from the western universities, from the western ministries of education and their governments,” he pointed out.
According to the latest OCHA report, he says because of the mass bombings of Gaza 625,000 students have no education while the Israeli army has killed 5,479 students and 261 teachers and professors. This is while 80% of UN and public schools (396 out of 495) have been partially and/or completely destroyed and presently can’t functions.
“…What the Israeli army has done is to eradicate the teaching, training education system and the research system in Gaza and systematically bombed archives, the health information system and all the sources and information about the situation in Palestine.”
Dr Gilbert, an anesthetist and head of emergency medicine department at the University Hospital of North Norway, had long association with Gaza and taught at many of its universities including Al Aqsa and Islamic Universities.
He points out what the Israelis are doing is “epistemicide” and eradicating the people on-the-ground in Gaza including the eradication of knowledge of the indigenous people.
The Israelis want to “crush the universities and schools, crush their [Palestinian] archives, their knowledge, their understanding, their history, their books, their culture, their music” and this is “to get rid of the whole Palestinian people and their history,” Dr Gilbert points out.
“We should not for one single second accept this, and we should demand for our universities to boycott Israeli universities that take part in the eradication of the Palestinian educational systems and their history.”
We should demand from our [western] institutions to they stand up and demand the right to knowledge the right to teaching, the right to have your own history and that means simple boycott of Israeli universities and that don’t protest against the occupation and the destruction in Gaza.
Finally, “if you are a student and university teacher ask yourself: What can you do in your institution to support Palestine and Gaza?
Dr Marwan Asmar is a writer based in Amman covering Middle East affairs
7 April 2024
Source: countercurrents.org