FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 8, 2014
Press Contact: csamedia@csalateral.org
The Cultural Studies Association (CSA) Executive Committee strongly condemns the continuing attacks on Palestinian universities, colleges, and schools by the Israeli government, including most recently the June 2014 invasion of Birzeit University, and the August 2014 decimation of the Islamic University in Gaza City.
Israel”s continuing attacks targeting identifiable schools, colleges, and universities are part of its campaign of the collective massacre and punishment of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip since Israel”s “Operation Protective Edge” was launched on July 8, 2014. The campaign has so far claimed more than 1,800 lives, including 300 children, and wounded more than 10,000 Palestinians. This goes well beyond and above Israel”s long-standing practice of denying academic freedom to Palestinian faculty and students to include the outright denial of the basic necessitates and rights of human life, including the right to education.
The CSA Executive Committee therefore calls upon the United States government to withdraw its political, financial, and military support from the state of Israel immediately. As long as government support continues to flow to Israel, the U.S. government shall remain complicit in the ongoing siege of Gaza, Israeli war crimes and violations of international law, and the collective suffering of the Palestinian people.
