What is happening in Palestine is genocide. There is an irrefutable moral truth that has been taught to us, you don’t keep quiet during a genocide. We pledged never again, but the lie behind that statement has never been more apparent. We ask Dutch academia to start talking about Palestine. Because you haven’t, you really haven’t.
With a fascist in the White House, and a far-right government here at home, the destruction of Palestine, its land, its culture, and its people will continue and worsen. Our Dutch government will cooperate, and most likely celebrate. The media members we all aspire to pitch our research to will whitewash this genocide and Dutch complicity in it, if not openly support it. 0.7 asks, are we any different?
While our students protest, while Dutch Muslims protest, while young people protest, while our non-white citizens and our Jewish colleagues protest, our managers will refuse to talk to them, give bureaucratic statements, and they will call the riot cops, who will beat them out of our buildings. Yes, our buildings! And we will say nothing. We have said far too little.
0.7 has been protesting the budget cuts as part of a coalition which we appreciate and respect. As a coalition we have worked tirelessly to prevent the far-right assault on higher education and research. We think the coalition has been impressive in its efforts. Academics are notoriously hard to convince to participate in activism, but we got 25.000 people onto the Malieveld, organized a nationwide demonstration in 24 hours, and connected politicians to our cause. These battles were all won, however the war is still undecided. In order to mobilize as many people as possible, the logic was not to talk too much about Palestine. It was not related to the issue at hand. It would blow up the coalition. It would distract. It would not be beneficial to the goal (of stopping the budget cuts). Maybe, maybe not. But it has to end now, the genocide, the occupation, our silence, and us walking into Wilders’ trap.
Don’t you see it is a trap? Wilders has us compromising our ideals, going as far as hushing each other in the face of unspeakable violence, because we are afraid he will punish our sector any further. As if he would spare us. It’s what leaders like him do, they pit us against each other, make us eat each other. 0.7 has supported the pro-Palestine protests, and our individual members have joined them, but we have refrained from regarding this subject as inherent to our cause. But it is, it is inherent to our cause. Our cause is an open and free academia, workers’ rights, and solidarity. Protests against genocide are part of such an ideal academia, and they are the ideal the far right wishes to destroy. We will communicate that more openly from now on and we urge the unions and action groups to do so as well. Why?
Firstly, the staff and students in solidarity with Palestine are right! Dutch society and academia are complicit. We are not going to argue a case that has been argued time and time again by those much more knowledgeable on the subject. If you want to know, start here:
https://www.dutchscholarsforpalestine.nl/
Secondly, this thing about keeping causes separate is activist illiteracy. Plurality is a part of protest and solidarity, and what’s more these cases are obviously related. Not only does the government mention defense as a reason for the cuts all the time, for example on November 26th during the parliamentary debate about education funding. The PVV is also pretty open about the fact that they want to punish universities for their Palestine protests. It is Wilders’ perception of Israel as ethnostate that he wants to model the Netherlands after, as Merijn Oudenampsen argues. These budget cuts AND the impediments on our right to protest are far-right attacks on academia as a vital pillar of our open and democratic society (see Gaard).
Lastly, if we compromise on our ideals to save our own skin, far-right figures have us where they want us. It’s a descent into moral ambiguity, which they will point out as hypocrisy. We will lose our true allies by appealing to those who want to exclude them. It is as we have said, we will not win on one issue by manufacturing consent over the other. Rather, our silence will keep us hostage. When we start policing the Palestine solidarity movement, we become a white powerhouse, determining what is acceptable and/or effective and what is not. Just because one issue is more important to us, does not mean it is to others. Forcing others to focus on the ‘larger goals’, which are just our own interests, is power, not strategy and definitely not solidarity. We know this all too well, because we were once teachers on temporary contracts, advocating for good contracts and social safety, being urged to focus on ‘adequate funding for Dutch universities’. We didn’t listen then, and look at us now, being partners of a major coalition fighting the budget cuts. However, we are fully aware that for those in solidarity with Palestine, for others, stopping the budget cuts is a subservient aim to stopping the deliberate and endless murder of children, the destruction of the very memory of a people, the rapes, the famine, all that is unspeakable. We can’t ask them to shut up about it. It’s wrong. We can’t say ‘let’s talk about this after we’ve reached our goals’. Their goals should be our goal. Solidarity should always be our goal.
0.7 will strive for those goals more explicitly going forward. Just to be clear, we are happy to remain in the coalition. Please don’t ask us to become a Palestine advocacy group, because we are not limited to that one topic. Democratization will be our major topic going forward, which includes workers’ rights, which includes the budget cuts, which includes Palestine.
In solidarity,