ERIS members are collecting and listing below statements, reading lists, petitions, and open letters with reference to the Palestine/Israel conflict. Content is continuously updated.
Summary
Academic societies statements
Academic networks, artists, and activists' statements
Petitions and open letters
International Organizations' statements and coverage
Reading list
Blogs
Teach-in and videos
Reading lists by academic societies, journalists and activists
Academic societies statements
• The Italian Society for Middle Eastern Studies SeSaMO Statement (in Italian): Dichiarazione del Comitato per la libertà accademica di SeSaMO, 17 ott 2023
• Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Board Statement on Palestine and Israel, 16 October 2023
• Statement from British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) on the Attack on Free Speech on UK Campuses, 14 October 2023
Academic networks, artists, and activists' statements
• A Letter: The atmosphere of fear at Cornell University must end. After attacks on a faculty member over comments about Gaza, faculty and students call on Cornell to take action, Al Jazeera, 21 Nov 2023.
• Scholars at Risk Ireland issue Statement regarding the ongoing conflict in Israel/Palestine. Statement on threats to members of academic communities arising out of the ongoing conflict in Israel/Palestine
• London School of Economics branch of the University & College Union. Statement on Israel-Gaza Conflict and Academic Freedom, 17 October 2023
• Statement from Artists for Palestine UK, 17 October 2023
• Statement from the Decolonial, Postcolonial, & Anticolonial Studies Special interest group, part of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), in support and solidarity with Palestine.
• Statement by Faculty for Justice in Palestine at NYU (Google doc)
• Statement on X by British International Studies Association (BISA), Colonial/ Postcolonial/ Decolonial Working Group (CPD) BISA, 16 October 2023
• Statement by scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies warn of potential genocide in Gaza, TWAIL Review, 15 October 2023
• Statement on X by Scholar Strike Canada condemning Canadian University Administrators and the Western media for their ongoing Threats against Scholars and Students in Solidarity with Palestinian People, 14 October 2023
• Statement by Dutch Scholars, Palestine. A letter of solidarity; a call for action, 14 October 2023
• Statement by CUNY Jewish Law Students Association on Events in Occupied Palestine, 10 October 2023
Petitions and open letters
• Open Letter to President Biden: we call for a ceasefire now. Judith Butler, Masha Gessen, Rachel Kushner, Ben Lerner, V (formerly Eve Ensler) and others. We are a group of Jewish American writers, artists and academics. We oppose what the Israeli government is doing with US assistance. 19 October 2023
• Open Letter on the Situation in Palestine by artists and writers based in the EU, the UK and North America, London Review of Books, 18 October 2023
• Open Letter to the Governments of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and all EU member states and EU institutions on Israel/Palestine and the Gaza crisis, by a group of researchers, policy analysts, and experts with deep commitments to and expertise on the Middle East and North Africa (Google doc)
• Letter by PhD candidates affiliated with the University of Amsterdam, Support Palestine, end occupation (Google doc), 15 October 2023
• Open letter by artists & academics in Canada, in Support of Palestine
• Open Letter from Birzeit University in Palestine to International Academic Institutions: “Do Not be Silent about Genocide”, 15 October 2023
• Statement and letter by PhD Community of the Department of Conflict & Development of Ghent University, Belgium (Google doc), 10 October 20230
• Jewish Voice for peace against genocide of Palestinians
International Organizations' statements and coverage
Human Rights Watch
• Sari Bashi, Why Israel’s Gaza Evacuation Order is So Alarming, 16 October 2023
• Sari Bashi, Questions and Answers: The Humanitarian Catastrophe in Gaza. International Law Obligations are Non-Reciprocal: One War Crime Doesn’t Excuse Another. Published in: The New Yorker, 16 October 2023
• Tirana Hassan, Israel/Palestine: Letter to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, 13 October 2023
• Sari Bashi, Nowhere to Go in Gaza. Today’s evacuation order from the Israeli military directed over a million Gazan civilians to abandon their homes with no safe passage. Published in The New York Review, 13 October 2023
Amnesty International
• Ban on protests supporting Palestinians is a disproportionate attack on the right to protest in France, 16 October 2023
• Israel/OPT: Appalling Gaza “evacuation order” must be rescinded by Israel immediately, 13 October 2023
• Israel/OPT: Israel must lift illegal and inhumane blockade on Gaza as power plant runs out of fuel, 12 October 2023
• American Red Cross Statement on the Conflict in Israel and Gaza, 20 October 2023
Reading list
Please find after this short list further links to more extensive reading lists prepared by academic societies and activists
• Ben Gidley, Daniel Mang, Daniel Randall, "For a consistently democratic and internationalist left", 10 December 2023, https://leftrenewal.net/.
• Seyla Benhabib, An Open Letter To My Friends Who Signed “Philosophy for Palestine”, Medium, account The Hannah Arendt Center, 4th November 2023. Link: https://medium.com/amor-mundi/an-open-letter-to-my-friends-who-signed-philosophy-for-palestine-0440ebd665d8.
• Isaac Chotiner, The Gaza-ification of the West Bank. As the war in Gaza escalates, so, too, has the forcible displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank. Is Israel’s approach to the two regions linked?, The New Yorker, 1st November 2023.
• Natalie Tocci, Europe’s chaotic response to the Israel-Hamas war reveals how weak it is – to its enemies’ delight, The Guardian, 30 October 2023
• Philippe Lazzarini, I run the UN agency for Palestine refugees. History will judge us all if there is no ceasefire in Gaza, The Guardian, 26 October 2023
• Anna Gordon, What It’s Like to Be an Israeli Peace Activist During the Israel-Hamas War, Time, 24 October 2023
• Gilbert Achcar, Two Gaza Scenarios: Greater Israel vs. Oslo. A ground invasion appears imminent, but what is the political endgame? New Lines Magazine, 23 October 2023
• Alon-Lee Green, I’m an Israeli, but I believe inflicting more harm on Gaza will not bring a solution, The Guardian, 22 October 2023
• Roger Cohen, Peace, a Forgotten Word, Renews its Claim in the Holy Land, The New York Times, 22 October 2022
• Peter Beinart, ‘What’s our common language?’ Jewish and Palestinian thinkers on where the left goes from here. Ahmed Moor and Joshua Leifer consider the future of the movement for Palestinian freedom, The Guardian, 21 October 2023. Condensed and edited version of authors conversation, originally held on Beinart's Substack.
• Francesco Strazzari, Le Chimere della vittoria sui due fronti vicini, il Manifesto, 21 October 2023 (in Italian)
• Mosab Abu Toha, The View from My Window in Gaza. Two days before Israel escalated attacks in the Gaza Strip, my family bought some bread. After we evacuated, I biked home to get it, The New Yorker, 20 October 2023.
• International Crisis Group, A Ceasefire in Gaza. Whoever bears responsibility for the blast killing hundreds in a hospital, the toll of the Gaza war is far too high. Western leaders should join calls for a pause to save lives, prevent fighting from spreading and give diplomacy a chance, 18 October 2023
• Judith Butler, The Compass of Mourning, London Review of Books, Vol. 45. No. 20, 19 October 2023
• Jadaliyya Co-Editors, The War on Palestine, Jadaliyya, 14 October 2023
• Marc Lynch, The humanitarian, strategic, and moral catastrophe of Israel's looming invasion of Gaza, Abu Aardvark's MENA Academy, 13 October 2023
• Amjad Iraqi, A psychological barrier has just been shattered in Israel-Palestine. Hamas’ bloody assault and the ensuing Israeli onslaught on Gaza have been described as a ‘game changer.’ This isn’t an overstatement, +972 Magazine, 11 October, 2023
• Isaac Chotiner, Where the Palestinian Political Project Goes from Here. For decades, Hamas and Israel have maintained a violent equilibrium. How will the war change that paradigm?, The New Yorker, October 11, 2023
• Interviews with Toufic Haddad and Ilan Pappé, Israel’s crisis and the Palestinian resistance, International Socialism. A Quarterly Review of Socialist Theory, Issue 180, 5 October 2023
• Leila Farsakh, The Question of Palestinian Statehood and the Future of Decolonization, MERIP, 302, Spring 2022
• The Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC), Palestine Action Toolkit (open access on issuu)
Blogs
• Institute for Palestine Studies, Blog reporting and press coverage
Teach-in, podcasts and videos
• Hajar A, Electrical Gaza 2015, uploaded on YouTube 3rd November 2023 https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=_FLKg7x9iFM.
• The Lede, The Day after Hamas. With Gilbert Achcar and Faisal al Yafai, 27 October 2023. Podcast
• Jadaliyya, Gaza In Context Teach-In: First Session, Series of teach-in "Gaza 101", YouTube video. More info here.
Reading lists by academic societies, journalists and activists
• "A Palestine Reading List. A collection of writings from Palestine and across the diaspora", by Words Without Borders. The home for international literature.
• "Palestinian Feminist Reading List. A list highlighting Palestinian feminist writers and resources". Developed by Gayatri Sethi (Desi Book Aunty) and Karla J. Strand with the assistance of Susannah Aziz, Susan Muaddi Darraj, and Hannah Moushabeck.
• The Italian Society for Middle Eastern Studies SeSaMO: Focus on Palestine, a reading list (multilingual)
• A reading list offering a brief primer on the radical Black feminist political mandate, which is solidarity with Palestine
• Maddalena Fragnito, No Justice No Peace list, including podcasts (multilingual)