Report criticises Leipzig University links with Israel

A group of students and staff members of Leipzig University have demanded that their institution suspend cooperation with its Israeli partners until they “recognise the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” and “end all forms of complicity in violating Palestinian rights”.

They have issued a report, Upholding Ethical Responsibility and Ending Complicity in Genocide, Apartheid and Occupation: Report on Leipzig University´s Cooperations with Israeli Institutions, which calls for the “suspension of institutional cooperations, not for the exclusion of Israeli researchers based on their identity or nationality”.

The report maintains that “German universities, and Leipzig University in particular, have a moral, ethical and legal duty under international law to suspend ties with Israeli institutions complicit in the occupation and genocide” and warns that “continued cooperation amounts to complicity in crimes against humanity”.

Among its academic activities with Israel, Leipzig University entertains a number of student exchange programmes in the Erasmus+ context. It also runs several research projects, focusing, for example, on archaeological and historical issues, with five of Israel’s 10 universities.

Roles in occupation

The report, presented by Students for Palestine Leipzig, is not concerned with the contents of these activities but highlights the role the institutions Leipzig is cooperating with play in the occupation of Palestine.

For instance, it accuses Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ) of breaching international agreements on cultural and intellectual property by appropriating thousands of publications in Palestinian West Jerusalem neighbourhoods. And it takes issue with HUJ collaborating with the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), for example, in intelligence training.

The report further refers to an IDF campus housing vital elements of the Gaza campaign having been set up adjacent to Ben-Gurion University (BGU) to facilitate cooperation with this institution.

Other examples given of institutions being integrated in the occupation of Palestine and being in breach of international agreements include the University of Haifa (UH) playing a key role in promoting Jewish settlements in Galilee and running a master’s programme for the IDF and Israel’s intelligence services.

Tel Aviv University (TAU), meanwhile, is said to have links with Israel’s security and military sector, and the report claims that Bar-Ilan University (BIU) conducts illegal archaeological excavations on Palestinian land.

“Given that Israeli universities are embedded in the Israeli political system and have put their research and resources at the disposal of the government and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to expand the illegal occupation and commit a genocide in Gaza,” the report concludes, “institutional cooperation with these universities amounts to aid and assistance in breaches of peremptory norms of international law”.

It further argues that suspending collaboration in such circumstances is of particular importance in Germany, since the commitment of its Basic Law to international law is enshrined in Article 25 of the Constitution.

University of Leipzig position

The University of Leipzig states that its scientists and scholars seek an optimum of exchange with colleagues from all over the world in discussing and working on important topics, which is why it is retaining partnerships promoting exchange with Israeli and Palestinian universities.

The Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (HRK – German Rectors’ Conference) has declared that it firmly rejects boycotts of Israeli academics and institutions. “As an HRK member, we share this view,” the university emphasises.

Indeed, the university argues, academic collaboration with Israel has to be stepped up, particularly with regard to solidarity and maintaining academic discourse. At the same time, collaborative programmes can foster efforts seeking exchange and reconciliation.

“Calls for boycotts won’t solve the conflict,” the university states. “In fact, many scholars and scientists in Israel are strengthening the debate on the peace process in the Near East.”

Criticism from Jewish lecturers

The Students for Palestine Leipzig report has been heavily criticised by Netzwerk Jüdischer Hochschullehrender in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz (NJH – the Network of Jewish Lecturers in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland).

In an open letter to Leipzig University rector Eva Inés Obergfell, NJH board members Julia Bernstein, Roglit Ishlay and Ilja Kogan refer to the report’s demand that “Israeli institutions distance themselves from the alleged genocide” as “obviously absurd, since one cannot distance oneself from a genocide which never took place”.

The NJH is particularly concerned about the report’s implications concerning getting rid of the “Apartheid Wall” enclosing Palestinian areas and Palestinian refugees’ right to return.

It claims that the report’s demands here are “tantamount to calling for the destruction of Israel in its present form” and therefore views it as “a pathetic anti-Semitic effort to delegitimise and isolate Israel which has no place in a university in the 21st century”.