Today’s installment of Chartbook is vital reading for anyone who cares about schools and universities. He starts with the term scholasticide and goes into current instances in Sudan and, on an exponentially more intense level, in Israel. The details are riveting and painful—and also insightful, placing these actions in the context of precious genocides:
As in other cases of scholasticide, this is not just frenzied looting or vandalism in the heat of conflict; we can see pleasure taken in the burning of the enemy’s books and libraries, because the political, cultural value is recognized. In one social media clip, an IDFsoldier standing in the rubble of al-Azhar University says, “To those who say why there is no education in Gaza, we bombed them… Oh, too bad, you’ll not be engineers anymore.” Israeli forces used over 300 mines to destroy the huge al-Israa University, near Gaza City, last January, having first used the building as a military base in the war’s first months.
Tooze draws attention to this interview with Dr. Ahmed Alhussaina, the vice president of al-Israa University. Here’s a selection from the larger quotation:
So many mosques, hundreds of mosques, hundreds of schools. Every single university was hit somehow. Some of them partially damaged, some of them totally destroyed. Schools are all mostly gone. Mosques, hospitals, medical centers. Even, like I said, libraries, the oldest library — Gaza City Library — also was destroyed. I don’t know, what else can you explain [about] this? It is what it is. It is a destruction of everything Palestinian. They want to make Gaza unlivable and they want to destroy its history.
One can know this is happening and still be shocked to remember, to notice again, to grapple again with the immensity of the destruction, the violence, the erasure. Even as we confront attempts to dismantle the state here in the U.S., it’s our tax dollars (under the previous regime) that have bought so many of these bombs.
Most of all, I think this provides another way into understanding and resisting the genocidal actions of Israel. As Tooze puts it,
Folks outside the conflict who have professional attachments to Universities and education have every reason to be horrified and to protest.
