Israeli Academics Accuse Their Government of Genocide in Gaza

In a rare and shocking stance within Israeli society, over one thousand academics, lecturers, and higher-education staff members today (Monday) issued an urgent appeal demanding an immediate end to what they called the “criminal” war on the Gaza Strip. They accused the Netanyahu government of committing “crimes against humanity” that have rendered Gaza uninhabitable.

The statement, released by a coalition of university professors, researchers, and administrators, noted that Israeli authorities violated the ceasefire agreed on March 18. Since that breach, airstrikes have claimed approximately 3,000 additional Palestinian civilian lives, bringing the death toll in Gaza to over 53,000, including 15,000 children. By contrast, Israeli fatalities during the conflict have totaled only 41, among them former hostages held by Palestinian resistance groups.

The signatories held their government “morally and socially responsible” for these atrocities, pointing out that the bombardment has targeted hospitals, schools, universities, and other higher-education institutions in Gaza, systematically destroying academic infrastructure and crippling the education system.

The academics emphasized the need to break the silence and refuse complicity with the “official killing machine,” calling on Israeli universities to raise their voices clearly before students and the wider local and international community, and to call things by their true names free from military propaganda. They also urged higher-education institutions to assume their institutional responsibilities in confronting this “catastrophic reality” and to stop using curricula as an ideological or moral cover for the brutal assault.

This unprecedented shift in the discourse of Israel’s academic elite reflects the depth of the moral crisis and growing internal division in the country, where even some of its intellectual pillars are refusing to remain silent amid what they view as ongoing massacres of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Against this wave of internal condemnation, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government appears more exposed than ever to mounting domestic and international pressure, with calls intensifying for war-crimes prosecutions.