We will not be silent in the face of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, and we hope we will see a free Palestine in our lifetimes. As scientists we can do more to support this goal and our community; we will take the following actions and encourage other labs to do the same:
- Participate in the BDS movement, including boycotting the following companies:
- Puma: Sponsors the Israel Football Association
- Sabra: A joint venture between PepsiCo and the Strauss Group, an Israeli food company that provides financial support to the Israeli army
- SodaStream: Actively complicit in Israel’s policy of displacing indigenous Bedouin-Palestinian citizens
- Ahava: Has its cosmetics production site, visitor center, and main store in an illegal Israeli settlement
- HP: Hewlett Packer helps run the biometric ID system Israel uses to restrict Palestinian movement
- Siemens: Siemens is involved in the construction of the EuroAsia Interconnector, benefiting from the Israel-EU trade of electricity produced from fossil fuels
- AXA: invests in Israeli banks
- Support local mobilization efforts demanding that our universities and institutions DIVEST from Israel
- The authors are students and alumni at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign which is part of the University of Illinois System that currently funds the following:
- Boeing partnerships with the Grainger College of Engineering at UIUC
- Aerospace Engineering Department
- Information Trust Institute Department
- Partnerships with israeli universities
- Hebrew University of Jerusalem
- Links to Elbit Systems, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon
- Investments in BlackRock
- UIC and UIUC partnerships with Caterpillar (CAT)
- UIC Partnership with the Illinois Defense Manufacturing Consortium
- Boeing partnerships with the Grainger College of Engineering at UIUC
- The authors are students and alumni at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign which is part of the University of Illinois System that currently funds the following:
- Continue to educate yourself and others around you in the face of misinformation. To help with this, check out the learning resources below:
The ongoing genocide in Palestine spans generations, beginning with the forced removal of upward of 700,000 Palestinians during the Nakba between 1947 and 1949 [1]. This was a result of colonial policy that encouraged and profited off of the creation of a settler-apartheid state [2]. Since October 7th, 2023, we have seen houses, hospitals, and churches in Gaza, Jenin and the West Bank indiscriminately bombed. Thousands have been killed. Over 60,000 people have been injured. Gaza has been cut off from accessing food, water, and medical supplies. Doctors are forced to perform c-sections and amputations without anesthesia [3]. People are literally digging themselves out of the rubble to share their pain with the world [4].
As employees and students at public universities on land removal states at land grant universities in the United States of America, we understand our complicity in the settler colonial system and thus our responsibility to work towards decolonization. We do not support this country’s continued commitment to funding violence in Palestine, Puerto Rico, Kashmir, the Philippines, Hawai’i, Guam, Mexico, and all over the world. We realize that decolonization requires global solidarity and standing with Palestinians as they fight for their lives. Our institutions are directly complicit. The authors of this statement are students and alumni of the University of Illinois, and we stand with the hundreds of students demanding our university DIVEST from weapons manufacturers who profit from genocide [5]. We must hold our institutions accountable for their role in the imperial project.
As scientists, we must recognize that our scientific systems were created to justify and help fuel imperial goals. Scientists are responsible for the design and manufacturing of weapons such as white phosphorus, the ‘hellfire’ missile, and the iron dome. We in science and technology are also responsible for the technology used for biometric surveillance in places like Palestine, Kashmir, and China [6]. Even our genetic ancestry tests are run with the assumption that Palestinians and Jews are biologically distinct, a racist assumption that does not hold up to scrutiny, as it erases the existence of the thousands of Palestinian Jews who have been living in the region since before the Nakba [7]. Many of us are biologists who focus on human genetics, so we understand that historically our discipline has justified genocide through eugenics. People have been raising the alarm about the unethical experimentation, organ theft, and desecration of Palestinian bodies for over twenty years[8]. Today, as we see genocide taking place in Palestine, we cannot stay silent [9]. As anti-colonial scholars, we have studied the tactics being employed by the Israeli state and its Western allies to dehumanize Palestinians, spread misinformation, and divide people. These tactics, most grounded in Orientalist, Islamophobic myths, have been used by colonial states in order to gain power and resources around the world; similar myths have been used to justify oppression in Iraq, Kashmir, and Myanmar, just to name a few [10].
The rampant disinformation fueled by Western media paints this as a “two-sided conflict”. What is actually a fight for justice is delineated as a religious crusade. Colonial powers use communalism to divide and conquer, we have seen this tactic used worldwide [11]. We ask you not to fall prey to it. Islamophobic attacks online, in Gaza, and in the diaspora are becoming rampant. We see anyone standing up for a Free Palestine labeled as terrorists for daring to speak out against colonial forces. Do not forget that people who fight oppressive systems, who stand up to power, and who move for change of the status quo have always been labeled terrorists; think of the Black Panthers, Nelson Mandela, and Angela Davis among many others[12]. We stand with our Jewish friends, students, and colleagues who are grieving and we ask our institutions, the universities, and our government to recognize that our collective grief comes from the same place—the violent actions of the Israeli settler-colonial state[13].
On Settler Colonialism, Genocide, and Race/ism’s role in Shaping Human Genetic Population Structure
Settler colonial racism functions through genocide, exploitation, and thievery, thereby producing the differential distribution of resources and conditions in which colonized peoples live. Given that fact, racism is a human ecological system fashioning the world using Eurocolonial systems of racism and racialization as a post-hoc legitimating rationale to justify colonial domination, exploitation, violence and inequality. The murderous genocidal Israeli occupation of Palestine is not only a demonstration that settler colonialism is a process and not an event, but also a demonstration that racism plays a big role in shaping human biology and genetics and has since its inception. Settler colonial racism IS the pre-existing condition exacerbating every social problem and environmental crisis we see before us. You cannot murder entire familial lines in mere seconds because of bombs and white phosphorus and not also influence allele frequencies of the human species. You are influencing human allele frequencies when you murder entire groups of people. Race/ism has been (and is) shaping human genetic population structure for centuries. As displaced Africans in Turtle Island, Pan-Africanists (Nkrumah-Touréist), Indigenous people to Turtle Island, and settlers to Turtle Island who understand our complicity in systems we need to tear down, we stand in solidarity with all Indigenous peoples and against all agents of European settler colonialism and Zionism. This isn’t up for negotiation. Neither is the fall of settler colonialism. We stand with Palestinians and with many others demanding an immediate and permanent end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. All aid and funding to the Israeli settler occupation forces needs to cease immediately and aid be provided to Palestinians to help them recover and rebuild Palestine.
“Let us form groups of two or five hundred and let each group deal with a colonist.”
– Frantz Omar Fanon
References
[1] “Quick Facts: The Palestinian Nakba (‘Catastrophe’) | IMEU,” accessed October 18, 2023, https://imeu.org/article/quick-facts-the-palestinian-nakba.
[3] “Gaza Crisis: MSF’s Response to the Israel-Gaza War | Doctors Without Borders – USA.” Accessed November 20, 2023. https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/our-response-israel-gaza-war.
[4]Duwaji, Rama. “Trapped for 12 Hours under Rubble in Gaza: One Woman’s Story – The Washington Post,” November 19, 2023.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/19/gaza-rubble-comic/.
[5]“Pro-Palestinian Students Protest U of I Trustees Meeting – CBS Chicago,” November 16, 2023. https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/students-protest-university-of-illinois-israel-palestinians/.
[6] Citations about IRON DOME, HELLFIRE, WHITE PHOSPHORUS
[7]“Blood Brothers: Palestinians and Jews Share Genetic Roots – Science & Health – Haaretz.Com.” Accessed November 20, 2023. https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/2015-10-20/ty-article/palestinians-and-jews-share-genetic-roots/0000017f-dc0e-df9c-a17f-fe1e57730000.; Kwan, Jaqueline. “Mohammed Is Palestinian. Why Does 23andMe Think He’s Egyptian?” Wired UK, September 15, 2021. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/23andme-genetics-palestine.; Rubenberg, Cheryl. Israel and American National Interest: A Critical Examination. Illni books ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.
[8]Jordan News | Latest News from Jordan, MENA. “Israel’s Skin Bank Raises Ethical Concerns on Organ Consent – Jordan News | Latest News from Jordan, MENA,” November 17, 2023. https://www.jordannews.jo/Section-20/Middle-East/Israel-s-skin-bank-raises-ethical-concerns-on-organ-consent-32381; Pulitzer Center. “The Cruel Experiments of Israel’s Arms Industry.” Accessed November 21, 2023. https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/cruel-experiments-israels-arms-industry.;“Israel Took Organs of Dead Without Permission – ABC News.” Accessed November 21, 2023. https://abcnews.go.com/International/israel-harvested-organs-permission-families-dead/story?id=9390407#:~:text=Yehuda%20Hiss%2C%20former%20head%20of,Hiss%20said%20in%20the%20interview.; Black, Ian. “Doctor Admits Israeli Pathologists Harvested Organs without Consent.” The Guardian, December 21, 2009, sec. World news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/21/israeli-pathologists-harvested-organs.
[9] Gregory Stanton, “Ten Stages of Genocide,” Genocide Watch, May 14, 2020.
[10] Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 1st Vintage Books ed (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); Sana Saboowala, “Science and Communalism in South Asia.,” Minerva, In review; “Season 1 — Blowback,” accessed October 18, 2023, https://blowback.show/Season-1.
[11] Saboowala, “Science and Communalism in South Asia.” Medical Humanities. In review; Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India, 2nd ed (New Delhi ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
[12] “US Government Considered Nelson Mandela a Terrorist until 2008,” accessed October 18, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/us-government-considered-nelson-mandela-terrorist-until-2008-flna2d11708787; “Black Panther Party,” Folder, FBI, accessed October 18, 2023, https://vault.fbi.gov/Black%20Panther%20Party%20.
[13] Ali Abunimah, “Israeli Forces Shot Their Own Civilians, Kibbutz Survivor Says,” Text, The Electronic Intifada, October 16, 2023, https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-forces-shot-their-own-civilians-kibbutz-survivor-says/38861.
Authors
Vivian Cheng, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Program for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology
Joshua Diaz, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Anthropology
Shay-Akil, McLean, MA, MA, Ph.D.
Sana Saboowala, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Program for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology
Sahara Zitlali Vilchis, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Anthropology
Signed in Solidarity
Vivian La, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Journalism
*NOTE: This statement is also published on http://www.decolonizeallthescience.com*
Decolonize ALL The Things 