JVP Academic Council Condemns the Military Invasion of Birzeit University

The Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace* condemns the Israeli military’s January 6, 2026 invasion of Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank. A swarm of Israeli army vehicles and soldiers entered the campus unlawfully, firing guns, throwing grenades, and spraying tear gas at faculty, staff, and students. Around a dozen students sustained injuries and were hospitalized. The Israeli military deliberately sought to arrest student activists during a student union protest in support of political prisoners and during hours in which the university was filled with staff, faculty, and students seeking to keep the educational institution working.  This flagrant violation of the university’s autonomy and self governance and students’ right to education was accompanied by the destruction of university property, spreading the fear of military violence throughout the campus. 

This appalling action violates international law, including the Geneva Conventions, which protects higher educational institutions against military and police incursion [Fourth Geneva Convention 50; First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions 52; see also Safe Schools Declaration]. We recognize this incursion as yet another assault on Palestinian education, operating in tandem with full scholasticide in Gaza, and understood as part of the ongoing genocidal attack on the Palestinian people.

As the Israeli state continues to seize Palestinian land illegally and dispossess increasing numbers of Palestinians of their homes, we join with those who deplore the occupation by calling upon the Israeli government to heed the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) ruling in 2024. The ICJ held that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories violates international law, and called upon Israel to end the occupation “as rapidly as possible” and make full reparations for its “internationally wrongful acts.” We regard the incursion into Birzeit University as an intensification of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and of the violent history of dispossession and destruction of Palestinian institutions which has been Zionism’s mandate for more than a century. We call for resisting this continuous and amplified occupation by affirming the BDS movement which seeks to hold the Israeli state and its own educational institutions accountable for their complicity in occupation and genocide.

The attack on Palestinian educational institutions is part of a longstanding Zionist attempt to erase Palestinian history and knowledge production; it is an attack on Palestinians’ right to imagine and craft their future – and it must end. The right to education is indispensable for the Palestinian people; its violation strikes at the heart of the infrastructures of Palestinian life, all of which are invaluable.  We join in solidarity with faculty, staff, and students at Birzeit and throughout Palestine who have every right to express their views by invoking rights of assembly, protest, and expressions and to pursue an education free of Israeli military repression, without the threat of imprisonment, injury, and death. We urge our fellow academics and scholarly associations to express solidarity with our colleagues under attack by adhering to the call for academic boycott issued by a unified Palestinian civil society, including by students and faculty at Birzeit University.

The Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Council is a network of scholars dedicated to furthering JVP’s vision and values. Drawing upon our shared commitment to both progressive Jewish values and Palestinian liberation, we organize in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle in educational and academic settings. We draw upon our skills as scholars, educators, and writers to develop critical analysis of contemporary censorship on Palestine. We oppose the deployment of the charge of antisemitism to censor or criminalize speech critical of the State of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.  We defend employment rights, academic freedom, and rights of association within higher education and confirm the core values of Jewish Voice for Peace.