Historians Trampling History (in Gaza)

Since there isn’t any evidence to prove Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, what’s the next best thing? Invent a new kind of “cide” and see how many scholars are gullible enough, or malevolent enough, to go along with it.

That, it seems, is the strategy of former PLO official Karma Nabulsi, who recently invented the term “scholasticide” to describe damage Israel has caused to college campuses in Gaza. From 1977 to 1990, Nabulsi was an official representative of a terrorist organization that murdered or maimed countless Israelis (and many Americans), and sought Israel’s destruction. Now she teaches at the University of Oxford.

Nabulsi’s strategy is working. By a vote of 428 to 88, members of the American Historical Association last week adopted a resolution accusing Israel of committing “scholasticide” through an “intentional effort” to damage universities and other schools and thereby “obliterate Gaza’s educational system.”

There is not a stitch of evidence demonstrating any such intent by the Israelis. Lack of evidence ordinarily would stop an historian dead in his or her tracks. But in this case, the facts, sources, and standards upon which historians ordinarily rely were thrown out the window. By a large majority, those who are supposed to be the gatekeepers of the historical record have embraced a libel.

The damage to college campuses in Gaza is not the result of an Israeli plot. It’s the result of Hamas using those campuses as operational centers for terrorism and storehouses for weapons.

In November 2023, Israeli soldiers found weapons and other terrorist equipment in Gaza’s Al-Quds University. The following month, Israeli forces discovered explosives and rockets in Al-Azhar University, in northern Gaza, as well as a half mile-long tunnel under the university’s yard. The site resembled “a military base,” a sergeant told the New York Times; only “if you look closely, you can see it’s a university.” In January, troops searching the campus of Islamic University, in Khan Younis, discovered hundreds of mortars, explosive devices, grenades, AK-47 assault rifles, ammunition, Hamas flags, and safes stuffed with cash in the classrooms.

In February, Israeli troops found a tunnel underneath Israa University, in Zahra City. In June, they discovered quantities of weapons on the campus of the University College of Applied Sciences, in central Gaza; the army said Hamas used the college “as a command and control center.” Soon after that, terrorists in a building at Islamic University launched anti-tank missiles at Israeli forces.

None of that information is mentioned in the AHA resolution. In fact, Hamas itself is never mentioned. That’s like describing World War II without mentioning Nazi Germany.

The hypocrisy of the accusers is egregious. While these historians denounce Israel, they have said nothing when Israeli universities have been victimized by genocidal terrorists.

Sapir Academic College, the largest public college in Israel, is just a few miles from the Gaza border. The only thing saving it from mass bloodshed during the Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023, was that the campus was closed and nearly empty because of the Simchat Torah holiday. Nonetheless, terrorists cut through its fences and shot at the guard booths and buildings.

Dozens of Sapir faculty members, students and staff who reside near the campus were murdered, wounded, or kidnapped. Some are still being held hostage in Gaza. Yet the AHA has not protested.

More than 1,000 Sapir students and nearly 300 staff members and their families became refugees. The AHA has said nothing about them.

That was not the first Palestinian Arab violence against Israeli universities. In 2002, terrorists bombed the Hebrew University campus, in Jerusalem, killing nine—five of them Americans—and wounding more than 100. A previous bombing at Hebrew University, in 1969, left thirty-six students injured. The AHA said nothing about either of those attacks.

History shows that victims of aggression have sometimes damaged university campuses in the course of defending themselves, as in World War II. The Allies’ bombing of Hamburg in July 1943 caused major damage to the University of Hamburg. Allied bombers destroyed the main building on the campus of Munich’s Ludwig Maximillian University in July 1944. Allied strikes on Bonn in October 1944 completely destroyed the main building at the University of Bonn. More than three-fourths of the buildings of the Technical University of Aachen were leveled in that month’s bombings as well. The University of Greifswald was so badly damaged by the Allies that it had to be rebuilt on a different site. The University of Rostock’s medical clinic, dermatological clinic, and hygiene institute were completely destroyed in Allied bombings, and additional buildings were badly damaged.

The proceedings of the AHA’s annual meetings during World War II do not mention any resolutions condemning President Franklin D. Roosevelt or Prime Minister Winston Churchill for damaging German universities. One wonders if the current generation of AHA members would have viewed those events differently. Would they have pointed an accusing finger at the Allies, just as they now unjustly heap blame on Israel? Would they have branded FDR and Churchill guilty of “scholasticide” ?

Unless the AHA leadership intervenes, the “scholasticide” resolution will soon go to the association’s full membership for ratification. If adopted, the new official position of the AHA would contravene its own mission statement. Instead of “promoting historical work and historical thinking in public life,” the AHA would be on record as discarding historical thinking in favor of extremist political posturing.

According to the AHA’s by-laws, however, its leaders could step in and veto the resolution. To preserve the association’s credibility and to remain true to its mission, they should do so.