By || Undersigned Franklin & Marshall Faculty
This statement represents the views of the undersigned faculty and reflects the views of the undersigned faculty alone, not the Franklin and Marshall Faculty as a whole.
We, members of the Franklin and Marshall College community, condemn the ongoing attacks on the Palestinian people in Gaza by the Israeli armed forces, which represent the latest chapter of a nearly-fifteen-year blockade that has transformed the territory into a prison for its two million inhabitants, most of whom descend from refugees expelled and driven from their homes during the Nakba (1947–49) that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel.
We condemn the displacement of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem — part of a decades long campaign of warfare, expulsion, unequal residency rights, and discriminatory planning policies that advances the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem.
We mourn all loss of life. We also refuse the “two-sides” and “evenhandedness” narrative that ignores and conceals the meaningful differences between Israel — one of the most heavily militarized states in the world that receives $3.8 billion in military aid annually from the United States — and a Palestinian population resisting occupation and oppression. The story of children killed in the most recent Gaza attacks alone reveals the absurd inaccuracy of the “evenhandedness” narrative.
We stand by Human Rights Watch and the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem in calling Israel’s systemic discrimination and violence by its proper name: Apartheid. The brutal system that controls Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is ideologically founded upon Jewish supremacy, rules over the lives of Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel alike, and is practically committed to territorial theft from Palestinians who continue to resist physical removal and existential erasure.
We salute the bravery and will-to-survival of Palestinians — in the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and within Israel — as they resist the violence of the Israeli military, settler militias, and lynch mobs, and as they find the strength to resist daily humiliations even when not faced with outright violence. We recognize, as they do, that peace with justice in Palestine/Israel is not possible under conditions of military occupation and unending settler-colonial expansionism.
We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their indigenous liberation struggle against forced dispossession by the Israeli settler colonial state. For decades, the ostensible peace process has perpetuated Israel’s land grabs and the violent displacement of Palestinians under the fictions of military necessity and a perpetually postponed “final status” negotiation. A single example is telling: of water resources under the West Bank, Israel by force of military occupation takes 83%, much of it for illegal settlers, leaving Palestinians 17%.
We wholeheartedly endorse the Palestine and Praxis open letter and call to action, affirming our own commitments to speaking out in defense of the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people as well as foundational principles of scholarly integrity and academic freedom.
We stand in solidarity with Palestinians and their Jewish Israeli allies, understanding that their struggle is fundamentally entwined with many other movements for equality, justice, and liberation both within the United States and around the world. We join together in rededicating ourselves to working against all forms of racism, colonialism, and injustice at Franklin and Marshall, in the classroom, on campus, and beyond.
Signed,
Sylvia Alajaji, Music
Douglas Anthony, History
Robert J. Barnett, Classics
Antonio Callari, Economics
Stephen Cooper, Religious Studies
Shari Goldberg, English
Van Gosse, History
Zeshan Ismat, Geosciences
Katherine McClelland, Sociology
Stephanie McNulty, Government
Jorge Mena-Ali, Biology
John Modern, Religious Studies
Padmini Mongia, English
Judith Mueller, English
Richard Reitan, History
Leanne Roncolato, Economics
Laura Shelton, History
James Strick, STS and Earth and Environment
SherAli Tareen, Religious Studies
Ryan Trainor, Physics
Eric Usner, American Studies
Mark Villegas, American Studies
Carla Willard, American Studies
Eiman Zein-Elabdin, Economics