It’s ALL destroyed’: Scottish university’s twin in Gaza lies in ruins
THE Islamic University of Gaza – which has a twinning programme with Glasgow University – lies in ruins.
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has destroyed every one of its four universities, Gaza City’s main public library, countless bookshops, publishing houses, and 352 Palestinian schools.
South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, set to be brought to the International Court of Justice on Thursday, states among other allegations that Israel is destroying Gaza’s future academic and cultural potential – with 4037 students and 209 teachers and educational staff among the dead.
Some of my colleagues have now been killed by Israel or missing along with countless students, or simply out of contact. We worked on academic peace-building projects, on intercultural communication, language pedagogy, arts, cultural heritage & gender-based violence. It’s ALL destroyed.
Bodies of scholars, trained medical workers, and students lie decomposing under rubble, or in mass graves, years and years of the painstaking work of research and scholarship.
South Africa’s legal filing noted that leading Palestinian academics who have been killed so far in the war between Israel and Hamas include the President of the Islamic University and award-winning physicist Sufian Tayeh, former president and professor of immunology and virology Muhammad Eid Shabir and poet and professor Refaat Alareer.
He was beloved by his students who he taught to become writers, poets, story-writers, and journalists, he was passionate about poetry and folktales and ensuring the survival of the intangible cultural heritage of Palestine.
Phipps told The National that she gets up every morning unable to fully comprehend the destruction.
15 years of our work and that right now all is literally in ruins. I write to my still surviving colleagues every day knowing every communication could be our last, Phipps said.
It is like being with people on death row who are entirely innocent, caught up in a frenzy of destruction of everything it means to be Palestinian.
It is beyond anything I have ever experienced in my 29-year career as an academic.
