An open letter addressed to the university’s vice-chancellor Dame Nancy Rothwell said the Israeli university was “deeply implicated” in the May bombardment, which martyred 260 Palestinians, including 66 children.
The authors of the letter, signed by 224 people as of Wednesday, said the University of Manchester’s continued relationship with Tel Aviv University is in violation of its commitment to oppose racist violence and oppression.
“Not only does the University of Manchester fail to speak up for Palestinians and heed their call for material support, but we also forge a strategic partnership with Tel Aviv University, an institution deeply implicated in their violent oppression,” the letter said.
Around 1,900 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli bombings in May and close to 60,000 were displaced in the violence.
The attacks on Gaza came amid police and far-right violence against Palestinian citizens of the Zionist entity, as well as a deadly crackdown on protesters in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem Al-Quds.
Tensions came to a head in early May after Israeli settler attempts to appropriate Palestinian property in the East Al-Quds neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and an Israeli assault against Palestinian worshippers protesting evictions at Al-Aqsa Mosque during the holiest night of the Islamic calendar.
Tel Aviv University is home to the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a think-tank close to the Zionist military establishment, which has helped define the occupying regime’s military philosophy when it comes to Palestinians and neighboring Arab states.
The Dahiya doctrine, named after a Beirut neighborhood nearly destroyed by the Zionist regime during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, encourages the destruction of civilian infrastructure as a supposed deterrence to groups taking up arms against Israel.
In a paper no longer hosted by the INSS website but cited by the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Gabi Siboni, director of the Military and Strategic Affairs
program at INSS says: Israel “will have to respond disproportionately in order to make it abundantly clear that” the regime “will accept no attempt to disrupt the calm currently prevailing along its borders.”
Alongside other Zionist universities, Tel Aviv University is also heavily involved in arms research, in collaboration with the occupying regime’s arms manufacturers and the Israeli military.
A 2009 publication issued by the university’s marketing department lauds the institution’s role in developing technology used by the Israeli army.
Isaac Ben-Israel, a former general who heads the Israeli Space Agency and Tel Aviv University’s Security Studies program, is quoted as saying: “Military [Research and Development] in Israel would not exist without the universities. They carry out all the basic scientific investigation, which is then developed either by defense industries or the army.”
The University of Manchester’s website currently lists collaborative research projects with Tel Aviv University involving the schools of Natural Sciences, Medicine and Environment, Education and Development.
Officials at the university have previously been criticized after technology developed by the institution ended up being shared with Zionist arms manufacturers.
Nanene, a graphene-based material developed by Manchester researchers, which has uses in aircraft production, is being purchased by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).
IAI produces missiles and drones used by the Zionist regime’s military, as well as the Iron Dome anti-missile system.
One signatory to the letter, quoted by the Middle East Eye, said: “In our climate of renewed attention to racial oppression, it is glaring when an institution claims anti-racism in word but not in deed.”
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