Killing of Gaza’s academics amounts to ‘educide’ say campaigners

Wesam Amer, dean of the Faculty of Communication and Languages at the Islamic University of Gaza, was evacuated from the strip in November. 

He tries to keep track of his colleagues left in Gaza, but frequent blackouts make that difficult.

“Many of my colleagues are still there... or displaced to Rafah in the south,” Amer, a Fulbright scholar and visiting researcher at Harvard, told MEE. “Some have preferred to stay in the rubble of their homes.” 

His university shut down after it was bombed on 11 October, and a number of his colleagues, including the university’s president, Professor Sufian Tayeh, and former president, Dr Said al-Zubda, have been killed in Israeli air strikes.

Rights groups have condemned Israel’s targeting of Gaza’s academic community and infrastructure as deliberate and tantamount to a war crime.

Read more: Killing of Gaza’s academics amounts to ‘educide,’ say campaigners