Academics against Israeli Aggression on Lebanon and Gaza

While the United States government applauds the collective punishment of already vulnerable populations, we U.S.-based academics stand together to condemn the atrocities being committed by the U.S.-funded and armed Israeli military against the peoples of Lebanon and Palestine. Scholars based outside of the United States are also welcome to sign this letter as an expression of their support.

The brutal bombing and invasion of Gaza (whose people have never escaped the torment of Israeli occupation despite official Israeli withdrawal) and of Lebanon and are acts of Israeli state terrorism. Along with the devastating U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the current U.S.-Israeli threat to Syria and Iran, Israels escalation indicates another terrifying example of the heightened reliance on military force by both these powers in their ongoing struggle for hegemony in the Middle East.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed in Lebanon. Scores are missing. Latest reports put the number of refugees at half a million. The attacks on Lebanons infrastructure power stations, factories, bridges, and ports will take decades to rebuild. The people of Lebanon are already weary from reconstructing their country after years of civil war and the last ruinous Israeli invasion in 1982.

In Gaza the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen. Hundreds have been killed. Water treatment plants, greenhouses, bridges, and homes have been the major targets of Israeli bombs in Operation Summer Rain, the code name for the latest Israeli military invasion of Gaza that began on 27 June 2006.

There is no military solution to the current crisis. War and occupation threaten all life in the region and around the worldand will never bring security to anyone. We call for an immediate cease-fire against Lebanon, an end to the occupation of Palestine, and the release of Palestinian and Lebanese political prisoners in Israeli jails.

Given the vacuum of political leadership from the governments of the world in the face of U.S. and Israeli intransigence, we feel it is incumbent on ordinary citizens to organize and support peaceful means for bringing economic and political pressure on Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories. It is urgent that individuals and non-governmental groups apply such means until Israel fully complies with international law and respects the fundamental human rights of all people.

While we unequivocally condemn the killing of civilians in Israel, it must be recognized that Israel's destructive and expansionist policies are primarily to blame for the seemingly perpetual "Middle East crisis. To call Israeli atrocities in Gaza and Lebanon simply a disproportionate response helps justify Israeli war crimes by making Israel the victim and obscuring both the short and long-term sources of this catastrophic violence.

Silence is a form of complicity with the war crimes being committed by the state of Israel. Business as usual should not continue in the U.S. academy or elsewhere while people experience the emotional, physical, and psychic terror of the Israeli military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.