An open letter from mathematicians against the genocide in Gaza

On October 7, 2023, Hamas carried out a terrorist attack in Israel, killing more than 1,200 people out of a population of 9.5 million, including over 800 civilians and at least 33 children, and injuring 5,400 more. The attack also led to the capture of 248 hostages, around 100 of whom are still held in Gaza.

Since then, the Israeli government has launched a response of genocidal violence against Gaza’s Palestinian population, under the eyes of the international community. By late October 2024, identified victims had reached 43,061, including over 13,735 children, 7,216 women, and 3,447 elderly people, with over 100,000 injured, in a population of 2.3 million. Thousands of additional victims remain buried beneath the rubble, uncounted.

The Israeli military is now inflicting upon Palestinian civilians at least the equivalent of an October 7 every ten days, and has done so for more than a year.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has described the situation in Gaza as a “crisis of humanity”. In addition to the heavy toll on civilians, this war has led to the massive destruction of Palestinian civilian infrastructure and has forced 90 percent of Gaza’s population into repeated displacement. Most hospitals have been bombed and destroyed, and numerous medical teams have been killed. Constant attacks and blockades on food, water, fuel, medicines, and humanitarian aid cause unbearable suffering for Gaza’s population, who are facing starvation and infectious disease. Children, along with other vulnerable groups, are particularly badly affected.

In late October 2024, the Palestinian Ministry of Education, based in Ramallah, reported that Israel had killed over 11,057 schoolchildren and 681 students in Gaza since October 7, 2023, and injured over 16,897 schoolchildren and 1,468 students. In total, 441 teachers and education personnel have been killed, and 2,491 injured. At least 117 academics in Gaza have been killed, including Sufian Tayeh, mathematician, theoretical physicist, and president of the Islamic University of Gaza, who was killed along with his family by an Israeli bombing in the Jabaliya refugee camp on December 2, 2023.

Additionally, 406 schools in Gaza have been damaged, with 77 completely destroyed. Gaza’s universities have been gravely impacted, with 20 institutions damaged, 51 buildings completely demolished, and 57 partially destroyed. As a result, nearly 88,000 students and 700,000 schoolchildren in Gaza have been deprived of education for more than a year.

On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that there was a risk of genocide and ordered Israel to take measures to prevent it. On March 28, the ICJ reiterated this order, requiring implementation of these preventive measures. Then, on May 24, the ICJ ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah and to open the Rafah crossing to allow unimpeded access to humanitarian services and aid for civilians.

These orders seem to have been entirely disregarded, and attacks on civilians in Gaza have intensified, especially in the north, with a clear aim to depopulate this region of Palestinians. On September 30, 2024, after days of aerial bombardment, the Israeli military also invaded Lebanon, killing at least 1,600 people and displacing 1.2 million.

Israeli government human rights violations extend beyond the Gaza Strip and do not begin as a reprisal for the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. In the West Bank, since October 7, 2023, 79 schoolchildren and 35 students have been killed, with hundreds more injured or arrested. Systematic, widespread human rights violations, such as land confiscation, resource plundering, and racial discrimination, have been well-documented over 57 years of occupation of Palestinian territories and 17 years of Gaza’s blockade.

On July 19, 2024, the ICJ issued an advisory opinion on “the legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including East Jerusalem and Gaza”, unequivocally declaring Israel’s occupation illegal and calling for its immediate cessation. The ICJ underscored that the responsibility not to support this illegal practice falls not only on third-party states but also on all institutions that uphold international law, including universities.

The scientific community has often mobilised in the past to defend human rights and international law. In an open letter published in the New York Times in December 1948, cosigned by Hannah Arendt and Albert Einstein, the authors denounced the visit of Menahem Begin, leader of the Tnuat Haherut party, precursor to Likud (the party of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), in these terms: “Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine…. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future. A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9, terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants – 240 men, women, and children – and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.”

For more than a year now, the Israeli government and its military forces have been committing the equivalent of a Deir Yassin massacre every day in Gaza, while the scientific community largely remains silent. Yet, as the open letter above demonstrates, this community has already strongly opposed attacks on civilians, whether during the Algerian and Vietnam wars or, more recently, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Scientists, particularly mathematicians, cannot remain indifferent to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, especially as Western powers appear to support this crime against humanity politically, diplomatically, and militarily.

Enough is enough. We urge our colleagues to cease all scientific collaboration with Israeli institutions that do not explicitly condemn the genocide in Gaza and the illegal colonisation of Palestine. We also encourage them to put pressure on our own institutions to terminate agreements with these partners under the same conditions, in accordance with international law. This position obviously does not include individual collaborations with Israeli colleagues, 3,400 of whom have courageously signed a call to the international community, which we wish to support, “to intervene immediately by applying any possible sanctions against Israel to achieve an immediate ceasefire between Israel and its neighbors, for the future of the people living in Israel/Palestine and the region, and to guarantee their right to security and life.” Finally, we demand that our institutions scrupulously respect academic freedoms and resolutely uphold freedom of expression in accordance with the law.

Signatories (petition closed on December 4, 2024 with 1078 signatories):

Ahmed Abbes, directeur de recherche au CNRS, France

Samy Abbes, Maître de conférences, Université Paris Cité, France

Maha Abboud, Professeure, CY Cergy Paris Université, France

Nahla Abdellatif, Professor, Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieur de Tunis, Tunis El Manar university, Tunisia

Amine Abdellaziz, Docteur de l’Université Grenoble Alpes, France

Chaima Abid, PhD in applied mathematics/LAMSIN, Tunisia

Hammadi Abidi, Professor University of Tunis El Manar, Tunisia

Mohammed Ably, Maître de conférences, Université de Lille, France

Abdelhak Abouqateb, Professor, Cadi Ayyad University, Morocco

Tiago Miguel Abreu, PhD student at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil

Khader Faiez Abu-Helaiel, Profesor en la Universidad de Jaén, Spain

Vincent Acary, Directeur de recherche à l’INRIA, France

Celine Acary-Robert, Ingénieur de recherche, UGA , France

Fessel Achhoud, PhD student, University  Hassan first, Morocco

Boris Adamczewski, Director of Research at CNRS, France

Louigi Addario-Berry, Professor, Canada Research Chair, McGill University, Canada

Karim Adiprasito, Directeur de recherche au CNRS, IMJ-PRG, France

Dan Agüero Cerna, Postdoc, SISSA, Italy

Marie-Thérèse Aimar, Maîtresse de Conférences émérite Aix-Marseille Université, France

Sabah Al Fakir, Ancien professeur université scientifique de Lille, France

Safaa Al-Ali, Postdoctoral researcher, Centre INRIA de l’Université Côte d’Azur, France

Darío Alatorre, Outreach technician, Institute of Mathematics, UNAM, México

Baklouti Ali, Professor, Faculty of Sciences of Sfax, Tunisia

Roberto Alicandro, Professor, University of Naples Federico II, Italy

Mohamed Aliouane, PhD student , SISSA, Italy

Nasrin Altafi, Postdoc at Queen’s university, Canada

Tuna Altınel, Maître de Conférences, Université Lyon 1, France

María de la Paz Alvarez-Scherer, Retired, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México

Saber Amdouni, Associate Professor, Ecole Nationale d’Ingénieur de Tunis, Tunis El Manar university, Tunisia

Silviana Amethyst, Research Engineer, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Germany

Omid Amini, CNRS – École Polytechnique, France

Claire Amiot, Professeur, Université Grenoble Alpes, France

Farid Ammar Khodja, Maître de conférences, Université de Franche-Comté, France

Cherif Amrouche, Professeur Emérite Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, France

Abdelhamid Amroun, MCF Université Paris-Saclay, France

U.K. Anandavardhanan, Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India

Yves André, Directeur de recherches CNRS, France

Angel Angel, Professor universidad politécnica de Madrid, Spain

Daniele Angella, Professor, Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica “Ulisse Dini”, Università di Firenze, Italy

Pablo Angulo, Profesor PCD en excedencia – Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain

Jean-Philippe Anker, Professeur émérite, Université d’Orléans, France

Colette Anné, mathématicienne retraitée (CNRS), France

A full list of all signatories can be found here.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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