‘We’ve Been Silent Too Long’: 1,300 Israeli Academics Call to End Gaza War, Citing ‘Moral Collapse’

Some 1,300 academics from universities and colleges across Israel sent a letter on Tuesday to the heads of the academic system in Israel, urging them “to mobilize the full weight of Israeli academia to stop the Israeli war in Gaza.”

The academics, organizing under the name Black Flag, criticized institutions of higher education for playing a central role in opposing the government-led judicial overhaul, yet remaining silent in the face of the current events in Gaza.

“This is a horrifying litany of war crimes and even crimes against humanity, all of our own doing,” the letter reads, adding, “We cannot claim that we did not know. We have been silent for too long.”

Prof. Ido Shahar of the University of Haifa told Haaretz that the initiative began with meetings between students and lecturers, during which “a cry emerged – saying this can’t go on.”

“At a certain point, the realization sinks in that we can’t go on normalizing the current situation and behaving as if a horrifying war of deception isn’t happening – one that leads to mass killing, sacrifices the hostages and whose sole purpose is transfer and settlement,” he added.

Among the letter’s signatories is also Prof. On Barak of Tel Aviv University. According to him, the name Black Flag was chosen as “an attempt to speak to Israeli society in its own terms.”

According to Barak, the term Black Flag is familiar to every Israeli who served in the military. “It carries historical weight,” he said, “as it was coined by [then Jerusalem Magistrate Court] Judge Benjamin Halevy following the 1956 Kafr Qasim massacre, in which 48 innocent Palestinians were killed by the Israeli Border Police.”

The use of the term, he added, “is a reference to a [legal and moral] protocol – one that marks the moment when Israelis from across the political spectrum recognize the need to hit the brakes.”