End Tel Aviv’s ‘sadism’ in Gaza or risk ‘moral collapse’, 1,300 Israeli academics warn

End Israel’s “sadism” in Gaza or risk “moral collapse”, 1,300 academics in the occupation state said in a striking letter warning of the radicalisation of Israeli society and the normalisation of hate towards Palestinians.   

Signed by Israeli professors, researchers and lecturers who have accused their own government of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, the letter says that the horrific violence of the past 19 months is “of our own doing”. 

Organised under the banner “Black Flag”, the 1,300 academics call on Israeli academia to mobilise urgently to stop the assault on the Palestinians in Gaza, warning that silence in the face of mass atrocities has enabled “a horrifying litany” of state violence.

“We cannot claim that we did not know,” the letter declares. “We have been silent for too long.”

The statement condemns the role of Israeli universities, which previously resisted judicial reforms by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu but have largely remained complicit during the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The signatories urge heads of academic institutions to use their influence to halt what they describe as an “intensifying war of deception” driven by a policy to “transfer” and settlement, not rescue of captives.

“This war knowingly and deliberately puts the hostages at risk,” said Professor Yael Hashiloni-Dolev of Ben-Gurion University. “Anyone who kills mothers and starves babies in Gaza is also harming the mothers of the hostages… We’re in the midst of a moral collapse.”

“The shame and blame must be redirected to where they truly belong,” Hashiloni-Dolev said, adding: “A black flag flies over these crimes. I call on people to refuse such illegal orders.”

READ: Fascism is ‘already there’ in Israel, says Jewish professor of the Holocaust

The group’s day of coordinated protest declared “Black Tuesday,” saw faculty and students dressed in black across multiple campuses, standing in silence and hanging flags. At Tel Aviv University, the protest was met with intimidation by campus security and physical confrontation from nationalist counter-protesters. Still, organisers described a breakthrough: “There’s a whole community living under a kind of censorship… the message from students is clear: stop staying silent.”

Professor On Barak of Tel Aviv University explained that “Black Flag” references the legal doctrine established after the 1956 Kafr Qasim massacre, when 48 Palestinians were massacred by Israeli Border Police. “It marks the moment when Israelis from across the political spectrum recognise the need to hit the brakes.”

READ: Kafr Qasim was not just a massacre, but part of an ethnic cleansing plan

He called on academia to help re-humanise Palestinians, warning that Israeli society has been programmed to hate: “The widespread indifference [toward Gazans] is the result of an intensive dehumanisation campaign that must be actively resisted.”

Professor Ido Shahar of the University of Haifa said the initiative emerged from urgent meetings between students and lecturers: “A cry emerged – saying this can’t go on.” The group calls for the deradicalisation of Israeli society, which they argue has normalised and legitimised violence against Palestinians through years of militarisation, occupation and anti-Palestinian incitement.

The warning from within Israel’s academic elite adds to a growing international outcry over the Gaza genocide. Earlier this week, over 300 global celebrities – including Dua Lipa, Benedict Cumberbatch and Gary Lineker, who resigned from the BBC over his opposition to the Gaza genocide – signed an open letter demanding the UK end its complicity in Israel’s war.

They joined more than 800 UK-based lawyers, judges and legal academics who accused the British government of breaching the Genocide Convention. Meanwhile, 400 renowned writers, including Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan, denounced Israel’s campaign as “genocidal” and urged international action to halt it.

READ: 10% of Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, injured, missing or detained, rights group says