Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology must investigate, and end, its Israel exchange link

This week, a screenshot began moving fast across Indonesian social media. It came from an Instagram account called Ganesa Space, and it showed something students did not expect to see. The image was a page from the online exchange system used by Bandung Institute of Technology, known in Indonesia as ITB. ITB is one of the most respected universities in the country. Many Indonesian engineers, scientists, and leaders studied there. What that screenshot revealed is not a small glitch to be quietly fixed. It is a question that ITB must answer in public, and a link that ITB must cut for good.

In the screenshot, a dropdown menu on the exchange form lists “Israel” as a country. Next to it, another field names the University of Haifa as a possible destination school. The post asked a simple question: is it true that ITB students can apply for an exchange trip to Israel? It called on students to demand answers, and it tagged two student groups that work on Palestine solidarity, asking them to look into the matter. The post spread quickly, with over a thousand likes and dozens of angry comments in less than a day.

To understand the anger, it helps to know a few things about Indonesia. Indonesia is the largest Muslim majority country in the world. Its constitution says clearly that colonialism must be erased from the earth. Because of this, Indonesia has never opened formal diplomatic relations with Israel, and the government has repeated this position even under pressure to change it. This is not a small technical detail. It is a core part of how Indonesia sees itself on the world stage, as a nation that stands with people living under occupation, not with the state that occupies them.

This is why a single dropdown menu became such a big story.

A public university, paid for by Indonesian taxpayers, appeared to be quietly offering a path to an Israeli school, at the exact moment the world is watching Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. No public announcement was made. No student voted on this. It was simply sitting inside a form, waiting to be noticed.

Defenders of exchange programs often say that universities are neutral places, and that cutting ties punishes students and scholars who had no say in their government’s actions. But the University of Haifa does not fit that picture easily. Reporting from Al Jazeera describes how the University of Haifa raised funds for its own students serving as soldiers, and donated protective equipment to military units fighting in Gaza. The same reporting says the university has worked to counter the global boycott movement against Israel, rather than reflect on why that movement exists.

The University of Haifa’s own published statement confirms it rejects any form of academic boycott, and says it will keep working with international partners no matter what happens in Gaza.

For students who have spent the last two years organizing vigils, fundraisers, and petitions for Palestine, seeing their own campus system quietly list this same university as a study option feels like a betrayal happening behind their backs.

This is part of a much bigger global movement. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign, often called BDS, has asked universities around the world to cut academic ties with Israeli institutions, on the same grounds raised here: that these institutions are not separate from the state, but part of how it presents itself to the world and defends its actions. Hundreds of universities and academic groups have joined this call. Indonesian institutions, given the country’s own history and constitution, arguably have even less reason to stay on the sidelines than most.

So far, ITB’s leadership has offered no explanation. Silence is not an acceptable response to a discovery like this. Students, faculty, and the wider public deserve a full, public investigation, not a quiet edit to a dropdown menu once the screenshot stops trending. That investigation needs to answer basic questions. Who approved this listing, and when? Is there a written agreement with the University of Haifa, and if so, who signed it and under what authority? Has any ITB student or staff member already taken part in an exchange under this option, and if so, was it paid for with public university funds? Every one of these questions has a knowable answer, and ITB owes its students the truth, not a vague statement designed to make the story go away.

An investigation on its own is not enough. Whatever the answers turn out to be, the outcome has to be the same: this option must be removed, and any cooperation with the University of Haifa, formal or informal, must end completely.

There is no version of this relationship that is compatible with Indonesia’s own constitution, with its long standing refusal to recognize Israel, or with the basic decency owed to Palestinians living through a genocide that Haifa’s own leadership has chosen to support rather than question. A public university does not get to make that choice quietly, on behalf of an entire student body, and then hope nobody notices.

Some will still argue that cutting all academic contact goes too far, that it punishes individual students and researchers who may privately disagree with their own government, and that it closes off exchanges that might otherwise build understanding. That argument deserves a hearing in calmer times. It does not answer the specific facts in front of us now: a university that has armed and funded its own students as soldiers, and an Indonesian institution that let that university onto its exchange list without a word of public explanation. Whatever value academic exchange might have in the abstract, it cannot be worth ignoring that.

The students behind this week’s post are not asking for something radical. They are asking ITB to investigate itself honestly, to explain what it finds, and to close this door for good. Until that happens, the question they raised will not go away, and it should not.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.