Dear Professor Stephen Toope,

We are writing to you as members of the University of Cambridge who are deeply concerned by the violence exacted by the Israeli state and racist Israeli groups against Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, Gaza, and across historical Palestine. We stand in solidarity with Palestinians and we are deeply angered by the role played by the University of Cambridge in perpetuating their oppression through institutional links and partnerships with companies whose products are used by Israel to enact policies condemned by Human Rights Watch as constituting the “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

As of 20.05.2021, the most recent round of Israeli bombings has left more than 232 Palestinians dead, including 65 children. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees [UNRWA] has condemned the killing  of civilians and is “shocked by the level and scale of destruction” in Gaza. Israel’s belligerent illegal occupation has for decades violated the fundamental norms of international humanitarian law. As Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem (the Israeli human rights organisation), and numerous Palestinian human rights organisations attest, Palestinians’ daily lives are defined by apartheid structures of oppression wherein Israel: a) illegally interferes with Palestinian mobility via checkpoints and closures; b) engages in ethnic cleansing in areas such as East Jerusalem; c) carries out unlawful settlement expansions and house demolitions throughout the occupied territories, and d) uses various judicial and extrajudicial techniques to subvert Palestinian rights, including against Palestinian citizens of Israel. The continuation of this violent system is only possible because of the impunity granted to Israel and the abhorrent complicity of countries and institutions around the world— including the  University of Cambridge.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, as of 2020, found that 118 UK Universities have investments in companies that are complicit in supporting Israel’s violations of international law. It is shameful that the University of Cambridge is amongst those with the highest investments, standing at an estimate of £109,820,000. According to its website, the Cambridge Service Alliance counts as “partners”  companies directly involved in advancing the settler colonisation of Palestinian lands. These include BAE systems, which was one of two founding industrial partners, and Caterpillar. Caterpillar supplies the militarised D9 bulldozers used by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to demolish thousands of Palestinian homes and construct illegal Israeli settlements, while BAE systems provides weapons to Israel, including ‘Head-Up Displays’ (HUD) for F16 fighter aircraft, used by the Israeli military in their bombing campaigns against Gaza and elsewhere. Cambridge spin-off company Q-Flo, which has close links to the Department of  Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, is partnered with Israeli armoured vehicle manufacturer Plasan Sasa Ltd, a supplier to the Israeli police and army.
 
International law is on the side of the Palestinians. The occupation is illegal. The evictions in Sheikh Jarrah are illegal. The bombing of Gaza is illegal. The settlements are illegal. We therefore trust that you, as a scholar of human rights and international law, are well placed to comprehend the gravity of the situation and the hegemonic sanitation of illegality in this context. It is our hope that you will see the acute contradiction between the core values of the University and its links with corporations and institutions perpetuating these injustices.

We therefore demand that the University of Cambridge:

1. issues a public statement expressing solidarity with Palestinians’ quest for freedom and justice, and condemns the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem and the racist assaults against Palestinians resisting erasure.

2. denounces Israeli use of excessive and disproportionate force on Gaza as a flagrant form of collective punishment of a vulnerable population, and in particular its targeting of schools, universities, professors and students.

3. releases a plan outlining the concrete steps it will take in solidarity, including:
 
 
a) instituting a formal review of institutional ties with all corporations implicated in illegal Israeli policies.
 
b) immediately sever formal links and partnerships with BAE Systems, Caterpillar and all other companies or institutions deemed complicit.
 
c) supporting Palestine student activism on campus, including, but not limited to, holding our university accountable for violations of academic freedom.


This is not the first time that students and staff have made demands related to the University’s links with BAE Systems and Caterpillar. In 2018 the demands raised by a petition signed by nearly 40 student societies and over 60 academic staff were dismissed by the Vice-Chancellor on the grounds that these partnerships “do not pertain to military operations”. Yet as Human Rights Watch clearly outlines in its report, the structures which sustain apartheid and persecution against Palestinians are not restricted to military operations, but are the responsibility of both military and civilian authorities, deploying a wide range of tactics to deny Palestinians their rights.

The situation in Palestine constitutes an instance of acute injustice. By perpetuating it, our university does a disservice to both Israelis and Palestinians, as neither can live in dignity and peace. We want to be part of a university that supports the emancipation of the oppressed, not their further subjugation and oppression. We want the University of Cambridge to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. We want our institution to be on the right side of history.

Cambridge University Palestine Solidarity Society

Number of signatories so far: 1692

The list of signatories who consented for their names to be published publicly can be accessed here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EbPA4qAjAXZ3Up75AsyJEROvLL03IGbD/view?usp=sharing 

** A hard copy of the letter has been delivered to Professor Stephen Toope. However, our letter is still open for signatures. PalSoc team is regularly updating the openly accessed letter.