Iran’s Top Cultural Council Calls on World Institutes to Sever Ties with Israeli Universities
The call was made in a letter that Hojat-ol-Islam Abdolhossein Khosropanah, secretary of the council, sent to the universities of the Islamic countries.
The letter comes as dozens of universities in the US and other states, including France and the UK, have witnessed Palestine solidarity encampments in the past few weeks.
"Today, the land of Palestine has become a symbol of genocide and violations of human rights in the world,” Khosropanah said.
“For more than half a century, the Palestinian Nation has been the victim of aggression and coercion by the superpowers, particularly global Zionism,” he said, adding that the Palestinian Nation has even been “deprived of its right to legitimate self-defense against the aggressors.”
“The movement of students, professors, and elites in defense of the oppressed people of Gaza and protest against oppression in Harvard, Indiana, Columbia, Yale, and other universities in the world show the awakened conscience of professors and students in all the universities in the world,” adds the letter.
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He asked academic elites and the presidents of the universities to perform their human and academic duties by condemning war crimes and genocide, urging peace and the restoration of the oppressed Palestinians' rights, and activating all diplomatic capacities to defeat the Israeli regime.
Khosropanah further pointed to the need to stop “the relationship between scientific and academic institutions and the Zionist regime.”
He also urged the formation of a global alliance to “restore the oppressed Palestinians' rights, reconstruct Gaza, and transfer knowledge and technology to revive the natural life in the ruined areas.”
The wave of pro-Palestinian student protests, which originated at Columbia University in New York on April 17, has since spread to other Western nations, including the UK and France. The protesters are calling for an immediate halt to support for the Israeli regime and an end to the conflict in Gaza.
A primary demand of the protesters is for their institutions to divest from Israeli entities or companies implicated in the Gaza war and wider abuses against Palestinians.
According to a report released by CNN on Sunday, the number of arrests since April 18 has exceeded 2,200, while a similar report by Fox News puts the total number of arrests at over 2,400.
The protesters share common goals, including urging their institutions to divest from entities associated with human rights abuses by the Israeli government against Palestinians and calling for an end to the Gaza war, which has been characterized as a genocide by numerous rights groups, UN experts, and nations.
Since the onset of Israeli aggression on Gaza on October 7, over 34,700 Palestinians, predominantly women and children, have lost their lives, and more than 77,500 have been injured amidst widespread destruction and severe shortages of essential supplies.
