Israel’s efforts to cripple higher education in occupied Palestine continued relentlessly in 2018, with Israeli universities acting as key tools of the occupation. The systematic punishment inflicted on Palestinian academics and students didn’t attract anything like the global attention of Gazans’ March of Return, but it deserves to be documented and organized against for what it is: a slow, sadistic crushing of learning, and a stifling of the life opportunities it provides. A selection of the manifestations of this “scholasticide,” all drawn from local reports, is cataloged in this article, along with some brief indications of Israeli universities’ collaboration in it. This suggests the full violence of Israel’s siege on higher education in Palestine — and the urgent necessity of an effective response on the part of people of good conscience around the world, including those who work in universities.

Universities in the West Bank and Gaza are key incubators and hubs of resistance, and major channels of Palestinians’ aspirations for freedom and justice. As such, they are methodically obstructed by Israel. Israel’s entire post-1967 regime can, in fact, be reasonably considered as a massive, militarized attack on Palestinians’ access to education: the low average age in the West Bank and Gaza — 46 and 61 percent of people respectively are under eighteen — means that young people who should be in school or further study disproportionately pay the price of Israeli oppression.

Students are also in the front line of Palestinian resistance: prominent in 2018’s Great Return March, whether as originators or casualties; and accounting for more than a quarter of civilian deaths during Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza. Gazans have still not recovered from that war, in which numerous university buildings were damaged or destroyed, and almost four thousand students (66 percent) at one university — Al Azhar — lost their homes. The scars left on Gazan students are a graphic illustration of the deeper reality of Palestine as a whole: the progressive amputation of universities is central to Israel’s intentions.