The International Islamophobia Studies & Research Association (IISRA) is alarmed by the ongoing killings, forced displacement of 85% of Palestinians, denial of clean water, the use of forced starvation as a weapon of war and the destruction of Palestinian life perpetrated by Israeli military forces and settler militias in Gaza. IISRA stresses that Israeli actions clearly amount to genocide as defined in international law; a position supported by Holocaust and genocide studies scholars as well as UN and other international human rights experts and accepted as plausible by the International Court of Justice. IISRA is also condemns the complicity of most Western governments, headed by the United States, in Israeli actions. 

To date, we have witnessed with grief and horror the killing of over 33,000 Palestinians, an estimated 70 percent of which are women and children, during Israel’s indiscriminate campaign of violence. Israel has reduced to rubble hospitals, schools, cultural and academic institutions, places of worship, and refugee sites housing the injured, infirm, and most vulnerable. 

As an academic research and international scholarly association, IISRA condemns the targeted Israeli destruction of universities in Gaza, the Central Archives of Gaza City, and other educational institutions as a form of scholasticide. The destruction of these institutions is part of a deliberate assault against Palestinian intellectual and cultural life, intended to destroy Palestine as a distinct nation. 

Islamophobia as an undercurrent for genocide

IISRA firmly registers that current Israeli military actions, the maintenance of Israeli apartheid over all territories controlled by the country, and Israeli settler-colonial processes in general, rely heavily on Islamophobic tropes propagated first and foremost by official actors and dominant media as well as through widespread and well funded transnational Islamophobia networks. Those narratives rely upon Orientalist tropes that dehumanize Palestinians, and Arabs and Muslims in general, painting them as terrorists, savages, or, in the words of senior Israeli political and military leaders, ‘human animals’ unworthy of rights protection. 

We recognize that the current Islamophobic backlash in western and other nations is in many ways worse than in the aftermath of 9/11, when anti-Muslim racism escalated and resulted in widespread hate crimes and systemic discrimination. The global ‘war on terror’ has been underpinned by racist ideologies casting all Muslims as violent, fanatical terrorists who threaten democracy, the stability of White nations, and Western civilization. Islamophobic conspiracy theories and anti-Muslim propaganda continue to be used as political ‘cover’ for ethnic cleansing and genocide.  

Anti-Palestinian racism

Islamophobia provides the architecture for  anti-Palestinian racism which takes specific forms including:

•  denying the Nakba and justifying violence against Palestinians;
• failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine;
• erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians;
• excluding or pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives, Palestinians and their allies;
• defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values.

(Arab-Canadian Lawyers Association, “Anti-Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing and Manifestations,” April 2022, p. 14)

Suppression of academic freedom 

IISRA is gravely concerned about the widespread suppression of critical speech and academic freedom about Israel and Palestine across the globe. Governments, the media, and pro-Israel lobby groups and funders are using neo-McCarthyist tactics to target scholars engaged in scholarship and public intellectual work in support of Palestine with intimidation, censorship, job precarity, threats to revoke funding, and costly litigation. Silencing critical scholarship on Palestine has been facilitated by the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism, which seeks to redefine antisemitism to include any criticism of the Israeli state.  

Scholars of Islamophobia studies and other related fields play a vital role in increasing public knowledge on these processes of settler colonization, racism, and dehumanization, and in countering Islamophobic narratives and anti-Palestinian racism. IISRA is committed to continuing the vital work of providing a venue for academic scholarship that addresses Islamophobia in all its historical, epistemic, ideological, systemic, and intersectional manifestations (including anti-Palestinian racism) as a global phenomenon, as we bear witness to times that makes this work more salient and necessary than ever. 

Calls to Action

•  IISRA urges scholars globally to mobilize their networks, to mount university based and national campaigns endorsing an immediate ceasefire and an end to 75 years of Israeli occupation, military aggression, settler colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. 
•  IISRA endorses the BDS academic boycott and calls upon scholars to work towards the adoption of the boycott by universities, faculty unions, academic associations, and other groups. IISRA also encourages scholars to examine and expose the ways their institutions may be complicit in genocide through ties to Israeli industries, military, businesses, and institutions that contribute to the oppression of Palestinians. 
•  IISRA calls upon scholars to challenge the tactics being used by pro-Israel groups and donors who target university scholars and students demonstrating support for Palestine, as a challenge to free expression and academic freedom.
• IISRA calls upon scholars to mobilize their academic unions and associations to pass motions against the IHRA definition of antisemitism on the grounds that it undermines academic freedom and decolonial and antiracist scholarship. See for reference: The IHRA Definition Handbook for Universities and Colleges: What You Need to Know.