On 13 May, staff across Dutch universities participated in a national walkout in the wake of student demonstrations against their universities’ complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The walkout was organised in protest of the repressive measures of these universities’ Executive Boards – which repeatedly called the police to evict peaceful protestors, resulting in mass police violence – and to show solidarity with the protesting students’ demands for disclosure and cessation of, and divestment from, ties with complicit Israeli institutions and companies. Below is the speech of one of these staff members, British-Jewish academic Jacob Engelberg, who is assistant professor of film, media and culture at the University of Amsterdam and a contributor to Vashti.
Hello friends. I join you today as a Jewish anti-Zionist member of staff here at the UvA [University of Amsterdam]; I name myself as both Jewish and anti-Zionist because dominant discourses circulating – from the Israeli state to the Dutch media to our own CvB [Executive Board] – tend to imply that we do not exist. I assure you, we are many. ….more
