Letter to the President of Göttingen University

Göttingen, 12 June 2025

Subject: Urgent Call to Sever Ties with Israeli Institutions Complicit in Genocide and Apartheid

Dear Professor Dr. Schölmerich,

We are writing to you to call out the complicity of our academic institution, among many others in Germany, in aiding and abetting the Israeli government. It is the state and military of Israel that ultimately controls the racist apartheid regime, kills children, blocks humanitarian aid and destroys an entire society. However, these abhorrent violations of international and humanitarian law are only able to continue due to the international consent, support and funding from Israel’s allies and bystanders.

It has been 20 months since Israel launched a genocidal attack on Gaza. This follows a 16 year blockade during which entry of food, water, medication, fuel and other basic supplies as well as the free movement of people was severely restricted by Israel. Since October 2023 the world has watched an entire society be bombed incessantly and annihilated utterly, with live footage deliveredtous by the very people being targeted - pleading with us to acknowledge their suffering.

In March 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry published a 1,516 page document of 50,020 identified Palestinians killed by traumatic injury as a direct consequence of the Israeli attacks, which represents about 2.2 % of the total population of the Gaza Strip. A study published in the medical journal The Lancet in July 2024, estimates that for each of the 37,396 Palestinians killed by Israeli attacks up to that point, 4 additional deaths should be calculated from disease and malnutrition, leading them to estimate about 186,000 dead at that time. This would represent about 7.8 % of the population.

Since March, Israel is again blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza. In recent weeks we have seen massacres and abductions of starved Palestinians waiting in line for food from the aid convoy controlled by Israel. Meanwhile hundreds of trucks of UN and international humanitarian aid are still denied access and waiting on the other side of the border. This war - called by many including UNICEF a war on children - has brought atrocities that shocked even experts studying conflict and war zones, such as:

• the new acronym WCNSF (Wounded Child No Surviving Family) coined by Doctors Without Borders, which already in March 2024 was estimated to be 17,000 children
• children admitted to hospital with precision bullet wounds targeting heart and brain
• bunker buster bombs designed to take out underground facilities being dropped on rubble and refugee tents
• imprisonment and torture of doctors and other civilian specialized staff
• targeted murders of journalists
• the bombing of hospitals, UN schools and humanitarian facilities, consistently normalized and justified
• complete destruction of the healthcare facilities, education system and religious sites
• Israel’s “systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence since is 7 Oct 2023”
• largest cohort of child multi-limb amputees
• the complete annihilation of 2000+ family lineages

We could go on for several pages listing the horrors of the great moral crimeof our time. Prof. Dr. Schölmerich, we are witnessing an atrocity unlike any other. The ongoing genocide has destroyed the moral and ethical foundations of our society. Palestinians in Gaza are being killed twice – once physically and once in the public image, when they are dehumanized, their murders justified and the crimes against them outright denied. Those who will survive will forever remember the moral and ethical depravity inherent in the silence and at times active complicity of the international community.

At this point of the conversation many people respond to our pleas with resignation, telling us that they see the suffering but there is nothing they or anyone could do about it. They feel powerless in the face of great geopolitical powers. However, we want to write to you today to demonstrate that this is not in fact the case. You and the Georg-August University Göttingen can and must act.

As an institution of learning and knowledge creation, the University is a locus of power and authority within wider society. Its public image and the relationships it chooses to maintain carry a message. Currently the University uses this power to legitimize the genocide of Palestinians through its silence and to lend credibility to the Israeli institutions perpetuating genocide and apartheid. Furthermore,public universities are subject to public law and their actions are attributable to the state and vice versa. As such, Göttingen University - like all other state and private actors - is required to comply with international law and treatises, in particular:

• The Genocide Convention (1948): States are obligated to act to prevent (or stop) genocide. As per rulings in the ICJ case South Africa vs Israel, this obligation was officially confirmed in January 2024, and subsequent proceedings re-emphasized that states (and entities under their jurisdiction) must cease actions enabling the genocide. Funding or partnering with complicit institutions contravenes this obligation.
• The UN Apartheid Convention (1973) & Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: Israeli policies meet the legal definition of apartheid (as concluded multiple times by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem). Furthermore, in the Advisory Opinion from July 2024, the ICJ confirmed that all states are obligated not to recognize the situation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory as legal and should immediately stop all actions that maintain it. Academic collaboration is such action that normalizes this crime against humanity.
• Respect the BDS Call by Palestinian Civil Society: Over 1,200 Palestinian organizations demand boycott, divestment, and sanctions until Israel complies with international law.

We are aware that many lawyers and judges across Germany and the world have gone out of their way to dismiss any such obligations and defend the status quo. We must do better.

We are watching Israel attempt to kill or permanently displace the remaining Palestinian population in Gaza and settle what’s left of the fractured Palestinian land in the West Bank.

The Genocide in Gaza, Occupation of Palestine and apartheid system have been recognized almost by the entire United Nations General Assembly, with the exception of USA, UK, some EU countries and their partners i.e. the same countries that supply Israel with weapons and legitimacy and could be held accountable in case of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Throughout this letter we use the terms genocide, occupation and apartheid not in a political or hyperbolic way but in their strict legal definitions, as recognized through the expert investigations and opinions of UN rapporteurs and committees, and leading humanitarian organizations.

Israeli universities play a key role in sustaining Israel’s regime of oppression against Palestinians through:

• Military Research & Developmentof the Apartheid System
• Land Theft & Settlement Expansion
• Discriminatory Policies against Palestinian students and academics

So far we have been able to learn about 6 collaborations that link the University to the ongoing genocide in Palestine and illustrate its complicity:

• The CODECO Program that includes a partnership with Red Hat Israel, an IBM subsidiary providing technical support to the IDF
• The Student Exchange with Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose Mount Scopus campus, where international exchange students are housed is built on illegally occupied land in East Jerusalem and which hosts the Havatzalot military program
• Cooperation with Haifa University, which was founded to aid in the settling of the Galilee and organizes military colleges to train IDF soldiers
• Cooperation with the Weizmann Institute, that together with Technion university develops weapons technology for the IDF
• The MEWAC-GRaCCE Program that partners with the Israeli Water Authority and the state-owned Israeli Water company Mekorot
• Presence of complicit companies like Kappa optronics, Coherent and Excelitas / Qioptiq at the Praxisbörse 2025

In previous conversation, you stated that German and Israeli universities are committed to neutrality and academic excellence. Will you stand by that statement and call the aforementioned cooperations neutral? How do you justify these cooperations that aid the Israeli occupation? When will your international scientific community allow Palestinians an equal chance to pursue academic excellence?

We call on the University of Göttingen and on you as the president of this highly reputable institution to immediately:

• Disclose every partnership, collaboration, research program and investment that links the University of Göttingen to the Israeli occupation.
• Sever all partnerships with Israeli academic institutions complicit in apartheid and genocide.
• Divest from and stop promoting companies profiting from Israeli occupation (e.g., HP, Siemens).
• Issue a public statement condemning Israel’s violations of international law.
• Institute a scholarship program specifically for Palestinian students.
• In collaboration with students and staff, find ways to implement and further define the Civil Clause so that breaches like complicity in genocide and apartheid can be prevented at an earlier stage.

We demand that you cut these ties with Israeli institutions until:

• Israel ends its occupation and apartheid policies.
• Palestinian refugees’ right of return is upheld (UN Resolution 194).
• Palestinian scholars and students enjoy equal academic freedom.

We demand this as students and future scholars based on our academic training. We are following in the footsteps of our academic forebears that have established a tradition of speaking out for “a humane, tolerant and peaceful world”, through “scholarly pragmatism and a sense of reality as well as keen awareness for science’s societal responsibility”.

History now calls upon you to make a defining choice.We insist: you must comply with your moral and legal obligationsor else risk forever staining your legacy and that of the institution you represent.Too muchtime has elapsed already and every further day that passes adds to our institution’s complicity, but by taking a courageous stand for justice, you can help spark a global movement of conscience, one powerful enough to challenge oppression as the world once did against South African apartheid.

The path you choose today will echo throughout generations. The choice before you could not be more clear: will you remain complicit, or will you take action against injustice as the university has envisioned?

We expect a written response within two weeks of this letter (i.e. 26 June) detailing your stance and your measures going forward.

Sincerely

Students for Palestine Göttingen

For further details check Gaza Strip: The Humanitarian Impact of 15 Years of the Blockade, June 2022, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Read the report

World Health Organization, Health Cluster (2022). 15 Years of Blockade and Health in Gaza. Read the factsheet

The list is also available as a dataset maintained by the Tech for Palestine Collective. View the dataset

For an overview of the humanitarian situation check that week’s UN OCHA dashboard Reported Impact Snapshot | Gaza Strip (25 March 2025). View the snapshot

Khatib, R., McKee, M., & Yusuf, S. (2024). Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential. Read the article

A recent study of the same time period additionally finds that the Ministry’s number of direct deaths by traumatic injury is itself an undercount by 41%, making the actual number about 64,000.
Jamaluddine, Z., Abukmail, H., Aly, S., Campbell, O. M., & Checchi, F. (2025). Traumatic injury mortality in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024: a capture–recapture analysis. Read the article

See for example this article by Amnesty International: Israel/OPT: Two months of cruel and inhumane siege are further evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza, 2 May 2025. Read the article

Here are some of the statements by leading UN officials:
UN Relief Chief UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
UNRWA Commissioner General
OCHA update

For more details check the report by the International Rescue Committee. Read the report

Reported in The Guardian as early as April 2024 and confirmed by subsequent international doctor delegations. Read the article

Most recently reported and soon to be presented at the 59th Session of the Human Rights Council:
Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (A/HRC/59/26). Read the report

Quoted from the title of the corresponding UN report on the question. Read the report

Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), ICJ Reports on the Procedure of Provisional Measures. Read the case

Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, ICJ Advisory Opinion from 19 July 2024. Read the opinion

See for example the latest veto by US of the Security Council Ceasefire Resolution.

Quoted from the University’s mission statement. View the statement