Scholasticide Definition
Scholasticide is a term that was first coined by Professor Karma Nabulsi, an Oxford don andPalestinian expert on the laws of war. She conceptualized it in the context of the Israeli assault
on Gaza, Palestine in 2009, but also with reference to a pattern of Israeli colonial attacks on
Palestinian scholars, students, and educational institutions going back to the Nakba of 1948, andexpanding after the 1967 war on Palestine and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
The term combines the Latin prefix schola, meaning school, and the Latin suffix cide, meaningkilling. Nabulsi used it to describe the “systematic destruction of Palestinian education by Israel”
to counter a tradition of Palestinian learning. That tradition, Nabulsi observed, reflected theenormous “role and power of education in an occupied society” in which freedom of thought“posits possibilities, open horizons”, contrasting sharply with “the apartheid wall, the shacklingcheckpoints, [and] the choking prisons”. Recognizing “how important education is to thePalestinian tradition and the Palestinian revolution”, Nabulsi noted that Israeli colonial
policymakers “cannot abide it and have to destroy it."During the latest Israeli genocidal war on Gaza, Palestine in 2023/2024, scholasticide has
intensified on an unprecedented scale. Israeli colonial policy in Gaza has now shifted from afocus on systematic destruction to total annihilation of education. There is, indeed, an intimate
relationship between genocide and scholasticide. Raphael Lamkin, the pioneering Polish Jewish
legal scholar who first defined genocide and played a key role in inserting the concept into
international law, saw genocide as an effort to “undermine the fundamental basis of the socialorder.” Key to this effort, in Lamkin’s conception, was the assault on the cultures of national,ethnic, racial, or religious collectivities.
Scholasticide is comprised of any of the following acts that entail systemic destruction, in whole
or in part, of the educational life of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group:1) Killings and assassinations of university and school teachers, students, staff, andadministrators.
2) Causing bodily or mental harm to university and school teachers, students, staff, andadministrators.
3) Arresting, detaining, and incarcerating university and school teachers, students, staff,and administrators.
4) Systematic harassment, bullying, intimidation of university and school teachers,
students, staff, and administrators.
5) Bombarding and demolishing educational institutions.
6) Destroying and/or looting of teaching and research resources including libraries,archives, and laboratories, as well as facilities supporting the educational process,including playgrounds, sports fields, performance venues, cafeterias, and residence halls.
7) Impeding the import of essential materials for rebuilding damaged schools anduniversities.
8) Obstructing the creation of new educational structures.
9) Besieging schools and universities and using them as barracks, logistics bases,
operational headquarters, weapons and ammunition caches, detention and interrogation
centers.

10) Closing educational institutions and/or disrupting their daily operations .
11) Invading educational institutions.
12) Restricting faculty, student, and staff access to educational institutions.
13) Denying education to political prisoners including child detainees.
14) Hindering access to the internet, disrupting the provision of electricity, andpreventing free entry of educational supplies including books and laboratory equipment.
15) Blocking the hiring of academic staff and denying them entry to their institutions
through visa denial and other restrictions.
16) Revoking residency rights of students or academics who may pursue educational
opportunities abroad.
17) Preventing scholarly exchange in all its forms.
18) Disrupting international and domestic funding of educational institutions.
All of these acts are currently being carried out to devastating effect in Gaza, Palestine. They arepart and parcel of the genocidal effort to impede the reproduction of the social order in thatoccupied territory, as part of a broader effort to render it uninhabitable, hence paving the way for
its comprehensive ethnic cleansing. Many of these acts have long been practiced against
educational institutions and communities in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, andsome are experienced by Palestinian citizens of the Israeli State.