Scholasticide: Educational Lawfare as a Marker of the End of Civilianness

Abstract

This essay explores the concept of scholasticide—the systematic destruction of educational institutions and targeting of academics—as a dimension of genocide, particularly in the context of the ongoing war in Gaza. It situates scholasticide within the broader framework of cultural genocide, tracing its conceptual emergence from Palestinian and international discourse. Drawing parallels with medicide—the targeted destruction of healthcare systems—this essay argues that both practices constitute academic and medical lawfare, strategically deployed to justify attacks on civilian infrastructure. The destruction of Gaza's universities and schools, along with the killing of students and faculty, reflects a deliberate effort to erase Palestinian intellectual life. By analyzing historical and legal precedents, this study underscores the role of scholasticide in dehumanization and settler colonialism, highlighting its implications for international law and human rights.

In February 2019, Riccardo Corradini, a medical student in his final year at the University of Siena (Italy), arrived at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) to advance his studies in emergency surgery as part of the Erasmus+ Program. As the first exchange student to study in the Gaza Strip, Corradini effectively became an "ambassador" for the initiative, paving the way for four additional Italian universities to apply to the program in Gaza, while three students from Gaza pursued studies in Siena. An exchange program between Italy and Gaza is strikingly significant, given that the Italian government, like other European Union (EU) member states, designates Hamas, the political party constituting the Palestinian government, as a terrorist organization.¹ Erasmus+, however, operates under the auspices of the European Commission, the EU's primary executive body. This arrangement highlights, on one hand, the complexities of multilevel governance within the EU, where differing perspectives coexist on sensitive issues such as terrorism designations, and on the other, the principle of academic autonomy.

Although Corradini had studied in the occupied West Bank two years earlier, his decision to focus on emergency surgery in Gaza was influenced by the region's exceptional circumstances. These included approximately one hundred people undergoing amputations as a result of the Israeli response to the 2018 Gaza border protests.² Reflecting on his experience, Corradini remarked, "coming here, I can see with my own eyes unfortunately how emergency surgery is really."³ Corradini's semester in Gaza, including his training as a war surgeon at three hospitals—Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia, and Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis—is chronicled in Erasmus in Gaza, an award-winning documentary from 2022 by Chiara Avesani and Matteo Delbò.

During the ongoing Israeli attacks in Gaza, known as the 2023/2024 "Israel-Hamas War," all three of these hospitals were struck. Al-Shifa Hospital was heavily damaged and left in ruins after Israeli forces withdrew on April 1, 2024.⁴ Al-Awda Hospital, which had been working in partnership with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) since 2018, was besieged by Israeli forces for four days in May and was subsequently forced to close.⁵ After Israeli forces withdrew from Nasser Hospital in late April, a mass grave containing nearly 300 bodies—the bodies of elderly people, women, and wounded individuals with their hands tied and stripped of clothing—was discovered. "I've worked in mass casualties around the world," reported MSF doctor Javid Abdelmoneim, "and the smell of blood is the same everywhere you are. But here in Gaza, the horror really hits home."⁶

The 2024 destruction of the three hospitals where Corradini had trained five years earlier, as part of an educational program between the EU and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in cooperation with IUG, underscores the close connection between medicide—the destruction of medical facilities and the targeting of the healthcare community—and scholasticide—the destruction of educational facilities and the targeting of the academic community.⁷ In addition to the three hospitals that provided training for IUG students, IUG itself was bombed, and its buildings were destroyed on the night of October 10, 2023. Almost two months later, Professor Sufyan Tayek, President of IUG and a prominent researcher in physics and applied mathematics, was killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in an air-strike on the Jabalia refugee camp, where he had been born fifty-two years earlier.

"The world is witnessing the first genocide shown in real time to the world by its victims and unfathomably justified by Israel as compliant with the laws of war," stated UN Special Rapporteurs Tlaleng Mofokeng and Francesca Albanese on April 3, 2024. Medicide and scholasticide should be regarded as two critical dimensions of genocide. Whereas the term medicide has long been used to refer to the termination of life performed by professional medical personnel and has recently evolved to mean "the destruction of a healthcare system in whole or in part with the aim of obliterating or damaging the conditions needed for saving and sustaining the lives of the sick and the wounded" in connection with the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the term scholasticide seems to have emerged exclusively from this context.⁸ Israeli authorities have justified the destruction of Al-Shifa Hospital, Al-Awda Hospital, Nasser Hospital, and IUG, along with numerous other hospitals and universities in Gaza since October 7, 2023, by claiming that they were being used by Hamas as command centers. On November 11, 2023, an Arabic-language Twitter/X account operated by Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared a video purportedly showing a nurse from Al-Shifa Hospital claiming that Hamas had taken over the facility and was stealing morphine and fuel, with explosions heard in the background. The post was later deleted after being exposed by France 24 and other media outlets as fake, revealing it to be a product of "crisis acting."⁹

In this essay, I will focus on the concept of scholasticide in the context of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. I begin by examining the emergence of the concept of scholasticide and then situate it within the broader framework of cultural genocide. Finally, I revisit medicide as a reference point to analyze scholasticide as a specific manifestation of law-fare, which I term academic lawfare. My contention is that there is an intimate connection between medicide and scholasticide: not only because of their institutional entanglement through teaching hospitals, with their affiliation to academic institutions, but also and primarily because both medicide and scholasticide represent deadly assaults on those human rights that seek to ensure the highest attainable standards of physical and mental health, aiming for the full development of the human personality.¹⁰

>> Scholasticide: The Emergence of a New Concept

It is rarely possible to pinpoint the exact moment and circumstances of a concept's emergence. Yet, this is the case with scholasticide, a term that has gained traction in both print and online media. A Google search retrieves 52,300 results, with 24,500 appearing after October 7, 2023. For the same period, a combined search of "scholasticide" and "Gaza" yields 24,400 results. Excluding Gaza or Palestine from the search reveals other locations, notably Great Britain, Haiti, and Tigray (Ethiopia), accounting for the remaining 100 results, listed in no particular order.¹¹ October 7, 2023, marks the armed incursions by Hamas and other groups from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel's Gaza Envelope, resulting in the deaths of 1,200 people, including 46 Americans, and the capture of approximately 250 Israeli civilians and soldiers, who were taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip.¹² The so-called "Israel-Hamas War" has been ongoing since October 7, 2023, with this date constructed as a "zero point" to justify the Israeli military's response.¹³

Many scholars rely on journalistic accounts when addressing scholasticide in their academic writings. In some cases, scholars cite one another, creating an appearance of scholarly consensus. However, upon closer examination, their claims often trace back to a single journalistic source. "Gaza exemplifies in graphic form the deeper reality: 'scholasticide,'" states Nick Riemer in 2023, defining the concept as "the violent suppression of education" by drawing from Sunaima Maira's 2018 book Boycott! The Academy and Justice for Palestine.¹⁴ Maira, in turn, refers to scholasticide as the "destruction of the educational environment … in Palestine" based on a 2015 book chapter by Omar Barghouti, who highlights the coinage of the term in Ben Schott's blog for The New York Times in 2009.¹⁵

"Schott's Vocab: A Miscellany of Modern Words and Phrases" is a repository, closed in 2011, of "unconsidered lexicographical trifles—some serious, others frivolous, some neologized, others newly noteworthy" by British writer and photographer Ben Schott. In his January 14, 2009 entry, Schott defines scholasticide as "the highly controversial charge that Israel deliberately targeted educational sites in Gaza in an attempt to damage Palestinian identity."¹⁶ Schott's source is an article by Ameera Ahmad Harouda and Ed Vulliamy, dating from January 10, 2009. Ahmad Harouda, a Palestinian journalist and fixer based in Gaza, and Vulliamy, a British journalist and writer known for his coverage of the Balkan wars and the invasion of and war in Iraq, in turn quote Karma Nabulsi, Professor of Politics at Oxford University, who explicitly mentions the concept of scholasticide.

In the quote from Ahmad Harouda and Vulliamy's article, Palestinian academic and former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) representative Nabulsi claims that "in Gaza we see the policy more clearly than ever—this 'scholasticide,'" in reference to the 2008/2009 Israeli bombing of educational institutions in Gaza, including the IUG, the Ministry of Education, and the American International School.¹⁷ This marks the earliest mention of the conceptual travel of scholasticide that I have been able to trace—a declaration made by a Palestinian scholar to two journalists, linking it to the Israeli government's aim to "annihilate an educated Palestine," approximately fourteen years before the events of October 7, 2023.¹⁸

As Mieke Bal has shown, concepts are not static; they evolve as they move from one academic discipline or cultural context to another.¹⁹ Their dynamism also stems from what I call conceptual battles—the preference for a specific concept over other alternatives that share the same meaning. "Educide" is presented by Wikipedia in English as a synonym for scholasticide. However, its history appears to be longer, originally carrying a completely different meaning: "the institutionalized, self-destructive conflicts between educators and students," a process "similar to the self-destructive act of suicide and the institutionalized destructiveness of genocide."²⁰ In regard to the meaning of the term explored in this essay—the destruction of educational facilities and the targeting of the academic community—Rula Alousi claimed in 2022 that her explanation was the first "formal definition" of educide, attributed its coinage to the 2010 edited collection Cultural Cleansing in Iraq, and identified the aftermath of the Second Gulf War in Iraq as a key case study.²¹

Both scholasticide and educide were thus coined to describe situations perceived as calamitous in occupied territories—specifically, in Iraq during the invasion of the U.S.-led coalition and in Gaza under Israeli occupation. The concept of educide is primarily associated with Iraq, and while the term has also been applied to Gaza,²² scholasticide is more commonly linked to Gaza and seems to dominate the semantic field since October 7, 2023.

The reason for the increased use of the term is the inverse relationship between the extent of the geographical area affected and the severity of the calamity. Gaza covers an area of only 141 square miles, which is 11.6 percent of the size of Rhode Island. Despite its smaller size, Gaza has twice the population of Rhode Island and a similar literacy rate, as well as approximately the same number of universities and colleges. Yet as of November 2024, Israel has bombed all higher education institutions in Gaza: IUG, Al-Azhar University, Al-Quds Open University, University College of Applied Sciences, University of Palestine, Israa University, University of Gaza, Al-Aqsa University, Palestine Technical College, Palestine College of Nursing, and Arab College of Applied Sciences.²³ More than 12,000 students have been killed and 19,000 others injured in Palestine since October 7, 2023. Of these, 697 university students have been killed and 1,523 wounded in Gaza, while 35 have been killed and 130 wounded in the West Bank. Around 444 school teachers and educational administrators have been killed and 2,491 wounded in Gaza, while 117 university professors and educational staff have been killed and 1,221 injured in the West Bank. Additionally, 77 schools have been destroyed and 171 severely damaged, including 65 UN schools.²⁴ This level of destruction has affected 625,000 primary and secondary students, as well as 90,000 university students, who are now facing a second year without education.²⁵ According to a report by Librarians and Archivists with Palestine, over 22 archives, museums, and libraries in Gaza were destroyed, damaged or looted by Israeli armed forces between October 2023 and January 2024 alone. This includes the libraries of the aforementioned universities as well as Samir Mansour Bookshop and Library, Diana Tamari Sabbagh Library, Gaza Municipal Library, Enaim Library, Community Library of the Kana'an Educational Development Institute, Lubbud Library, Al-Nahda Library, and Al-Shorouq Al-Daem Library.²⁶

>> Scholasticide and Cultural Genocide

Scholasticide is semantically related to another concept, which has an even more egregious history—cultural genocide. It is well known that the definition of genocide adopted by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is indebted to the intellectual efforts of Polish Jewish lawyer Raphaël (Rafał) Lemkin. In his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Lemkin—who coined the concept of "genocide"²⁷—documented the atrocities committed in Nazi-occupied territories, categorizing them under eight fields geared at erasing the targeted people: (1) political, (2) social, (3) cultural, (4) economic, (5) biological, (6) physical, (7) religious, and (8) moral.²⁸

Two issues stand out here: First, Lemkin detected an intrinsic relationship between genocide and colonialism. In his description of genocide as a process, he envisions two stages, first the "destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed," and second "the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor."²⁹ Needless to say, this pattern is well known among postcolonial intellectuals and scholars, as well as researchers studying Israeli settler colonialism in the Palestinian Occupied Territories.³⁰ Lemkin planned to devote a section in his unpublished Introduction to the Study of Genocide to this connection. In 1956, he collaborated with the UN Arab States Delegation Office to produce an article calling for French officials to be charged with genocide in Algeria.³¹ Interestingly, the committee drafting the UN Genocide Convention, to which Lemkin belonged, discussed during their working meetings whether the mid-1940s events in Palestinian villages committed by Zionists (such as the al-Khisas massacre, the Irgun attack on Tira, and the Balad al-Shaykh massacre, between December 1947 and January 1948) were constitutive of genocide.³² Second, Lemkin's conception of the cultural dimension of genocide did not make it into the final version of the UN Genocide Convention.

In Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, Lemkin listed several strategies under the cultural dimension of genocide, such as the prohibition of using one's own language in schools and in print, the exclusion from liberal arts studies, rigid control over all cultural activities, and the destruction of national monuments, libraries, archives, museums, and art galleries. Lemkin singled out the burning of the library of the Jewish Theological Seminar in Lublin, Poland by the Nazis as exemplary of the cultural dimension of genocide.³³ Lemkin quotes a report from the Frankfurter Zeitung, owned by a Nazi publishing house at the time:

For us [Nazis] it was a matter of special pride to destroy the Talmudic Academy which was known as the greatest in Poland…. We threw out of the building the great Talmudic library, and carted it to market. There we set fire to the books. The fire lasted for twenty hours. The Jews of Lublin were assembled around and cried bitterly. Their cries almost silenced us. Then we summoned the military band and the joyful shouts of the soldiers silenced the sound of the Jewish cries.³⁴

Still, Lemkin never used the exact term "cultural genocide" in his 1944 book. The closest to a common-sense understanding of cultural genocide is found in the following passage:

Many authors, instead of using a generic term, use currently terms connoting only some functional aspect of the main generic notion of genocide. Thus, the terms "Germanization," "Magyarization," "Italianization," for example, are used to connote the imposition by one stronger nation (Germany, Hungary, Italy) of its national pattern upon a national group controlled by it. The author believes that these terms are also inadequate because they do not convey the common elements of one generic notion and they treat mainly the cultural, economic, and socials aspects of genocide, leaving out the biological aspect, such as causing the physical decline and even destruction of the population involved.³⁵

Genocide, therefore, has a cultural aspect which according to Lemkin is key for achieving the destruction of a group of people, but the actual term "cultural genocide" does not exist yet in Lemkin's elaboration. The concept of cultural genocide did appear in the two first drafts of the UN Genocide Convention. The Ad hoc Committee Draft, for example, defines cultural genocide as:

any deliberate act committed with the intent to destroy the language, religion, or culture of a national, racial or religious group on the grounds of the national or racial origin or the religious belief of its members such as:

1. 1. Prohibiting the use of language of the group in daily intercourse or in schools, or the printing and circulation of publications in the language of the group;

2. 2. Destroying or preventing the use of libraries, museums, schools, historical monuments, places of worship or other cultural institutions and objects of the group.³⁶

The Sixth Committee produced a new draft based upon the Ad hoc Committee Draft. This is the version unanimously adopted on December 9, 1948, by the General Assembly and constitutes Resolution 260(A)(III), formally known as the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in which any reference to culture is absent:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. (a). Killing members of the group;

2. (b). Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

3. (c). Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

4. (d). Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

5. (e). Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.³⁷

Several reasons have been proposed to explain the exclusion of the concept of cultural genocide or references to the cultural dimension of genocide from the final resolution.³⁸ One key reason pertains to the interests of states with histories of policies that threaten the cultural survival of minority groups within their own territories or in regions under colonial control. Leo Kuper considers Algeria a prime example of genocide committed by an imperial power, namely France.³⁹

The absence of the concept of cultural genocide from the UN Genocide Convention does not mean that it has not elicited a rich array of scholarly and political discussions. According to the authoritative definition by Lawrence Davidson, cultural genocide is "the purposeful destructive targeting of out-group cultures so as to destroy or weaken them in the process of conquest or domination."⁴⁰ If the different thematic threads touched on so far are connected, it becomes clear that scholasticide, which has garnered great attention in the media and the public sphere in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, constitutes a key aspect of the cultural dimension that Lemkin and others saw, and still see, as part and parcel of genocide. One may even say that Lemkin already developed a definition of scholasticide when he wrote about the destruction of libraries, museums, schools, and other cultural institutions and objects, before the concept itself even existed as a term.

It is no surprise that the scale of destruction of academic institutions and the targeted killings of scholars and students in Gaza (and the West Bank) has elicited a strong response from academic organizations, scholars, and students worldwide. A case in point is Scholars against the War on Palestine (SAWP), a transnational coalition that brings together faculty, researchers, and graduate students in the humanities, social sciences, law, medicine, and STEM who stand in solidarity with Palestine. One of SAWP's demands is the defense of the Palestinian right to education, for which the organization issued a leaflet devoted to the concept of scholasticide in February 2024. The leaflet acknowledges that the term was coined by Nabulsi and defines scholasticide as the "systemic destruction, in whole or in part, of the education life of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group."⁴¹ Furthermore, SAWP lists eighteen acts as constitutive of scholasticide:

1. 1. Killings and assassinations of university and school teachers, students, staff, and administrators.

2. 2. Causing bodily or mental harm to university and school teachers, students, staff, and administrators.

3. 3. Arresting, detaining, and incarcerating university and school teachers, students, staff, and administrators.

4. 4. Closing educational institutions and/or disrupting their daily operations.

5. 5. Bombarding and demolishing educational institutions.

6. 6. Restricting faculty, student, and staff access to educational institutions.

7. 7. Systematic harassment, bullying, intimidation of university and school teachers, students, staff, and administrators.

8. 8. Invading educational institutions.

9. 9. Preventing scholarly exchange in all its forms.

10. 10. 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.

11. 11. Obstructing the creation of new educational structures.

12. 12. Hindering access to the internet, disrupting the provision of electricity, and preventing free entry of educational supplies including books and laboratory equipment.

13. 13. Blocking the hiring of academic staff and denying them entry to their institutions through visa denial and other restrictions.

14. 14. Impeding the import of essential materials for rebuilding damaged schools and universities.

15. 15. Besieging schools and universities and using them as barracks, logistic bases, operational headquarters, weapons and ammunition caches, detention and interrogation centers.

16. 16. Disrupting international and domestic funding of educational institutions.

17. 17. Revoking residency rights for Palestinian students or academics that may pursue educational opportunities abroad.

18. 18. Denying education to political prisoners including child detainees.⁴²

As of April 18, 2024, scholasticide has made it into the UN lexicon to call attention to the dismantling of the foundations of Palestinian society and the erasure of Palestinian history.⁴³ Scholasticide, therefore, represents one layer of the cultural dimension of genocide—regardless of whether one understands genocide as having a cultural dimension or considers cultural genocide to be a distinct kind of genocide. In both cases, intentionality plays a significant role in defining (cultural) genocide as such.

>> Scholasticide as Academic Lawfare

Israeli authorities, both civilian and military, have justified their lethal attacks on Gaza's education system by claiming that these institutions are used by Hamas to attack Israel, even when they have been established by the Palestine Liberation Organization, such as Al-Azhar University and Al-Quds Open University.⁴⁴ Israel has accused countless members of the academic community of being either part of Hamas or collaborators. As the Israeli army advanced into Gaza, the military released photos and videos that, according to Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, Israel Defense Forces spokesman at the time, show "Boy Scout camps that have rocket launchers in them [and] ammunition and military facilities within school compounds."⁴⁵

Just as October 7, 2023 is neither an isolated outbreak of lethal violence by Hamas and other groups nor the starting point of the historical context to which Israel is responding, Israeli accusations of the military use of educational facilities in Gaza and the strategy of scholasticide have a much longer history. In a 2014 video on the IDF YouTube channel titled "What Is Hamas Doing to Schools and Hospital in Gaza?", a voice-over claims that hidden behind schools in Gaza are weapons, concealed rocket launchers, and booby-trapped buildings. A military officer then states that "all of these explosives have wires attached to them, all of them are activated. This house is near a UN school." The voice-over claims that these illegal operations also occur in hospitals, clinics, rescue service centers, water supply stations, and mosques.

In their analysis of this video, Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon focus on health facilities and argue that the Israeli military resorts to the strategy of "medical lawfare" to demonstrate that its attacks comply with the principle of distinction, the cornerstone of the laws of war. The video argues that "these buildings are not targets until they're used to target Israel."⁴⁶

Lawfare is a term coined by Major General Charles J. Dunlap Jr. to describe "the strategy of using—or misusing—law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective." Dunlap notes that lawfare can be used both legitimately or illegitimately, and suggests that "the frequency with which insurgents use mosques as armories"⁴⁷ is an example of illegitimate lawfare.

In contrast, Perugini and Gordon contend that military forces are more prone to use lawfare against nonstate actors than vice versa, and they single out Israel in this regard. They define medical lawfare as "a strategy adopted by the Israeli military and government to legitimize attacks on lifesaving and sustaining infrastructures by shifting the blame for these attacks onto Palestinians themselves."⁴⁸

Following Perugini and Gordon, I define "academic lawfare" as a strategy adopted by the Israeli military and government to legitimize attacks on educational infrastructures by shifting the blame for these attacks onto Palestinians themselves. For instance, Israeli government spokesman David Mencer declared on September 12, 2024, in relation to the strike on a UNRWA school-turned-shelter in the al-Jaouni area of the Nuseirat refugee camp, that it was "no longer a school" and had therefore become "a legitimate target" because Hamas used it to launch attacks.⁴⁹ Eighteen people were killed in the strike, including six UNRWA workers, and over forty-four were wounded.⁵⁰

Medicide is not recognized in the UN Genocide Convention either conceptually or denotatively. The emergence of this concept relates, on one hand, to acts listed in the UN Genocide Convention, such as causing serious bodily and mental harm to members of a targeted group and deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the targeted people in whole or in part. On the other hand, the concept brings to the forefront the issue of genocidal intent, which is contentious in the theory and practice of proving genocide.⁵¹ When all medical facilities in an area are destroyed or seriously damaged, the injured cannot escape to another area to receive medical assistance, and medical aid is not allowed to enter the target area, the perpetrators' dolus directus (direct intent) to cause harm becomes evident.

Similarly, scholasticide refers to the destruction of an education system and the harm inflicted on members of the academic community, which may include physical annihilation as well as mental harm. The destruction of academic facilities—ranging from classrooms to libraries and archives—and the targeted killings of university and school teachers, students, and staff exemplify the necropolitical governance exercised by Israeli authorities in occupied Gaza (and the West Bank).⁵² "Every school, every mosque, every second house has an access to tunnel and of course ammunition," Israeli Ambassador to the UK Tzipi Hotovely alleged during a televised interview on January 3, 2024, referring to the supposedly vast network of underground tunnels utilized by Hamas and other Palestinian organizations. When the interviewer remarked, "That's an argument for destroying the whole of Gaza," Hotovely responded: "Do you have another solution?"⁵³

From this perspective, Gaza's population is stripped of civilian status, rendering everyone a legitimate military target in accordance with the eliminatory logic of settler colonialism.⁵⁴ In this rhetoric, Gaza is not home to individuals but rather described in dehumanizing terms: Hotovely's "horrible terror city," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "city of evil," and then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's assertion that Gaza is inhabited by "animals, not people."⁵⁵

Scholasticide, along with medicide, plays a pivotal role in the de-development, decivilianization,⁵⁶ and dehumanization of the Palestinian people. These strategies are likely to be central to the investigation of the International Court of Justice into the genocidal intent of Israeli authorities.⁵⁷ In early 2024, Neve Gordon remarked on the destruction of Gaza's education system that "the damage of three months will take 10 to 20 years to recover from."⁵⁸ Meanwhile, the systematic annihilation of academic spaces—established to uphold the "unconditional freedom to question and to assert, or even, going still further, the right to say publicly all that is required by research, knowledge, and thought concerning the truth"—has exponentially intensified, perpetuating the prolonged denial of the Palestinian people's right to narrate their own story.⁵⁹