Around 200 demonstrators, mostly students and young people, protested in Brno’s Komenského náměstí yesterday evening against the Masaryk University leadership’s vocal support for Israel.
The organisers from the Collective Against Dehumanisation said that Israel’s military actions against several countries in the region are in violation of international law, and that by expressing uncritical support for Israel’s actions, the university is contributing to Islamophobia in the Czech Republic and the dehumanisation of Palestinians and people of Arab origin.
The protesters carried Palestinian flags and banners drawing attention to the victims in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon. They also chanted the slogan “ceasefire”, demanding an end to the current fighting, which has now been going on for a year, with tens of thousands of casualties.
Under the statue of the first Czechoslovak president T. G. Masaryk in Komenského náměstí, the protesters demanded that the university end relations with Israeli organisations and show solidarity with students and academics from Palestinian universities destroyed in the conflict.
“We know that Palestinian, Muslim and Jewish students and academics have been fearing for their safety in the past year,” said Simona Hendrychova, one of the organisers of the demonstration. “It is terrible when someone feels in danger simply for their religion, culture or skin colour. Therefore, we strongly oppose all hatred and really strongly wish that our activities contribute to spreading compassion.”
The students were outraged by a statement made by Stanislav Balik, the dean of the Faculty of Social Studies, who was elected to the Czech Senate in the September elections as an independent candidate. He expressed his support for Israel and described the country as “the only democracy in the Middle East”, which was “a miraculous state that arose almost from nothing”.
The student organisers argued that Balik’s comments ignore the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine known as the Nakba, which displaced 700,000 people, and thus dispute that the country was created out of nothing. They also highlighted that the university’s actions indirectly support the pro-Israel foreign policy of the current government of Petr Fiala (ODS), which was also criticised during the protest.
University spokesman Radim Sajbot wrote to CTK that the university is a democratic institution inherently based on discussion and the exchange of ideas and opinions, which he said are taking place within its walls.
“However, if someone decides to make their opinions and attitudes visible in the form of coercive appeals to the university’s leadership via social networks, demonstrations and the media, that is quite far from rational and constructive communication,” Sajbot said.
He added that the university was not playing the role of arbiter in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that after last year’s terrorist attack in Israel, it condemned the act and offered assistance to cooperating Israeli institutions. Regarding Balik’s interview with Czech Television, Sajbot said that the university honours freedom of speech and expression.
The current phase of the decades-long conflict began on 7 October last year, when the Palestinian Hamas movement launched an unexpected attack on settlements in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 as hostages.
In retaliation, Israel launched a large-scale assault on the densely populated Gaza Strip, which has now killed at least 40,000 people, mostly women and children, and left much of the territory in ruins. In addition, Israel’s almost blanket restrictions of food, water, electricity, and communications in the territory has caused an unprecedented humanitarian crisis and left hundreds of thousands of people without shelter, and at risk of famine and infectious diseases.
The war has since spread to other territories in the region, with many killed in the Palestinian-administered West Bank, and thousands killed in airstrikes on Lebanon in recent weeks as Israel has focused its attacks on the Hezbollah movement, based in the south of the country.
International human rights and humanitarian organisations have described the ongoing bombardment as the most deadly conflict of the 21st century so far, and Israel is facing charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), brought by the Government of South Africa.
