University unity: understanding the reality facing Palestinian universities

A line from the Beatles goes—”living is easy with eyes closed”.

Life goes as dreams do, a blur between two realities: one we are told about and one which we live in. The suffering of one nation will often be irrelevant to another community. For most people it does not concern their well-being, and many simply cannot afford the time to dedicate a fight against political injustice. From time to time anguish at the hypocrisy of world powers will surface, but just as swiftly it will subside, lull back into the distant land.

Selfishly and nonchalantly most of us continue to indulge ourselves in the entitlement our world has allowed us, and the more we relish in it the more likely we are to forget the parallel reality that exists on the other side of the sea. As Orwell explained, the consumeristic and capitalist system makes us morally subdued, subverting revolutionary instincts. The urge to fight becomes but a trivial thing, an inadequate thought.

I have heard many express their sense of dysphoria posed between the genocide occurring in Gaza and the remarkably pleasant life one leads here. There is a cynicism, a self-loathing that encapsulates the mood of these deeply empathetic people, reluctant to allow themselves diversion whilst Palestinians are dying, wailing over their lost ones.

There are others who have completely disengaged themselves from this topic, seemingly oblivious, embracing life as they always did, emerging themselves in the pleasure they have always known. People stumble across dance floors drunkenly as if there were no tomorrow. 

Since 7 October, Israel has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s universities, killing thousands of students and close to a hundred professors.

Campuses are supposed to be a sanctuary, a haven for intellectual nourishment, a pedestal of enlightened discourse. It is meant for young adults to ripen and thrive before they step into the world, to reach a deeper understanding of the self as they counter obstacles and revelations. One acts promptly yet unhurriedly, granted to make mistakes, experiment with ideas. It is a place for learning, sharing, meeting other people of similar ideals.

Martin Luther King said one of the chief aims of education is to ‘save man from the morass of propaganda. … education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.’ When the intellectuals of a society are killed, who then is going to narrate the memory of that community?

The future Palestinian society will stand on shallow ground, having lost its bulwark, seeing its people decimated with impunity, abandoned by the world at large. Yet such ruthless destruction can only yield a flame that shines brighter than any fire, a wrath resolute to dismantle the giant beast that has for too long crippled the weak. Destruction either kills hope or ignites it; I am to believe it is the latter for the Palestinians, as have been for the many who were oppressed in history, and continue to be. Those people rise up against the tide of tyranny, blossom into a blazing flower and revel in the destiny of fighting against the enemy.

Our university seems to have had little to express in face of the events happening in Gaza. All I have seen are students taking on the streets, protesting across campus, marching and delivering speeches, articulating their pain, their bewilderment at the silence of our institution. Today’s society has become an absurdly bad dream; stating one’s opinion seems to entail more punishment than praise. Perhaps that is why the university has been silent throughout, for fear of repercussion. But that matters little. Embodying the soul of this university, our students carry the loudest voice, expressing what the ancient are afraid to admit.

“Latrobe University students for Palestine marching down Swanston Street” by John Englart (Takver) is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.