Rescind your invitation to Mr. Robert Aumann, known for his Zionist views
By Signed by around 250 Citizens
To,
Director, Indian Statistical Institute
Subject: Your invitation to Robert Aumann, known for his Zionist views, for a lecture
Dear Sir,
We are writing to you, on behalf of concerned citizens and human rights activists, after learning that the economist Robert Aumann has been invited by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) for a lecture on January 13, 2025. We understand that there has not been any public announcement regarding the same, and therefore seek clarification on whether Mr. Aumann has indeed been invited.
We would like to remind you that Mr. Aumann has openly identified himself as a Zionist and is a member of a number of groups opposing the historic existence and recognition of the Palestinian state. He has repeatedly supported the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the denial of their equal rights. He also joined a Zionist political party to which he served as ‘Scientific Advisor’, and subscribed to the aim of a ‘Greater Israel’, which includes parts of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and other countries. He also made public statements claiming that the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, in which Israeli settlements were removed, should be termed as ‘ethnic cleansing’. This invitation mocks the historic position of the Indian government to stand with the rights of Palestinian people to sovereignty, drawing from its own anti-colonial struggle for independence.
Coming at a time when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has held Israel liable for committing plausible genocide and held Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories to be unlawful and when the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an institution as esteemed as yours, by inviting and hosting a keynote lecture by Mr. Aumann, is ignoring its moral obligation to support an international order based on compliance with international law and human rights.
We are on Day 441 of the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and the continued expansion of Israeli terror in the West Bank, other Occupied Palestinian Territories, Syria, Lebanon and other areas in neighbouring countries. The continued partnership with Zionist leaders and Israeli institutions by the ISI and other Indian academic institutions not only endorses and supports a regime built on ethnic cleansing and genocide, but also violates universal human rights principles and values of solidarity, empathy and justice which are central to academic pursuit and learning. The decision to invite someone who has justified the ethnic cleansing of lakhs of Palestinians, also undermines the stand taken by the Indian government in the UN of recognising the Palestinian state and voting in the UNSC for a permanent ceasefire.
As of today, there is no university left standing in Gaza. To make this targeted assault on the Palestinian education system worse, Israel has destroyed 80% of schools in Gaza. Palestinian academics and intellectuals have been deliberately killed by Israeli forces. These actions taken together are being referred to as the crime of ‘scholasticide’, a term developed in the very specific context of Israel’s attack on Palestinian scholars, students and educational institutions since the time of the Nakba in 1948. For years, there has also been increasing evidence of the central role played by Israeli universities in being ‘a key planner, supporter and defender of Israel’s attacks on Gaza’ including in enforcing the occupation and in developing defense and arms technology for the Israeli state. For example, Israel bombed the Al-Tabin school in central Gaza killing hundreds of displaced families including children in one of the deadliest massacres since Israel first launched its full scale offensive in Gaza in October 2023. Despite this, some Indian academic institutions in fact have chosen to deepen their ties with Israeli institutions, rejecting global and national calls for academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
Deepening academic ties with Israeli universities is neither in our national interest, nor compliant with our own constitutional values. There are genuine concerns that such ties might pull Indian academia into a military industrial complex much like American and Israeli universities. India is already imitating inhuman and undemocratic Israeli policies directed towards Palestinians: oppression of minorities, forced evictions and demolitions, curbing of dissent, among others. Indo-Israeli academic ties, many Indians fear, may end up entrenching such policies even more deeply in India’s body politic.
Mr. Robert Aumann is a member of the group ‘Professors for a Strong Israel’, a group of academics which has publicly and repeatedly called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the interest of preserving the domination of Jewish Israeli society. While many argue that an individual may be separated from their political beliefs, Mr. Aumann has repeatedly used his research to justify Israel’s authoritarian regime and called for more aggressive strategies to be used to oppress Palestinians. Even the Nobel Prize conferred to Mr. Aumann was vehemently opposed by hundreds of academics. A petition was sent to the Swedish Academy to condemn the decision to give Mr. Aumann and Thomas Schelling the award.
The Indian Statistical Institute prides itself for being a centre for excellence in the fields of Mathematics, Statistics and related sciences. No academic pursuit is meaningful without an awareness and commitment to making the world a more just and equitable place where every human being can realise their right to a life with dignity. Inviting Mr. Aumann would make ISI complicit in the Zionist goal of genocide and expansion of Israeli terror, and guilty of abandoning the values of human rights and justice which must underline every academic pursuit.
We urge you to rescind your invitation from Mr. Aumann, and demand that your institution heed the call of the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and desist from entering into new tie-ups with Israeli institutions, terminate existing collaborations with Israel and boycott all Israeli state officials. Just as the international boycott of South African institutions during the apartheid years led to the fall of the apartheid regime in South Africa, we are confident that a similar boycott of Israeli institutions will ensure that Israel fails in its entirely illegal objective to destroy the very social, cultural and political foundations of the collective life of Palestinians. It is the moral imperative of our times, that all right thinking people stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza.
We, the undersigned, demand the following from your authorities immediately:
- A clarification whether Mr. Robert Aumann will be hosted by Indian Statistical Institute in January 2025
- And if that is the case, a public announcement of the withdrawal of invitation to Mr. AumannCirculated: December 21, 2024