Canadian universities should also be in the Francesca Albanese report | Israeli-Palestine conflict

“Universities around the world, under the guise of research neutrality, continue to take advantage of an (Israeli) economy now operating in genocidal mode. Indeed, they structurally depend on collaborations and the financing of colonial colonists. ”

This is what the United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese wrote in his latest report “From the occupation economy to the genocide economy”which documents the financial tentacles of the continuous genocide of Israel in Gaza and beyond. His release prompted the United States governor regime to issue Sanctions against Albanians In a movement, the Italian legal researcher rightly described as “obscene” and “mafia intimidation tactics”.

The report reveals how universities invest not only their allocations in companies related to the War Machine of Israel, but are also committed to research initiatives directly or support that contribute to it. It is not only an act of accusation overwhelming with the complicity of the university world in genocide, but also a warning to university administrations and academics that they have legal responsibility.

In Israel, observes the Albanians, the traditional disciplines of the human sciences such as law, archeology and the studies of the Middle East essentially whiten the history of Nakba, the cropping through colonial stories which erase Palestinian stories and legitiment a state of apartheid which has transformed what it describes as a “genocidal machine”. Likewise, STEM disciplines are involved in open collaborations with military industrial companies, such as Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries, IBM and Lockheed Martin, to facilitate their research and development.

In the United States, written Albanians, research is funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense and led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with various military applications, including control of drone swarms.

In the United Kingdom, she said, the University of Edinburgh has 2.5% of its endowment invested in companies that participate in the Israeli military industrial complex. He also has partnerships with Ben Gurion University and companies supporting Israeli military operations.

Although Canadian institutions do not appear in the Albanese report, they could very easily and, in fact, we support it.

The flagship school of Canada, the University of Toronto (UOFT), where one of us teaches and another is a former student, is a particularly salient example.

Over the past 12 years, the tangles of UOFT with Israeli institutions have made snowball, extending into the fields of human sciences at cybersecurity. They also involve Zionist donors (individuals and groups), many of whom have links with accomplices and Israeli institutions, and have actively With university hiring practices to a extent that has pulled the censorship of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.

This phenomenon must be included in the context of the financing of public higher education, which obliges universities to seek private sources of financing and opens universities to the interference of donors.

After the calls for the reduction of these links intensified in the middle of the genocide, the UOFT has doubled over them in the past year, announcing partnerships linked to artificial intelligence with the Technion University in Haifa, calls joint for proposals with various Israeli universities and student exchange programs in Israel.

UOFT also continues to collect funds for its “archeology of Israel’s confidence”, which has been put in place to make a “significant contribution to the archeology of Israel” – a discipline which has historically focused on the legitimization of Israeli dispossession of the Palestinian people. He also inaugurated a new laboratory for the study of world anti-Semitism, funded by the University of Toronto-Hebrew University of Jerusalem Research & Innovation Alliance.

In addition to institutional partnerships, Asset Management Corporation (UTAM) of UOFT, which manages the allocation of the university, has direct links with many companies which, according to the Albanian report, are accomplices of genocide in Palestine, in particular Airbnb, Alphabet Inc, Booking Holdings, Caterpillar, Elbit Systems, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin and Pallant Technologes.

A 2024 Report revealed that 55 of these companies operate “in the defense, weapons and aerospace sectors affiliated to the military” and at least 12 of the 44 UTAM contractual investment managers made investments totaling at least $ 3.95 billion Canadian dollars (2.88 billion dollars) in 11 companies listed For human rights (Ohchr Territories.

In addition, 17 of the 44 UTAM contractual investment managers are responsible for the management of around $ 15.79 billion Canadian dollars ($ 11.53 billion) in assets invested in 34 companies identified by the American Friends Service Committee as benefiting from the current genocide in Gaza.

UOFT is not unique among Canadian universities in this regard. According to a report on university disinvestment, Western University, has also promoted current partnerships with Ben Gurion University and invests more than $ 16 million Canadian ($ 11.6 million) in military entrepreneurs and nearly $ 50 million Canadian dollars ($ 36.5) in companies. The list of accomplice companies again includes Lockheed Martin, as well as others listed by Albanese like Chevron, Booking Holdings, Airbnb and Microsoft.

McGill University, another best Canadian university, has also invested in Lockheed Martin, as well as notable military industrial companies like Airbus, Bae Systems, Safran and Thales, which have also been accused of having provided weapons and components to Israel.

In the context of the current genocide, students, staff and teachers of these accomplice universities – including in each of our respective institutions – demanding that their universities boycotted and deploy from Israel and businesses taking advantage of his war.

They are not only explicitly in law in accordance with international law, but in fact articulate fundamental legal responsibility and the requirements borne by all business entities.

And yet, for having increased this request, they were subjected to all kinds of discipline and punishment.

What the Albanian report is naked is that university administrators – like other business leaders – are subject and, frankly, should fear censorship under international law.

She writes: “Societies must respect human rights even if a state where they operate do not do so, and they can be held responsible even if they have respected the national laws in which they operate. In other words, respect for national laws does not prevent / is not a defense against responsibility or responsibility. ”

This means that administrative universities in Canada and in the world who have refused to decide and unravel from Israel and rather focus their attention on the regulations of students who fight for this purpose are themselves personally responsible for their complicity in genocide, according to international law.

We could not put it more powerfully or succinctly than Albanese itself: “The business sector, including its managers, must be taken into account, as a necessary step to put an end to the genocide and dismantle the global system of racialized capitalism which underlies it.”

It is our collective responsibility to ensure that this is also happening in universities.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.