Birzeit University Under Attack: Fifth Invasion Amid Ongoing Genocide and Scholasticide

At midnight of September 22, 2025, Israeli occupation forces once again stormed Birzeit University. Israeli Soldiers violently assaulted campus guards before raiding several university buildings, including the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Art, Music and Design, the Naseeb Azeez Shaheen Auditorium, and the Student Council office.

Since 2002, Birzeit University has endured 24 raids, and today’s assault is the fifth invasion of our campus since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza. As last year, the assault comes at a particularly critical moment, as the university community wraps up the summer semester and begins preparations for the fall term.

This is not an isolated incident, but part of a broader, systematic assault on higher education institutions across Palestine. The repeated raids on Birzeit, like the destruction of universities in Gaza, are calculated attempts to crush academic freedom, break the spirit of our students and faculty, and erase the foundations of Palestinian intellectual and cultural life.

Just days ago, the Israeli occupation declared the Islamic University of Gaza “no longer exists” after destroying its last standing campus. Such acts go far beyond military oppression, they form the core of scholasticide, the deliberate destruction of education as a means to deny Palestinians the ability to rebuild their future and pursue justice and liberation through knowledge.

These systematic violations are in clear breach of international law, which obliges an occupying power to protect educational institutions. Instead, Israel has turned universities into targets of war.

The Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University calls on students, academics, activists, human rights organizations and all people of conscience around the world to confront scholasticide. We call to take action and urge you to pressure your governments and representatives to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinian education and against the Palestinian people, and collectively work towards ending the complicity of your institutions in these war crimes.

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