Israeli higher education punished Palestinian students who expressed empathy for Gaza, NGO says

An Israeli legal rights group says higher-education institutions punished Palestinian students for actions as minor as liking a pro-Palestinian post, displaying a flag or writing the word “Palestine.”

Adalah, which advocates for Israel’s Arab minority, published a report on Monday examining 132 cases involving Palestinian students who it said faced reprisals after showing support for Gaza or criticizing the siege of the territory following Oct. 7, 2023. The students attended around 40 Israeli universities and other higher-education institutions. More than three-quarters of the inquiries came from women, and most of the students were born in Israel.

In more than 60% of the cases, institutions imposed provisional suspensions before determining whether the students were guilty at a hearing. Adalah documented only 30 cases in which institutions conducted an initial investigation before opening disciplinary proceedings. Of those, 73% ended without further action.

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Israeli academia has created a two-track disciplinary system, equivalent to apartheid within higher education between Israeli Jewish and Palestinian students.

Seventy-eight of the 132 consultations eventually led to formal disciplinary files. The group said 52 ended in convictions, including permanent expulsions and temporary suspensions lasting from one to five years. Fourteen students were acquitted, while the remaining cases ended in other ways.

Adalah said Israeli academic institutions began classifying Palestinian students’ posts as “support for terrorism” immediately after Oct. 7, amid heavy pressure from Israel’s Education Ministry. In some cases, institutions reported their own students to police, which intervened up to 20 times and made arrests in some instances.

The organization described the system as an emergency administrative route marked by restricted procedural safeguards, vague criteria and assessments based on loyalty and enemy concepts. It said Jewish Israeli students instead had access to a constitutional route that preserved limits on institutional authority and freedom of expression.

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Support for terrorism.