This is a guest post by Contentious Centrist

Remember this petition, initiated by some Israeli academics and addressed to the government of Israel?

With its call to remove the:

“Checkpoints, blockades, walls and fences prevent thousands of students and teachers from leading a normal academic life,”

because such obstacles are incompatible with academic freedom, which cannot be practiced

” unless it is possible to reach the institutions where one studies, teaches.”

Now read this report which appeared on The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“A bomb exploded on Tuesday at Al-Azhar University, in the Gaza Strip, causing damage but no casualties.

The blast occurred in a classroom on the first floor of the humanities building. The room had just been vacated by students who were taking an examination, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, an independent organization known as PCHR.

Al-Azhar is a secular university politically affiliated with the Fatah movement headed by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. The human-rights organization described the attack as part of the continuing “security chaos” in Gaza that involves sporadic and sometimes deadly clashes between rival supporters of Fatah and Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip last year.”

It is very fortunate indeed that there were no casualties, though not for lack of trying.

What can have motivated the placing of a bomb in a room where students were sitting for an exam? I think it is safe to assume that the bomb was intended as some sort of a warning for those aspiring academics and their teachers.

Compare and contrast: in the West Bank, Israel places obstacles that slow down and impede the movement of Palestinians for security reasons. Academics suffer from these restrictions because getting to their institutions is exasperating and time consuming. In Gaza, a bomb is planted in an academic institution and explodes, practically shutting down academic freedom altogether as we know it.

Yet an eerie silence hovers over this violence, except for one rather forlorn post on Engage.