For decades, Israel’s oppression of Palestinians has depended upon technologies of control that involve water, agriculture, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. In forging a formal partnership with Israel, Gov. David Ige and other Hawaii officials support this oppression. We call upon them to revoke this partnership.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Defense for Children International, the United Nations, and even Israel’s own human rights groups, Yesh Din and B’Tselem report that Israel regularly commits human rights violations against Palestinians in its practices of occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. Most recently, Israel has massacred and maimed thousands of Palestinians: The 2021 military offensive operation Wall Guardian killed 256 Palestinians; this past August, Operation Breaking Dawn killed 49.
In May, a U.S. citizen and journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was killed by the Israeli Army while documenting Israel’s brutality. The Israeli military has imprisoned upwards of 700 Palestinian children every year and killed over 100 children in the past two years alone. The U.S. bankrolls this violence by sending Israel $3.8 billion in taxpayer dollars annually, along with military equipment.
It is particularly deplorable that the University of Hawaii is pursuing a research partnership with Israel at a time when many U.S. academic organizations have condemned the complicity of Israeli academic institutions with Israel’s human rights violations, including Palestinians’ right to education. To form a research partnership is to participate in these violations. In the 1980s, students went on hunger strikes to demand that UH divest from South African apartheid. Acting from the same principles, we call upon the UH administration to withdraw from this investment in Israeli apartheid.
In Hawaii, kanaka maoli leaders Andre Perez and Kaleikoa Ka‘eo have worn keffiyeh in solidarity with Palestinians as they stood to protect Mauna Kea from the Thirty Meter Telescope. Perez explains, “In Hawaii, we are very much aware of Palestinian struggles, and I wanted to show solidarity with Palestinians in our shared resistance for our land.”
Israel controls every aspect of Palestinian life. Israel holds Palestinians in a virtual prison of deprivation and brutality in Gaza and constantly expands its land grab in East Jerusalem and the West Bank with hundreds of settlements, confiscating land, forcing evictions and demolishing homes in violation of Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Laws. We know all too well that water is life and that those who control wai control life. For decades, Israel has diverted waters flowing in and underlying the West Bank for its own use, forcing Palestinians to purchase limited quantities of their own water at exorbitant rates.
Israel controls access to land and water, medical care, food, markets, electricity, travel and technology. Because of Israel’s apartheid policies, approximately 50% (2.1 million people) of all Palestinians in the “occupied territories,” and in Gaza over 80% of its residents, require humanitarian assistance (stats from UN OCHA).
As for Hawaii and Israel sharing cybersecurity and intelligence technology, Israel develops and employs its technology in large part to monitor and control all aspects of Palestinian life. Hawai‘i should not be a part of this oppression. It is with similar objections to partnership that Google and Amazon workers are protesting “Project Nimbus,” a multibillion-dollar technology contract with Israel.
Why would Hawaii commit to collaborating with an oppressive regime, even as we ourselves struggle with settler colonialism in Hawaii? How can Ige celebrate this partnership as one of uniting peoples, when Israel’s consul general shamelessly alludes to Palestinians and other Arabs as “human sharks” during this same press conference?
Hawaii officials must withdraw participation in a partnership that brings with it tacit endorsement of the above injustices and atrocities.
Ali Musleh is a member of Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UH (SFJP@UH), and a University of Hawaii lecturer in political science; Cynthia Franklin is a UH English professor and a founding member of SFJP@UH and Jewish Voice for Peace-Hawai‘i.
