The “Dangerousness” of Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

On April 18, 2024 our ISCI colleague Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was arrested at her home in Occupied East Jerusalem. Police confiscated her mobile phone, computer, a range of documents, and poetry books by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a Palestinian citizen of Israel was held overnight in a cockroach and urine infested Jerusalem cell. She was shackled, deprived of sleep and refused timely access to her medications. She was abused and shouted at by Israeli police.

Following interrogation, she was handcuffed and taken to the detention centre in the Russian lot. “There they stripped me completely, a girl searched my body, I told her that I’m not a criminal, that I’m just talking. They cursed me: ‘Die’, ‘Burn’, ‘Hamas’.”

After her blood pressure reached dangerous levels  she was taken to a doctor at the detention centre who reluctantly agreed to deliver her medication.

“They took me to a room and threw a mattress on the floor. I was shivering with cold, I asked for a blanket, and they brought me a blanket that smelled of garbage and urine and was also wet,” she tells of the arrest in the Russian lot. “I sat on the bed until morning, my ears and nose started to bleed, I threw up, washed my face and went back to bed. I don’t know how something like this happens to someone my age. The light was very strong and there was noise. The cold was terrible, my teeth were chattering, even though the blanket smelled And it was wet, in the end I covered myself with it because I couldn’t stand the cold. Although I research these things, I never felt them on my flesh.”

The charges against this distinguished feminist criminologist included suspicion ‘of severe incitement against the State of Israel for statements made against Zionism and claims that Israel is currently committing genocide in Gaza.’

Israel’s genocide has now killed at least 35,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 76,000 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Over 4,000 Gazans have undergone amputations and an equal if not greater number have sustained spinal cord injuries. Two-thirds of the murdered have been children and women. The real death and injury toll is undoubtedly much higher given the countless bodies buried beneath the rubble left by airstrikes and the inability to record mental health damage. Every cide known to humanity has been perpetrated by Israel against Gaza – genocide, ecocide, infanticide, femicide, and cides that we have never witnessed before, scholasticide, saniticide, domicide, urbanicide.

The morning following her arrest at a hearing in the Jerusalem Magistrates Court the state prosecutor’s request for an extension of detention was dismissed for lack of evidence.  Shalhoub-Kevorkian was released by the court on minimal bail conditions which amounted to 10,000 NIS (£2,150), third party guarantees also to the amount of 10,000 NIS and a readiness to appear for any investigations or further court hearings.

One of less than a handful of Palestinian Israeli Professors she is the Lawrence D. Biele Chair in Law at the Institute of Criminology and School of Social Work and Public Welfare at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem and a Global Chair in the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London.

She is a highly distinguished scholar of childhood, state crime, occupation and settler colonialism.  But it is for her research on Palestinian children for which she is probably best known. This work focuses on the ‘unchilding’ of Palestinian children a process through which racialised Israeli state practices produce  a cycle of … ‘unending cruelty and violence’ transforming children into killable and maimable subjects. She explores and documents the multitude of methods used by the occupation to deprive Palestinian children of their childhood. In one study 39 children from Gaza were interviewed by her team about the “return marches” held near the fence between 2018 and 2019. According to Shalhoub-Kevorkian, since the beginning of the current war, contact with 21 of the children she interviewed has been lost. She knows some have died,  “I remember a boy, I asked him why he doesn’t participate in the return marches. He said he wants to live and he wants to play football, and in the marches they shoot his legs, and then he can’t play. You just have to hear his desire to grow. He was the first to die.”

Just weeks after Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza Shalhoub-Kevorkian published and signed a petition on behalf of researchers and students of childhood. The petition, which has now garnered 2,492 signatures called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the cessation of the ‘Western-backed Israeli genocide’ and an end to the ‘egregious violation of Palestinian children’s rights’.

The petition located the genocidal assault on Gaza within 75 years of settler-colonial occupation in Palestine and the 17 years in which Gaza was placed under siege by the Israeli occupying power.

The petition quoted British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta who, from Al Shifa hospital, described the unprecedented scale of childhood trauma in which children were undergoing amputations without anaesthetic and who were writing their names on their arms so they might be identified should they be murdered. The unprecedented extent to which children were injured and orphaned at the same time necessitated, Abu Sitta explained, the new medical category of ‘wounded child with no surviving family’.

The petition drew on research conducted by Shalhoub-Kevorkian and other scholars of childhood that showed ‘that colonial occupation, state violence, and terrorism means a real threat to children’s physical and psycho-social continuity’ and described ‘the ongoing cumulative trauma’ of the bombardment of Gaza, ‘on children’s well-being and emotional, mental, and physical health.’

In an exceptional move the Hebrew University’s President,  Asher Cohen and Rector, Tamir Sheafer responded on October 29, 2023. with a letter to Shalhoub-Kevorkian declaring how: “astonished, disgusted and deeply disappointed” they were that she had published and signed the petition. They claimed what was written in the petition was “not very far from crimes of incitement and sedition.” They categorically refuted the analysis offered in the petition that Israel was perpetrating genocide and instead claimed Hamas’ massacre of October 7 “falls completely under this definition.”

The letter to Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian concludes with the statement: “We are sorry and ashamed that the Hebrew University includes a faculty member like you. In light of your feelings, we believe that it is appropriate for you to consider leaving your position at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.”

The letter was shared by the President’s office with all members of the HuJ staff. As was undoubtedly anticipated the letter was posted immediately on social media platforms and disseminated widely.

Given the febrile environment within Israel at the time Cohen and Sheafer would have been acutely aware of the impact their actions would make. Even at this early stage Israeli academics were already playing a key role in promoting the genocide. Video clips made and circulated by Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s colleague Professor Gad Yair, called for a ‘Nakba 2’ (later taken offline), articles from Tel-Aviv University Professor Eviatar Matania called for the complete destruction of Gaza City (Makor Rishon, October 27). At the same time Palestinian students came under attack by Zionist mobs shouting “death to Arabs, death to Arabs.” Targeted hate mail and death threats against Shalhoub-Kevorkian followed quickly.

Asher Cohen and Tamir Sheafer had wittingly placed one of their colleagues at very real risk of personal violence.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian did not, as Cohen and Sheafer had demanded, resign. Instead, despite an increasingly hostile and personally dangerous environment, but buoyed by a global wave of academic support she continued to teach her Palestinian and Jewish students all of whom she describes as ‘precious’.

Then came suspension.

She also continued her research and administrative commitments – that is until mid-March 2024 when she was formally suspended from her position at the HUJ. On March 12, 2024, Cohen and Sheafer wrote to Knesset Member Sharren Haskel of Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party reiterating the charges they had made against Shalhoub-Kevorkian in their  October 29, 2023, open letter. Again they declared how sorry and ashamed they were that Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian was included as a member of faculty. The letter was full of accusations including the charge that she had used her right to freedom of speech and academic freedom in a “cynical way” that “divides and incites”. And again they attempted to cast shame upon her. Such was the dishonour she had brought upon the HUJ they had decided to suspend her from all teaching responsibilities and concluded the letter to Haskel by declaring that the Hebrew University is a Zionist university. The implication was clear – non Zionists and anti Zionists, such as Shalhoub-Kevorkian have no place at HUJ.

Not all HuJ staff were on board with its senior management.

In a letter to Cohen and Sheafer, HUJ professor Yuri Pines described the content of the letter to Haskel as ‘despicable’, “I never thought that the Hebrew university was a Zionist institution”, he wrote, “I saw it as an academic institution where Zionists, non Zionists and also people who oppose Zionism like myself can work. I also thought that the Hebrew University is led by people wise enough to understand that the issue of whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza or just normal ‘war crimes’ belongs precisely to the area where lecturers and students can express themselves freely … I never knew there where was a political position test that we are obliged to take in order to teach in the university.”

In their public haste to attack Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Cohen and Sheafer breached the university’s own conventions. She learned of her suspension through the media. Cohen and Sheafer had first circulated their letter to Haskell through social media platforms and Israeli news outlets.

In the letter that was published announcing her suspension, the president and rector declared the suspension was “to maintain a safe climate on campus for the benefit of all the students.”

The letter claimed that the professor, “continues to benefit from the reputation of our illustrious [sic] institution, while disgracing us on the Israeli and international level.”

HUJ senior management thus ensured that the atmosphere of threat and intimidation was reignited against Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian who has since received dozens of threats to her life.

In late March following a meeting with rector Sheafer during which Shalhoub-Kevorkian clarified her remarks on reports of sexual assaults during the October 7 attacks her suspension was rescinded. She was not asked to withdraw her statement that Israel was committing genocide despite this being cited as a formal reason for the suspension.

Shalhoub-Kevorkian has been the victim of Israeli state harassment and intimidation for many years but the intimidation has taken a new and sinister form since Israel launched its genocidal campaign against Gaza.

Following a research trip in March 2024 to her second academic home, Queen Mary University of London, during which she launched a special issue of State Crime Journal on Settler Colonialism, Shalhoub-Kevorkian was detained  by Border Control at Ben Gurion airport and interrogated for several hours before being released.

She was then notified by her lawyers that a police investigation of her was very likely.

Israeli state security officials were particularly exercised by Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s statements on an late February 2023 episode  of the podcast ‘Makdisi Street’ devoted to the events of October 7. During the podcast she said that she “opposes things that were done – I wouldn’t permit anyone to kill a child, to kidnap, to rape a woman,” but she also cast doubt on the fact that sexual assaults happened during the attack. “The creation of stories, the exaggeration, were done in order to portray the Palestinians as terrible… Sexual violence is a thing that happens, and I oppose it… If a woman says she was raped, I believe her. But we’re not seeing (after October 7) a woman who came out and said what happened to her.”

The Extension Hearing

In the hearing the state prosecutor accused Shalhoub-Kevorkian of, “severe incitement against the State of Israel for statements made against Zionism and claims that Israel is currently committing genocide in Gaza.” In evidence he brought before the court several quotes from the Makdisi St podcast including “a woman soldier shot a 14 years old child at point-blank range” and “they return the body dirty and horribly mutilated”. On the basis of these quotes the prosecutor argued her “dangerousness due to her influential statements, which have wide exposure both domestically and internationally, posing a danger as they might influence various citizens to commit crimes against the State of Israel.” He continued, “Additionally, during her arrest yesterday, a search of her home found posters and pictures depicting IDF soldiers as an occupying army.”

Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s lawyer Hasan Jabarin cut right to the chase, challenging the court that this was the first case in legal history in which public incitement and incitement to racism against an academic had been used to extend her detention. And to the best of his knowledge, this was the first time an academic in Israel had been investigated by the police over academic articles they had published in leading peer reviewed international journals, articles he pointed out written in English and read by students and scholars at the Hebrew University as well as internationally.

The interrogations proceed and they are now being held outside Jerusalem in an effort to thwart the solidarity protests which her case has attracted.

The story of Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is an object lesson in the fragility of academic freedom under conditions of war and genocide. Attacks on academics and students who oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza are growing. We are all at risk. Solidarity with, and defence of Nadera and all those who are currently targeted by those complicit in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, must be our immediate priority.