An Epistemicide
Zachary Levinson | 07 July 2025 | The Telegraph
Earlier this month, the United Nations special rapporteur, Farida Shaheed, confirmed that more than 90% of schools — and every single university — in Gaza had “been completely or partially destroyed, rendering them inoperable”. She described the situation as “scholasticide”, a term first invoked by the UN in April 2024 when another special rapporteur, Francesca P. Albanese, suggested that Israel was undertaking “an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system”. By this point, six months into the genocide, 80% of Gaza’s schools and universities had been damaged or destroyed.
Israel’s wilful destruction of educational institutions — and more broadly, of archives, art, literature, and entire libraries — was first described by the Palestinian political theorist, Karma Nabulsi, as “scholasticide” in 2009. “Deep down,” she suggested at the time, Israel “know[s] how important education is to the Palestinian tradition and the Palestinian revolution. They cannot abide it and have to destroy it.”…