![UNB links to Israel under scrutiny as students establish ‘solidarity camp’ in Saint John [video]](https://nbmediacoop.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/PalestineMay142024.jpg)
UNB’s Saint John campus is among the latest sites of a Gaza solidarity camp, following a series of student protests and occupations across North America that have sometimes been met with severe police clampdowns.
Meanwhile, some professors at UNB Fredericton have supported the students by pressing administrators at university Senate to disclose ties to Israeli institutions.
Up to 20 people have attended the protest site in the quad at UNB Saint John, according to Sarah Durham, a doctoral student in the Department of Biological Sciences.
Unlike on-campus protests in other parts of North America, students in Saint John haven’t attempted to occupy the site overnight.
“We set up every morning and then we take down in the evening, so we haven’t escalated anything quite yet,” Durham said. She said the response has mostly been positive, although one or two people have attended as counter-protesters.
Video footage and photos from the location shows placards and banners calling for a ceasefire, Palestinian flags, at least one tent and a hammock, and people seated in lawn chairs or blankets spread out on the grass.
The protest sprang up spontaneously after Durham learned that the biology department chair, Prof. Jeff Houlahan, was out in the quad with a sign that said “Free Gaza.”
“I grabbed all my stuff and I ran out there to join him and I just put out the word,” Durham said. “And that first day, I would say there was probably around 10 people and it’s kind of waxed and waned ever since.”
It’s part of a protest movement against Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip, where the Palestinian death toll had reached at least 35,173 by Tuesday, according to figures compiled by Al Jazeera. The International Court of Justice ruled in January that Israel’s acts could plausibly amount to genocide.
A petition that had collected nearly 500 signatures by Wednesday calls on UNB to “disclose all its associations, partnerships, and investments with Israeli entities.”
It also calls on the university to “cease all collaborations and partnerships with and divest all investments from Israeli entities that are complicit in the occupation of Palestinian territories and the maintenance of the apartheid regime,” among other demands.
In response to a question from several professors who are members of the UNB Fredericton Senate, the university administration stated that “currently UNB does not have any active partnerships with Israeli institutions” and reported that a small fraction of its endowment is invested in Israel-based companies.
A written statement from Prof. David MaGee, vice-president of research, states that UNB has equity investments in 35 companies “domiciled in Israel,” worth about $340,000, or roughly 0.08 per cent of the $445.2 million fund.
Protests also took place at the UNB Fredericton campus on Wednesday to mark Nakba Day, which commemorates of the forcible displacement of Palestinians in 1948.
Ahead of those protests, UNB security distributed a document on “expectations for a peaceful protest,” which states, in part, that temporary structures such as tents are prohibited and warns that violations such as refusal to leave will be reported to police.
CyberSpark
Concerns about potential links between UNB and CyberSpark were outlined in the petition, which a group of students delivered to university administration on Friday.
It notes that, in 2017, the university announced a collaboration agreement with CyberSpark, a cybersecurity research complex meant to bring together “local companies, global multinationals, all levels of government, the military and academia” in Beersheba, Israel.
CyberSpark was reportedly run by the Israeli military, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated in 2014 that an elite Israeli intelligence unit would be relocated to that campus to be closer to other stakeholders.
That intelligence unit is linked to an AI system that allegedly generates automated “kill lists” that have contributed to the massacre of thousands of civilians, according to an investigation published by the Israel-based +972 Magazine and Local Call.
In response to an interview request from the NB Media Co-op, UNB provided a brief statement attributed to MaGee.
“UNB signed a Memorandum of Understanding with CyberSpark in 2017 that allowed us to discuss opportunities for collaboration; however, it did not result in either party pursuing collaboration and the MoU ended in 2018,” he said.
A spokesperson for Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where the research complex was based, told the NB Media Co-op that “CyberSpark no longer exists and we do not have any partnerships with the University of New Brunswick.”
Some elements of CyberSpark have been integrated into Ben-Gurion University’s advanced technologies park, the “future base of the Israel Defense Force’s elite technology units,” according to a Ben-Gurion University webpage.
The formal relationship may have lapsed, but last year a UNB grad student in computer science visited the Cybersecurity Innovation Centre at Ben-Gurion University as part of a trip “made possible by a partnership between the Lawrence and Judith Tanenbaum Foundation and UNB’s McKenna Institute,” according to a 2023 UNB blog post.
On Monday, at the university Senate meeting, Prof. Matthew Sears — one of the UNB Fredericton senators who co-signed the disclosure question — asked what “informal” links may exist, including last year’s visit to the Cybersecurity Innovation Centre.
UNB President Paul Mazerolle told senators the goal of that trip was to explore partnerships in Israel and Jordan, but that those discussions have been paused. Mazerolle himself was on the trip, along with former premier Frank McKenna and others.
The professor also asked Mazerolle if the university would consider divesting from Israeli companies.
“The President answered that he would be happy to take this request to the Investments Committee, and he also said that it would be good to avoid investments in companies involved in the military and related activities,” according to Sears.
Colonial enterprise
Prof. Viqar Husain, another UNB Fredericton senator who co-signed the Senate question, said it was important for him to speak out because the situation in Israel-Palestine is “fundamentally different” from other contemporary conflicts.
“It’s a colonial enterprise in the image of what happened in the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries that has found its way in the 21st century,” Husain said.
“And that is partly why, in my perspective, as someone coming from a developing country whose ancestors have lived under colonial occupation and colonial rule, I view it through that lens, and that lens is extremely stark for me,” the Pakistani-Canadian physicist said.
Palestine represents an exception from human rights standards “that are widely trumpeted by the West,” Husain said, adding that it’s important for faculty to uphold principles that he views as essential to universities.
“The administrators at the senior level come and go every five years or every 10 years,” he said. “Universities are defined much more so by their faculty and their students.”
Lockheed Martin
Activists say more questions remain about issues such as funds invested in the military-industrial complex and groups that support illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories.
Sears noted that the university has an engineering research chair sponsored by Lockheed Martin, an American arms manufacturer that supplies fighter jets and other equipment to the Israeli Defense Forces.
“I think it’s our responsibility to speak out when our institutions are involved materially and otherwise in what I would consider certainly, at the very least, atrocities,” Sears said.
David Gordon Koch is a journalist with the NB Media Co-op. This reporting has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada, administered by the Canadian Association of Community Television Stations and Users (CACTUS).
