The War Criminals Might Be Too Close to Home! Osgoode Must Clear the Air Around Its Partnerships with Bar-Ilan University and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

In Fall 2024, Osgoode’s annual tuition stood at an eye-watering $26,0156.16.¹ In exchange, Osgoode purports to offer a world-class education via a diverse course selection, clinical offerings, and academic partnerships with other law schools. However, what many may not realise is that our tuition dollars may be going towards Osgoode’s possible partnerships with Israeli universities—namely Bar-Ilan University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem—that arm, recruit, and service the Israeli war machine directly responsible for the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. 

As of July 2024, Osgoode appears to continue its partnership with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with at least one student from Hebrew University currently on exchange at Osgoode for the fall 2024/2025 semester.² At the time of writing in November 2024, Osgoode continues to list Bar-Ilan University as a potential exchange destination for Osgoode students.³ Bar-Ilan University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem also continue to name Osgoode as an academic exchange partner.⁴ Members of the Osgoode Hall Law Union’s (OHLU) Palestine Solidarity Working Group reached out to the Associate Dean, Research & Institutional Relations on two separate occasions in October and November 2024 in order to better understand the nature of Osgoode’s relationship (if any) with Israeli universities. We have not received a response to our queries thus far. We are writing in order to highlight the need for transparency from the Osgoode administration regarding the nature and status of our institutional partnerships with Israeli universities. If Osgoode does continue to have partnerships and relationships with Israeli academic institutions, specifically ones that support and legitimize Israeli war crimes, this is worrying news indeed. 

Currently, OHLU has been given no reason to believe that these partnerships have been discontinued. By continuing to partner with Israeli academic institutions that welcome soldiers directly involved in war crimes and that provide research/intellectual support for military operations, Osgoode normalizes and legitimizes atrocities currently being committed by the state of Israel against the Palestinian people in the name of “academic exchange.” 

We may only realize the full scope of what has been normalized once historians put ink to paper. Nevertheless, there is still time to address what we stand for today. We cannot accept that it is “business as usual” with a state that has committed systematic war crimes and been credibly accused of genocide. Would we be so unfazed if Osgoode partnered with any other institution so deeply responsible for an ongoing campaign of bloodshed? 

No Longer Up for Debate: Israel is Committing War Crimes, Apartheid and Illegal Occupation 

Israel is committing war crimes against Gazans as we speak— this is not controversial. It is also not controversial to note that Israel has been enforcing illegal occupation and apartheid against Palestinians for decades, via military force. According to both the United Nations (UN) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Israel has committed the war crimes of collective punishment, wilful killing and mistreatment, denial of access to medical treatment, the implementation of settlements and annexations, the destruction of protected civilian property, violations of the right to life, and the crime against humanity of extermination.⁵ Long before 7 October 2023, the ICJ has reported Israel’s decades-long occupations of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem to be illegal and its treatment of Palestinians to be systematic racial discrimination and apartheid.⁶ 

Over the past year, both the UN and the ICJ have condemned Israeli military attacks in the Middle East – with the ICJ finding that there is a “compelling foundation for genocide.”⁷ By a conservative estimate, Israel’s assaults have caused the mass killing of more than 42,000 civilians in Gaza since 2023. Every day, approximately 10 Palestinian children lose an arm or leg—or both.⁸ It is estimated that 96% of Gaza’s population are facing high food shortages and a risk of starvation.⁹ 

Israel’s assault on Gaza has been so brutal that even the Parliament of Canada has passed a motion to stop the future authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel.¹⁰ Despite such international condemnations, including from its Western allies, Israel continues to violate international law with impunity. 

Are Israeli University Students Committing War Crimes? 

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is Israel’s military and the central perpetrator of Israel’s war crimes. Some commentators refer to them as the “Israeli Occupation Forces” (IOF) to highlight the illegitimacy of their presence in the occupied territories and their centrality to maintaining Israeli occupation and apartheid. The Israeli military has been found definitively to have deliberately targeted children, refugee camps, schools, and hospitals.¹¹ Unlike the vast majority of professional armies around the world, the Israeli military operates almost entirely by conscription—mandatory military enlistment enforced by law— of Jewish Israelis over the age of 18, for a period of 32 or 24 months depending on gender.¹² Military service occurs between the end of high school and the start of university for the overwhelming majority of these conscripts. 

Israeli universities and university students are intimately involved with the Israeli military—university students make up close to one-third of all reservists who have been called into action since 7 October 2023.¹³ Some of these students are likely leading ongoing military operations against Gazans while attending classes.¹⁴ Israeli universities incentivize students currently active in the military by offering financial grants (in many cases, full-ride scholarships) and comprehensive academic accommodations.¹⁵ 

Osgoode Hall Law School Welcomes the Israeli Military-Industrial Complex 

Both Bar-Ilan University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem proudly boast their participation in Israeli military logistics and the development of weapons technologies, and offer special incentives to students participating in Israel’s current genocidal war campaign 

efforts.¹⁶ Universities are typically understood to be largely independent beacons of academia. Yet, according to author Maya Wind, “Israeli universities are not independent of the Israeli security state, but rather serve as an extension of its violence.”¹⁷In Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinians Freedom, Wind shows how Israeli academia and the security regime have “always been co-constituted.”¹⁸ 

Bar-Ilan University is one of Israel’s largest universities, with about 2,500 of its current students being army reservists.¹⁹ This number is predicted to rise, as Bar-Ilan has offered a special admissions process for university applicants who have served in the Israeli army.²⁰ As an institution, Bar-Ilan collaborates with the Israeli military through academic research. For example, a Bar-Ilan think tank called the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) issues opinions to military decision-makers and facilitates conferences on strategy with the Israeli military.²¹ 

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem also directly profits from the Israeli military-industrial complex via research partnerships and investments. Scholar Nick Reimer shares that “Israeli universities are reliant for much of their income on IDF training and research funding.”²² The active military-involvement of Hebrew University dates back to the Nakba in 1948, where faculty and students participated in producing arms and biological weapons on campus for Zionist militias that would expel and massacre Palestinians.²³ These early initiatives were then absorbed into the Israeli Ministry of Defense and birthed major Israeli weapons manufacturers, including Rafael and Israel Aerospace Industries.²⁴ Today, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s in-house technology transfer company, Yissum, has a long-term collaboration with the American weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin, which provides fighter jets and artillery to Israel and beyond.²⁵ 

There is no way around the fact that through even the possibility of these partnerships, Osgoode increases the likelihood that its students could be classmates with war criminals. This is how Osgoode may be supporting and legitimizing an ongoing genocide: by embellishing the academic transcripts of Israeli military veterans and reservists who have yet to face accountability for their participation in an unlawful occupation and inhumane siege. How do we feel, as Ozzies, about lending a hand to genocide? 

No War Criminals at Osgoode! No Tuition Dollars for Genocide! 

Genocide is not just about extermination. Genocide is about the process that normalises conditions that creep towards complete destruction. Global affairs scholar Mark Kersten elaborates that “Genocide is likewise not a failure of institutions or politics, but the result of the successful capture of those institutions, the application of discriminatory laws, atrocity denialism, and the manipulation of public opinion combined with the dehumanization of the group targeted with extermination.”²⁶ 

Through investments of law school resources, including tuition dollars, into ongoing exchange programs with at least two Israeli universities, Osgoode Hall Law School and York University continue their affiliations with the weapons companies that make genocide possible and the educational institutions that provide cover and intellectual justification to it. 

Osgoode’s continued affiliation with Israeli universities that actively provide military technology and recruits makes us directly complicit in the genocide of Palestinians. Osgoode’s failure to put as much distance as possible between us and the genocide risks compromising Osgoode’s reputation for fair and inclusive policies. Its continued partnership with Israeli universities deteriorates the legal frameworks enacted by the international community to prevent atrocities such as those systematically committed by the Israeli military. They leave open, too, a chilling and far more proximate possibility that former or current Israeli soldiers who have engaged in unfathomable brutality may be welcomed into our classes as fellow students through these exchange agreements. 

Love it or hate it, Osgoode is a type of home for us. In the process of obtaining a professional degree, learning, friendship, collaboration, and stimulating disagreement take place. In the fighting rings of the mandatory ELGC classes, we’ve all at some point smushed our furrowed brows into our palms to cringe at someone bleating an unpalatable opinion. But, by the end of our three years here, we (mostly) leave with some bittersweet affection for the growth that we’ve cultivated together in these classrooms. Interpersonal disagreements, however, do not begin to compare with the scale of horrors unleashed by Israel with the active support of its universities. Today, Osgoode Hall Law School has an open invitation to war criminals. It is high time to rescind it. 

We call on all students to talk to their Student Caucus representatives, members of Osgoode administration, professors, and classmates about Osgoode’s potentially continued 

relationships with Bar-Ilan University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. If Osgoode has indeed discontinued its relationships with Bar-Ilan and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, this is welcome news that requires Osgoode’s active confirmation and transparency around the formal cessation of this relationship. 

We also invite anyone interested in Palestine solidarity work at and beyond Osgoode to reach out to the Osgoode Hall Law Union’s Palestine Solidarity Working Group. Everyone’s ideas and contributions are needed as we organise against the possibility of Osgoode’s continued partnership with institutions that provide the material and intellectual support for war and genocide. You can contact us at ohlawunion@gmail.com. Keep an eye out on our Instagram (@osgoodehalllawunion) for updates.

Endnotes

1. Tuition is $27,296.26 if you happen to be an out-of-province student and $43,170.50 if you are an international student. Osgoode Hall Law School “Tuition, Fees, and Key Dates” online: https://www.osgoode.yorku.ca/programs/juris-doctor/access-and-support/financial-services/tuition-fees-and-key-dates/
2. HUJI International, “15 Hebrew University Students Head to Canada on Exchange,” online: https://international.huji.ac.il/news/15-hebrew-university-students-head-canada-exchange
3. York University Web Page found online at:
   • https://yorkinternational.yorku.ca/partnership/bar-ilan-university-2/
   • https://www.osgoode.yorku.ca/programs/juris-doctor/jd-academic-program/study-abroad-for-osgoode-students/fall-and-winter-academic-exchanges/
4. Bar-Ilan University Web Page found online at:
   • https://law.biu.ac.il/en/node/163
   • Hebrew University Web Page found online at: https://international.huji.ac.il/exchange-partners?tab-active=1
5. Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, UNGA, 79th Sess, UN doc A/79/232 (2024): https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/262/79/pdf/n2426279.pdf
6. International Court of Justice, “Summary of the Advisory Opinion of 26 January 2024” (26 January 2024), online: International Court of Justice https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204176.
7. United Nations, “Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel” (11 September 2024), online (pdf): United Nations https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/262/79/pdf/n2426279.pdf. International Court of Justice, “Summary of the Advisory Opinion of 26 January 2024” (26 January 2024), online: International Court of Justice.
8. Mark Kersten, “Genocide doesn’t ‘just happen’ – Israel, Gaza and Genocide as a Process, not an Event” (19 January 2024), online: https://justiceinconflict.org/2024/01/19/genocide-doesnt-just-happen-israel-gaza-and-genocide-as-a-process-not-an-event/
9. Al Jazeera, “Palestinians ‘starving to death’ in Northern Gaza due to Israeli siege” (27 October 2024), online: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/27/palestinians-starving-to-death-in-northern-gaza-due-to-israels-siege
10. House of Commons Debates, 44-1, No 290 (18 March 2024) at 1205 (Hon Heather McPherson).
11. United Nations, “Gaza: Killing of Hind Rajab and her family – a war crime too many, warn experts” (19 July 2024), online: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/07/gaza-killing-hind-rajab-and-her-family-war-crime-too-many-warn-experts. United Nations, “Gaza: UN officials condemn Israeli airstrikes on camp for displaced” (27 May 2024), online: UN News https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/05/1150261. United Nations, “UN rights office reports escalation in strikes on schools in Gaza” (6 August 2024), online: UN News https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152886.
12. Israeli Defence Forces, “Our Soldiers” (2024), online: IDF https://www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/our-soldiers/.
13. Gavriel Fiske, “Released IDF reservists head back to school, but not everything is a matter of course,” The Times of Israel (6 February 2024), online: https://www.timesofisrael.com/released-idf-reservists-head-back-to-school-but-not-everything-is-a-matter-of-course/.
14. Gavriel Fiske, “Israeli universities step up to support students in reserves, war effort,” The Times of Israel (7 November 2023), online: https://web.archive.org/web/20241008172816/https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-universities-step-up-to-support-students-in-reserves-war-effort/.
15. Bar-Ilan University, “Full Scholarships to Veteran IDF Combat Soldiers” (23 June 2022), online: https://www.biu.ac.il/en/article/11369.
16. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “University Providing Support” (November 2024), online: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem https://campaign.huji.ac.il/help-university-community.
17. Maya Wind, Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinians Freedom (Verso, 2024) at 13.
18. Ibid, at 105.
19. Bar-Ilan University, “Bar-Ilan: Israel’s Fastest Growing University for the Past Six Years,” online: https://www.biu.ac.il/en/about-bar-ilan/overview/about/.
20. Bar-Ilan University, “Special Admission Track for Reservists,” online: https://www.biu.ac.il/en/article/304508.
21. The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Bar-Ilan University, “Mission,” online: https://besacenter.org/about/mission/.
22. Nick Riemer, “Universities as tools of apartheid,” Overland (29 May 2023), online: https://overland.org.au/2023/05/universities-as-tools-of-apartheid/.
23. Marcy Newman, “How Israeli universities are an arm of settler colonialism,” Mondoweiss (2 March 2024), online: https://mondoweiss.net/2024/03/how-israeli-universities-are-an-arm-of-settler-colonialism/.
24. Ibid.
25. “Lockheed Martin in Research Deal with Israel Tech Company Yissum,” Reuters (6 October 2014), online: [https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/lockheed-martin
26. Mark Kersten, supra note 7.