Dear Staff Member or Student,

On April 11th we received information about a closed-conference taking place on May 7th on the VU campus with the title "The Risks of Weaponizing International Law". The description of the conference and the affiliations and prior work of the speakers, suggest that the aim of the conference is effectively to legitimise the genocide of Palestinians, despite conclusion of the UN Commission, rulings of the International Court of Justice and broad consensus amongst genocide scholars. To address this, concerned staff sent out a letter  on April 17th to the executive board and FSG dean to demand a critical review of the event. Moreover, the event violates the VU rules regarding Israel/Palestine-related events [1] by not being inclusive or transparent in virtue of being a closed-door conference. On April 30th we received a reply by the dean and the rector stating that they "see no grounds to reverse that approval based on the speakers and their topics" but that they will reach out to the organizers to enable registration by members of the VU community. Less than a week before the start of this conference this has not been followed up on and staff members requesting attendance have been rejected. 

Amongst the people involved in this closed conference are:

• Lawyer Geert-Jan Alexander Knoops who defended Geert Wilders for his public statements demanding "less Moroccans" [2] and has previously published work titled Adjudicating Genocide Charges: Challenges for the International Court of Justice. 

• Prof. Danny Orbach who published a blog post titled The Inflation of the Genocide: Thoughts on the verdict in The Hague [3] in which he states: "If the Israeli Center, which advocates combat under international law, is also accused of committing genocide, then perhaps it is worthwhile to cut off all contact with the international law establishments and behave without any restraint?"

• Prof. Elena Kantorowicz (in the organizing committee) was called out by a former Palestinian PhD candidate for her anti-Palestinian and hateful tweets at Erasmus University Rotterdam, in one post claiming that "at some point remaining humane towards your enemy stops being an option" and reposting a tweet that describes Palestinians as "blood thirsty Nazi-Arab Jihadists. This lead to a protest by at EU Rotterdam supported by Muslim Rights Watch [4].

• Prof. Jessica Roitman is the organiser of this conference. She teaches Jewish studies at the VU, with no academic resume pertaining to international law. She has been weaponizing her LinkedIn account to openly platform blatant pro-Israel propaganda, and genocide denying, anti-Palestinian rhetoric.

• Anne herzberg who works as a legal advisor for NGO Monitor. NGO monitor presents itself as an independent watchdog that scrutinizes humanitarian organizations, though leaked documents suggest it functions as a strategic tool for the Israeli government to discredit its critics [5]. By publishing reports alleging ties to terrorism, the organization influences media narratives and political pressure to jeopardize the funding of NGOs like Oxfam Novib.

This highlights a recurrent and evident double standard: a conference that openly aims to legitimise genocide, war crimes and brutal violations of human rights, by bending legal definitions is permitted, while staff and students advocating for Palestinian rights face repression, police violence and intimidation. Events and actions by Palestinian advocacy groups are repeatedly suppressed under the veil of "pluralism" while violence towards Palestinian groups and activists given a platform and legitimised. 

Since the responsible boards have failed to take action we call on staff and students to 1) sign this letter to demand that the conference is cancelled, and 2) attend our counter-event on May 7th: we will hold a demo against the conference at 9am and then a counter-conference at 10am (location will be announced in an updated below - make sure to check the box "Send me an email to keep me posted of the results of this open letter​​​​​​​" when signing!) in which we have invited several speakers to clarify the applicability of international law with respect to the ongoing genocide: 

• Prof. Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg from the London School of Economics and Political Science: "International Humanitarian Law is supposed to regulate the conduct of hostilities in times of armed conflict through "usages established among civilized peoples, from the laws of humanity and the dictates of public conscience". This claim has never been truly sincere, but it has been rendered completely unworkable in the past two years, as bad faith actors construct what I call "International Hasbara Law - the distortion of the laws of armed conflict not for the purpose of humanitarian values, but the justification of inhumane war, mass atrocity and genocide. In this talk, I will explore how the law is manipulated, through which processes and what does this mean for International Humanitarian Law and war going forward."

• Prof. Younes Saramifar from the VU's Faculty of Humanities: "Political cruelty is the law of victim-turned-perpetrator and victor nothing counts as winning except continued killing and denial of genocide not as a factual legal disagreement but as a breakdown of ethical consensus on the meaning of good and evil. In this talk, I reflect on the law of political cruelty to explain how the denial of genocide of Palestinians is an attempt to end possibility of peace and reconciliation."

• More speakers are pending confirmation. 

Please join our event and signal to the executive board that we do not want to platform genocide deniers on our campus. 

With kind regards,

concerned Staff and Students

References:

[1] vu.nl/en/employee/meetings-and-events/events-about...

[2] nu.nl/politiek/4325844/uitspraken-wilders-moeten-b...

[3] dannyorbach.com/2024/01/27/%d7%94%d7%90%d7%99%d7%a...

[4] instagram.com/p/DOGBS3ijaPZ/?igsh=d3JtcDA0azhuanZh...

[5] https://archive.is/z8S02