We Have Won the Moral Battle

The movement for Palestinian liberation has taught us a fundamental lesson: no one is free until everyone is free. The proliferating crises of our current moment make clear that the struggle for a free Palestine is connected to struggles against mass detention and incarceration, and for immigrant and trans rights. As we enter the 2025-2026 academic year, we are resolved to continue fighting for justice in Palestine and in the United States, against occupation, genocide, and famine there and the assault on Black and Brown lives here.

As students, staff, and faculty who are committed to Palestinian freedom, we are facing heightened attacks on our capacity to produce knowledge and to speak and write freely. Draconian new rules and regulations curbing campus protest, and the dragnet of detention and deportation, aim to crush the Palestine solidarity movement. We know that we are targeted because words matter, because critical thinking threatens authoritarian regimes of all stripes. But this coordinated campaign by university and political leaders to silence and suppress those who have the courage to chant “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea” cannot hide a simple truth: we have won the moral battle. We must hold tightly to that victory, and follow the lead of our comrades who for twenty-two months have called the assault on Palestinian life what it is: an orchestrated genocide.

While the world’s attention has waxed and waned, the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is more dire than ever. The World Food Program estimates that a half a million Gazans are on the brink of starvation, with a third of the population not eating for days on end. The entry of food and other necessary supplies remains severely restricted, with insufficient, inefficient and dangerous airdrops serving as a poor substitute for the 500 to 600 aid trucks that the UN delivered daily during the most recent ceasefire. Even when aid reaches Gaza, Palestinians continue to face Israeli attacks on aid distribution points. In a press release on August 1st, the UNHCR said that “In total, since 27 May [2025], at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of the GHF sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys.” Dr Ahmed Kamal Junina, an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics & Translation, al-Aqsa University, writes about how this widespread starvation manifests in classrooms in a recent article for The Guardian. Palestinians in the West Bank continue to face increases in violence and displacement by both the Israeli military and settlers. In the face of this moral depravity, we are witnessing the upswell of popular protest, while the U.S. and other powerful states continue to actively aid and abet Israel's war crimes.

In the coming year, National Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine will continue to support established campaigns and new ones that address the needs of our chapters and advance the global movement for Palestinian liberation. We will continue to serve as a mutual aid network for those working to end the Israeli occupation and genocide and defend academic freedoms on their campuses. We will heed the lesson of Anas al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera reporter assassinated by Israeli forces on August 10, 2025, who taught us that silence is complicity. In writing and teaching about imperial and genocidal violence, we follow Refaat Alareer who said on October 9, 2023: “I am an academic, the toughest thing I have at home is an Expo marker.” Together, we stand for justice and liberation.

NFSJP Steering Committee