Half of faculty at Israeli universities signed petitions accusing IDF of Gaza war crimes - study

A new report published by research and business-intelligence outlet The Olam on August 17 examined political petition participation among 2,844 faculty members across eight leading Israeli universities. The audit found that 1,434 faculty members, representing 50.4% of those included in the study, publicly signed at least one political petition calling the Gaza campaign launched following the October 7 massacre a war crime.

The study covered universities such as the Haifa Technion, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU), the Weizmann Institute, the Open University, Tel Aviv University (TAU), Ben-Gurion University (BGU), the University of Haifa, and Bar-Ilan University. Researchers cross-referenced public rosters of political petitions circulated between 2024 and 2026 with official university faculty directories.

According to the report, 96.9% of the identified signatures traced back to a single document issued by the Black Flag initiative in May 2025.

Titled “An Urgent Call to the Heads of Academia in Israel,” the letter explicitly described the military campaign in Gaza as “a horrifying litany of war crimes and even crimes against humanity,” and urged the Association of University Heads in Israel and other academic leaders to mobilize the full weight of Israeli academia to stop the war.

The researchers noted that the numbers were driven by widespread single-issue participation rather than a small cadre of habitual activists, pointing out that the vast majority of participating faculty signed only once, with just 18 individuals across the dataset signing multiple petitions.

Participation rates varied notably across institutions, highlighting how institutional character shapes faculty activism. At the Technion, 77% of audited faculty signed, and HU recorded 67%, while Bar-Ilan sat at the opposite end of the spectrum with a 30% signing rate.

Study finds that Israeli humanities professors at least three times more likely to sign Gaza war crimes petitions

The findings also underscored a structural divide between academic disciplines. Humanities faculty members were roughly three and a half to five times more likely to sign than their colleagues in STEM fields. Middle Eastern studies faculty signed at an 82% rate, sociology at 70%, philosophy at 66%, and political science at 59%, compared with lower engagement in fields such as physics at 27%, chemistry at 23%, biology at 19%, and engineering at 15%.

The Olam noted several methodological limitations, stating that petition-signing does not directly establish an individual’s broader political ideology, and that the sample of eight universities likely does not capture the entirety of Israeli academia.

The researchers placed these findings in a broader comparative context by looking at a previous study they conducted on American academia.

That earlier audit examined 2,499 American Jewish Studies faculty members across 313 US universities and found that 51.9% of them had publicly signed political petitions targeting Israel, such as calls to sever institutional ties with Israeli academic centers, endorse academic boycotts, or condemn Israeli military policies. By comparing the two datasets, the authors noted that elite American academia and flagship Israeli universities exhibited nearly identical overall rates of public political petitioning.

Ronn Torossian, publisher of The Olam, said in a statement, “These are not fringe figures - these are core faculties at Israel’s flagship research universities, during a war that began with the single deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Parents sending their children to study at these institutions, donors writing checks, and the boards of governors who set policy for them are entitled to know exactly what they’re funding. Now they can.”

Torossian told The Jerusalem Post that “after completing studies on both American and Israeli academia, students seeking Zionist and pro-Jewish values should thoroughly explore enrolling at institutions which don’t permit views opposed to their worldview,” noting that “in both Israel and the US, there are entire schools and departments which have been completely infected with radical extreme viewpoints.”

Torossian commented on the report, saying, “What is extraordinary about this study is the sheer scale of professors in Israel who operate well outside the country’s political mainstream and Zionist consensus. There is not a single major Israeli political party that would endorse the positions represented in these petitions.”

Torossian added that “when political activism reaches this level inside institutions entrusted with scholarship and intellectual independence, Israelis, parents, students and donors have every right to ask difficult questions.”

'How deeply anti-Israel have these institutions become?' researcher asks

“Do Israel’s universities reflect the society whose taxpayers and philanthropists sustain them? How deeply anti-Israel have these institutions become?” He asked, warning: “The concentration of this political activism is bewildering. Israeli universities should not be places where radical viewpoints become the mainstream. It is alarming to see how deeply entrenched these extreme viewpoints appear to be in academia.”

He urged “donors to the Technion, Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, and other Israeli universities to demand answers from university leadership and ask what these institutions are doing to protect Zionist interests and values.”

“Donors have every right to ask whether the institutions they support remain places of genuine intellectual pluralism. The numbers make that question impossible to ignore,” Torossian said.