I have a long history and strong connection to the people in Jabalia camp. My friends, former coworkers, patients, and people I have known for decades through my work as a doctor at Gaza’s Al-Awda hospital are living in this camp. There are the children who grew up coming to the library I founded in Jabalia, who are now young men and women, who have their own children, their own families. There are my beautiful neighbors and friends and patients, who are not my relatives but are my family. They are generation after generation of refugee families living in one of the most crowded places on earth. More

My friends in academia tell me they are experiencing the most repressive environment of their lives. The campuses of Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Northwestern (where I taught for almost 25 years), and others have been riven by conflict over the Mideast war. Faculty deemed too sympathetic to Palestine have been tarred by trustees, senior administrators, other faculty, and some students as naive at best and anti-Semitic at worst. A few professors have lost their jobs or been subjected to student petitions demanding their ouster. University presidents have been hounded by pro-Israeli, often Jewish trustees, to loudly and publicly condemn criticism of Zionism or Israel, and take additional measures to quash protest. More