On August 17, my host brother from Gaza, Mohammed Masbah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike with his mom, dad, and brother. He stayed with my family in the US for several months to get fitted for a prosthetic limb. Israeli snipers shot off his leg as a child during the 2018 Great March of Return protests, and we were happy to get him out of Gaza and give him the chance to walk again. We stayed close even after his return to Gaza. Two years ago, he even sent my mom a WhatsApp message: “Mama I am getting married. No matter how far I am from you, you will be my second mother.”

The strikes that killed Mohammed and tens of thousands of other Palestinians likely relied on ballistics positioning systems and AI targeting algorithms developed in American academic institutions like MIT. An Israeli weapons company Elbit which supplies the drones that may have killed Mohammed is still a member of MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program. Three MIT laboratory groups still take research funding from the Israeli military, which operates torture camps and provides armed cover for a 21^st century settler colonial project in the Occupied Territories. This occupation denies millions of Palestinians under its rule the right to habeas corpus, and rights to vote, worship, move from city to city, and marry other kinds of Palestinians (or Jews).

It’s time for MIT’s faculty to enter the fight and say no to abetting crimes against humanity and apartheid in the Holy Land. These collaborations break MIT’s own ethical funding criteria and health and safety policies. I invite faculty to immediately suspend all collaborations with Elbit and the Israeli military and use all available means to force MIT to sever institutional ties with the state of Israel. In the 1980s, the cumulative campaigns to globally boycott and isolate the South African regime paved the way to democracy and the end to apartheid. A similar campaign is required of us today.

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