The speaker, a student, introduced himself as Adam, from Free Palestine Maastricht. He has Palestinian heritage, and although born in Canada, he has spent a lot of time in East Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. This conflict, he explained, is understandably very personal for him.
He repeated the message that FPM has been spreading by any means possible since the beginning of the war in the Middle East. Maastricht University must break ties with institutes that are linked in any capacity to the Israeli armed forces and thus complicit in the many deaths in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. He named the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as an example of an institute that UM has ties with and which is “responsible for training elite troops”.
“Does the university want these partners?” the student asked, before continuing. “Does UM wish to be associated with institutes that train soldiers who fight in Palestine and Lebanon? Follow the example of other universities such as Columbia (New York) and UCLA (Los Angeles) and boycott these institutes. Just like when Dutch universities did the same during the time of apartheid in South Africa.”
The University Council acknowledged the argument and – as is procedure after the public round – carried on with the meeting.