(by Valentina Roncati) Yodan Rofè teaches Urban Planning at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, a university particularly involved in the Hamas terrorist attack on 7 October: students, university administration staff and teachers were directly involved, injured, killed or taken hostage , during the Hamas terrorist attack.
"We opened lessons very late", says the teacher, "shortened the semester, held hybrid lessons to allow reservists to participate and we are doing everything we can to ensure students don't miss out on the year. The university, which also has many Arab students - I myself am the coordinator of a group of Bedouin students studying urban planning, these specialized figures are missing in their communities - he has also made special services available such as teams of psychologists".
"I am very saddened by the hostility towards the Israeli academic world - continues the professor - we are undergoing attacks and this is certainly harmful for Israel but above all it affects the large part of Israeli society which is against the current government and its policies. I cannot deny that my government he is acting in a completely wrong way but the actions of those in foreign universities who are against Israeli universities do not help the cause of peace and dialogue".
For Rofè, "Netanyahu's is the worst government ever had and enjoys too much consensus but it is also true that in Palestine those who governed for 20 years received a lot of money and used it to create a war structure and use the civilian population instrumentally, brought forward In short, a policy that makes civilians suffer. As long as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority exploit the suffering of civilians to gain international political advantages, nothing will be achieved and peace will not be achieved."
Yodan Rofè is among the academics who were protagonists, before 7 October 2023, of strong protests against government policy.
"Netanyahu's coalition that he is trying to maintain in every way - he explains - wants to reduce or eliminate the liberal part of our democracy and make it a procedural democracy, wants to reduce the capacity of the Supreme Court, which tries to have human rights at heart and monitor the actions of the government. Against the policy of this government, we protested en masse until the beginning of the war. Then, there was a state of confusion and emergency. The government's problem is that the prime minister never wanted to define a strategy regarding the war on Hamas, even though the Americans have asked him to do so several times. Netanyahu, in order to maintain his government which has two very extremist parties within it, has avoided taking a path that could also maintain a broader international consensus for Israel .
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