OPINION – According to 10 students from Nijmegen Student Encampment, last week’s media reports focused too much on the risks of the occupation of the Goudsmitpaviljoen. As a result, the real reason for the action remained underexposed. ‘A laboratory being disrupted for one day is incomparable to the devastation in Gaza.’

As the media storm rolled in last week after the occupation of the Goudsmitpaviljoen, we were angry — but not surprised — by the framing. A legitimate protest against genocide has once again been turned into a fear-mongering spectacle for newsreaders. We would like to clarify a few things that the news cycle has obfuscated.

Before the Tuesday¹ action, a clear media statement was released explaining in detail why the Faculty of Science and the Goudsmitpaviljoen in particular were the target of this action. In summary: as reported by Vox and others last month, the Faculty of Science is entering into a research project that involves among others three Israeli institutes starting in January 2026. The final signatures for this agreement were put to paper this summer.

This means that the final decision about this collaboration was made after the advisory committee hired by Radboud University had recommended that all ties with Hebrew University be severed (including partnerships in consortia such as those of Horizon EU). This recommendation was reiterated in a second advisory report published last Friday.

Ignorance

The researcher who will be receiving the Horizon funds for the upcoming project works for a research group that falls under the Institute for Molecules and Materials. This institute makes use of various research facilities on campus, including HFML-FELIX and the Goudsmitpaviljoen. We therefore see it as malicious ignorance that Professor Arno Kentgens should claim in a Vox interview: ‘We are still not quite sure why they picked us.’’

In addition to the very clear ties, outlined above, that this faculty has to genocide, the reaction to this occupation highlights the university’s hypocrisy concerning the genocide against the Palestinian people. Firstly, Kentgens speaks of the ‘fear of irreparable damage to the magnets’ in the laboratories onsite. Besides the fact that the only damage in the building has been to a few pieces of replaceable office furniture, the panic about the potential of damage to machinery emphasises again how much this university and some of its staff prioritise materials over Palestinian life (irreplaceable, irreparable). How many university laboratories in Gaza are still operational? None.

‘The Goudsmitpaviljoen location was picked with intention and consideration’

Secondly, the media panic focused mostly on the ‘deadly risk’ to those inside the building during the occupation. If Radboud University takes any pride in the education it gives its students, the Executive Board should not underestimate our critical thinking and risk-assessment skills. The protesters inside the building fully understood the risks entailed by their presence. The location was picked with intention and consideration. Those inside collectively decided this was a risk they were willing to take.

Suffocation

As described by Kentgens, the deadly risk in the laboratory comes as a consequence of damage to the magnet. In the worst case scenario, helium would escape the machinery and lead to the near-immediate suffocation of those inside the building. This sounds like a gruesome death– until you read reports of Israeli quadcopter drones shredding the organs of children already injured from a missile strike with drones developed with funding from the Horizon Europe programme. The European research project due to start in January 2026 and which involves Radboud University as well as three Israeli parties also falls under Horizon Europe.

Mayor Hubert Bruls concluded that this protest had gone too far because it put lives at risk. Apart from the fact that the Mayor has never stated anything about the fact that Radboud’s collaborations with genocidal institutions also put lives at stake, the university announced multiple times on their news page that the occupation did not pose any risk to those outside of the building. Bruls then pointed to the potential risks should police officers enter the building armed with weapons. But why would that be necessary to confront a crowd of unarmed students?

Relentless bombing

We believe that this action demonstrates that the university cares more about their expensive lab equipment than their own students. Otherwise they would not condone life-threatening police violence. But even if the university is concerned for our lives as they claim, they are incapable of extending that concern to the lives of Palestinians.

A conservative estimate of the death toll in Gaza up to January 2025 is currently at 84,000. Relentless bombing and a famine in the north have undoubtedly raised this number significantly. More than half of those dead are women, children, and people over 65. Many of the Palestinians slaughtered by Israel were students or academic researchers.

‘Our lives are not more valuable than those of the murdered inhabitants of Gaza’

Our lives are not more valuable than theirs. We are not angry that the fire department and other emergency workers took steps to ‘safeguard people’s safety’ on Tuesday. We are angry because the media leads people astray by focusing on the potential risk rather than the real genocide in which we are all complicit. We are angry because the media lets Rector José Sanders get away with saying that the university’s ties to Israel were ‘not on the agenda’ of the press conference last Wednesday.

Urgency

Have you seen the bombing of universities in Gaza? Are 23 students in a laboratory who pose a calculated safety risk really the shocking news story? Do you see the irony here?

Our intention is not to stop scientific research, but to stop a genocide. A laboratory being disrupted for one day is incomparable to the devastation in Gaza. We sincerely hope that Radboud University and its staff members can appreciate the urgency of the situation and the need for action. Students will not rest, they will continue to occupy and disrupt, until the university ends it complicitly in genocide and cuts all ties to Israeli institutions.