When he became president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Professor Daniel Chamovitz never thought he’d one day be formulating a mourning protocol.
But when Hamas terrorists attacked southern Israel on October 7, the reality for the world-leading university, which is located just 40 kilometres from Gaza, changed for ever, and with it the requirements of his role.
“We immediately sprang into action when, within an hour or two, it was clear that this was just not a normal attack,” he told the JC.
Prof Daniel Chamovitz (Photo: Diego Mittelberg)
“Unfortunately, we are practised in dealing with emergency situations. We’ve had altercations with Gaza in the past, we’ve had missiles coming. And so we had the protocols in place.”
But even those protocols soon proved to be insufficient: “When we started understanding the scale of destruction, of the murder, of the torture, I made the decision that there would not be one funeral in the university where there wouldn’t be someone from the senior administration who would go, and that I would try to get to as many shivahs as possible.”
He says the university suffered 54 deaths, both staff and students, in the attacks, and four students have been kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
More than 500 of its families are now internal refugees in Israel, having lost their houses. Meanwhile, up to 30 per cent of its undergraduate students are in the reserves, serving in the war with Hamas.
The university and its community swung into action as soon as news of the massacre started to spread.
“Even on October 7, 500 of our students — medical students, social work students, psychology, physical therapist — descended on our university, on the Soroka University Hospital affiliated with Ben-Gurion, and volunteered in the emergency room, each to his abilities, whether they were already almost physicians or they were just helping with the families, or whatever they could do,” Chamovitz explained.
All of this happened without top-down leadership, he said: “It’s not that the university organised that. It’s built within our DNA to be part of the community.”
Though the academic year has been indefinitely paused, the university has reinvented itself as an educational hub of a different nature. Its campus in Eilat has been opened up for the displaced people from several of the kibbutzim around Gaza. Last week, it opened two different elementary schools there.
“So more than 100 students from kindergarten to sixth grade, for the first time since before Sukkot, have gone back to school with their surviving — which is an awful word to say — friends. That is trying to give them some type of normality.”
Students at the university
This week, several high schools from Be’er Sheva are moving to the university’s main campus, to allow them to continue functioning despite the ongoing rocket barrages: “The university is opening up its buildings to the school districts of Be’er Sheva so that the students can study in a protected environment,” said Chamovitz.
For the first two weeks of the war, the student-union building became a distribution centre for an NGO that was distributing clothes, toiletries and toys to affected individuals in the south. Hundreds of students volunteered.
All of this activity is far removed from the normal activities of the university and Chamovitz confesses: “Being a university president is supposed to be wining and dining meeting with donors and things like that around the world.”
But it is thanks to the university’s existing structures, donors and ethos of serving its community that its funders and faculty immediately switched to supporting the Israeli people at this time of extraordinary need.
“We’re very, very lucky that we have supporters around the world,” he explained. “There are Jews and non-Jews who are looking for ways of being part of what’s going on. The university did not wait for donations.
Students have rallied to help
"We just diverted funds. I mean, our funds are supposed to be going for research and education. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing.
“We immediately diverted funds to wherever it was needed. And now it’s being made up by donations from Israel and around the world.”
BGU has established a student emergency assistance fund to provide critical direct financial help to students in need. Prior to the attack, around 400 of its students lived within seven kilometres of the Gaza border.
Many have had to evacuate their homes, leaving behind cars, laptops and other belongings.
They also have a variety of physical and mental health needs that may go on for some time.
The university is determined to build a fund to support them throughout. As president, Chamovitz finds himself at the centre of a very different organisation from the one he headed until 6 October, serving an entirely unexpected role.
“The only thing I can do as president is to be a human sponge,” he says, “to give support and to absorb some of their pain and their suffering.
“It’s the only thing I can do, actually.”
Donations to Ben-Gurion University can be made at bguf.org.uk/donate
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