“I tortured! I raped! I wanna go debate!” by Anonymous
This summer, from the 26th of July to the 1st of August, Utrecht University (UU) hosted the European University Debate Championship (EUDC) for the year 2026. 375 participants split into 200 teams originating from a total of 33 countries. Out of these 200 teams, 35 were Israeli and originated from institutions complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. Furthermore, a number of these participants were confirmed to be past members of the Israeli occupation forces (IOF). Some of the positions they occupied were, among others, within Unit 8200 of the Israeli intelligence corps, responsible for the mass surveillance of Palestinians, and the air force, guilty of mass bombings on civilians.
This information was all too easy to find. These people’s affiliation to the IOF was openly and proudly shared on their LinkedIn profiles, effectively normalizing their role in the persecution and glorifying their involvement in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. To think that daily persecution or management of the largest open air prison on Earth is just another thing you put on your CV, right up there with where you study.
Leon Khlebnikov is one of these participants, a reservist who served in the zionist militia and participated in the EUDC as a judge. Photographic and videographic evidence collected by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) distinctly demonstrates his zealous involvement in, and mocking of, the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure during his recent deployment in Gaza. These photos and videos were proudly shared by Leon himself across his social media accounts until he cowardly deleted his profiles when his case was made public.
Leon should have been arrested as soon as he set foot on Dutch soil. He shouldn’t have been allowed to leave the Netherlands, let alone freely roam its streets and participate in a debate championship. Yet, despite the HRF’s urgent criminal complaint against him supported by overwhelming evidence of his crimes, the Utrecht police refused to fulfill their duty to arrest and bring that war criminal to justice even after his participation and residence at UCU were confirmed.
However, UU did not simply host such terrorists at their facilities — it also housed them. For the duration of the event, the participants of the EUDC resided in UCU units, in Kromhout and G. If
you live in one of these buildings, then a war criminal may have lived in your unit. A rapist may have used your shower; a torturer may have eaten at your table; a killer of children may have slept in your bed.
As is their habit, the entertainers of this farce attempted to either justify their position or outright deny it and evade responsibility for their actions. The first statement came from the EUDC organizers themselves. They claimed that the Israeli participants were there as “individual debaters, not as representatives of the Israeli state”. Can that really be the case when they served in its military and studied at universities built to push its exterminatory ideology?
As for UU, our dearest College van Bestuur initially didn’t bother with statements but instead hid behind a ridiculously large amount of security. Even delivery drivers were reportedly escorted in and out of campus by personnel. Not to mention the closing of campus gates at 10 PM rather than 1 AM for “security reasons”, as we were all informed by e-mail. What were you so terrified of, Sjoerd? If it was terrorists, it would've served you better to look inside of campus than outside.
On the 30th of July, only after the evidence became too flagrant to ignore and most of their venues had canceled their contracts, UU and UCU withdrew their support and funding for the event, stating that they had not been informed of the presence of former IOF members. Their tale of an honest mistake could probably have saved their honor, if these very concerns had not been brought to the forefront of EUDC news coverage days before the event even started. Not to mention a letter sent directly to UU by Dutch Scholars for Palestine (DSP) three days prior to the championship addressing the matter of Israeli participation and specifically that of IOF reservists, to which UU responded by claiming that DSP shared “factual inaccuracies” and completely dodging the main points of the letter.
Some of you may have already read this on a few flyers scattered around campus. I do not know whether it is university personnel or unfriendly students that keep taking them down, but I do know that the students of this faculty have a right and duty to know about this. The students have the right to know that their university is hosting the members of a genocidal militia whose leaders are wanted internationally. The students have the right to know that their university is using their tuition money to house, feed, and entertain torturers and rapists. The students have the right to know that their university is using its institutional reputation to normalize state-sanctioned persecution.
During World War II, when The Netherlands was invaded by Germany, the Wehrmacht seized the Kromhout barracks and nicknamed them the “Hermann Goering barracks”. I suppose we also had the right to hope there wouldn’t be any other members of a genocidal militia to ever live there again.
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