Hvostov said does not expect the decision to be reconsidered.

Speaking to "Terevisioon" Wednesday morning, Hvostov said EKA rector Mart Kalm's decision is understandable, given what is happening in universities across Europe and in the U.S.

"The academic world is closely inter-connected, so Estonian students are well aware of what is happening in Western European and at North American universities. It is therefore wholly natural that they share this sentiment. It just happened to have arrived at Estonian universities now.

"What was bound to transpire sooner or later, now has indeed happened," Hvostov noted.

Hvostov said he also finds Kalm's claim that universities across Europe have severed ties with Israel and that Estonia should follow suit as "credible."

He pointed out the examples of institutions in the low countries, including the art universities in Rotterdam and The Hague (Netherlands) and Ghent University in Belgium, which all ended all contact with Israel as early as last May, well ahead of the Gaza conflict which began in October 2023.

As to the timing, Hvostov said: "This was likely connected to the 75th anniversary of the Nakba – the catastrophe – marked on May 15, commemorating the mass exodus of Palestinian Arabs from their homeland during the first Arab-Israeli war."

"In commemorating this catastrophe, the European academic world showed solidarity in some way," he went on.

In any case: "At that time, fierce demands arose for these universities to end all cooperation with Israeli universities," Hvostov noted.

Western students have also been protesting with placards and slogans charging Israel with genocide in Gaza, particularly following Israel's response to the October 7 attacks, a response which has both taken down two major terror organizations, Hamas and Hezbollah, and has led to tens of thousands of civilian casualties in Gaza, as well as Israel setting up a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

"This kind of blaming Israel for crimes against humanity has a very long tradition, and it was only a matter of time before it reached Estonia. And now it has," Hvostov said.

Either way, Hvostov said he does not envy current EKA rector Mart Kalm's current situation.

"He has ended up between a rock and a hard place," Hvostov remarked, referring to reactions from the Estonian prime minister and even more so the foreign minister, who subtly hinted in an Aktuaalne Kaamera interview that the university's funding might be affected by the decision/a climbdown from the decision.

"But knowing the sentiments in Western European and North American universities, EKA simply could not ignore this," Hvostov said.

This could have led to a reverse situation where foreign institutions would have severed their own ties with EKA, he added.

"Let's say that EKA hadn't severed its ties with Israel – this fact would have reached partner universities in Western and Northern Europe at supersonic speed. In this case, EKA would have been labeled as unsupportive of the Palestinian people, perhaps even as 'Zionist.' Such a label makes further collaboration very difficult," Hvostov explained.

For this reason, EKA is most likely to stay on its current course, he argued.

"EKA is already under significant pressure, and I fear they won't reverse their decision. They'll just endure it with gritted teeth."

Hvostov also pointed out that the public discussion currently focuses solely on EKA, yet there is no clarity on what is happening in other Estonian universities and higher learning institutes.

"Is cooperation still functioning there? Perhaps all ties have been severed there as well," Hvostov speculated.

Hvostov: 'Genocide' means target population falls, but Gaza's has risen several times over since 1967

In the course of his appearance on "Terevisioon" and in the light of current events Hvostov also put his finger on a phenomenon where the concept of genocide in its classic sense has begun to take on a different meaning.

Hvostov said that he does not himself understand what Dutch universities meant by severing ties with Israel and in so doing stating that Israel supports genocide, a statement made even ahead of the current Gaza war.

In 1967, the year Gaza came under Israeli occupation, its population was just under 400,000, Hvostov noted, compared with a population of 2.2 million on the eve of the October 2023 attacks and subsequent Israeli strikes on Gaza.

"A genocide which leads to a six-fold rise in a populations is a very strange one," he said, noting that in its original meaning, the population of the victim group would fall as a result.

This together with a word salad of terms including left-wing, right-wing, liberalism and others sometimes serves to obscure the issues and positions of opposing sides, as well as blurring the concept of genocide itself, Hvostov said.

This week it was reported that EKA would not be hosting the second half of a workshop from a visiting associate professor from  Shenkar College in Tel Aviv.

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