The Rising Student Movement In Solidarity With Palestine

By Barry Sheppard

Prior to the police action on campus, Columbia suspended three women students from the University’s historically largely female Barnard College — Isra Hirsi, Maryam Iqbal, and Soph Dinu — for participating in the encampment. Isra Hirsi is the daughter of representative in Congress from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Ilan Omar, one of two Muslim members of Congress (the other being Rashida Tlaib) and the first woman of color to be elected from Minnesota.

Other protestors were suspended a day later.

Suspension meant not only not being allowed to attend classes, but also denial of their rooms in dormitories or meals in the cafeteria.

Columbia University President, Minouche Shafik, called in the cops to break up the protest. She did this right after being grilled by a witch-hunting Congressional bipartisan committee going after university and college officials to ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Even the police reported that the encampment was peaceful and there was no violence or threats at the encampment. The arrests were made peacefully. Shafik has yet to come up with credible arguments for her action, and the arrested activists were charged for “trespassing” on their own campus!

Columbia students have reacted to the attack by holding actions on the campus every day since. The University, however, is blocking all “outsiders” from the campus, normally open to visitors. One such outsider jumped a fence to participate in the day’s demonstration — that was Cornell West, a well-known Black activist and professor as the Columbia-affiliated Union Theological Seminary.

West is also an independent candidate for the presidency in November’s election. He told Democracy Now that he lauded the students for “fighting in the face of domination and occupation, and doing it with tremendous determination.”

Amy Goodman reported on Democracy Now on April 23: “As Israel’s assault on Gaza enters its 200th day, Palestinian solidarity protests and encampments are spreading on college campuses across the United States, inspired by the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University.

“Here in New York, police raided a student encampment at New York University Monday night. Police arrested more than 150 people, including students and 20 faculty members. Earlier on Monday, police at Yale University arrested 60 protesters, including 47 students who had set up an encampment to demand the school divest from weapons manufacturers….

“Other campuses where encampments are occurring, now include University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; University of California, Berkeley; University of Maryland; MIT and Emerson College in Boston.” As of April 24 the number of campus encampments is estimated at several dozen and growing.

A theme that has been used to call for suppression of pro-Palestinian demonstrations is that they are aimed to frighten and threaten Jewish students on campuses. The White House has joined this chorus. The New York Times reports:

“President Biden condemned anti-Semitism on college campuses in a statement on Sunday, three days after more than 100 people protesting the Gaza war on Columbia University’s campus were arrested.

“Biden’s statement, which came as part of a lengthy Passover greeting he issued from the White House, didn’t name Columbia directly but said there had been “harassment and calls for violence against Jews” in recent days.

“This blatant anti-Semitism is reprehensible and dangerous — and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country,” the statement said….

“Earlier Sunday [April 21], the White House issued a separate statement directly in response to anti-Israel protests at Columbia, which are continuing this week as students occupy the university grounds in tented encampments.

“ ‘While every American has the right to peaceful protest, calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community are blatantly anti-Semitic, unconscionable, and dangerous,” said the statement from Andrew Bates, deputy White House press secretary.’ ….

“The protest at Columbia University came the same week as many other demonstrations across the country that were meant to highlight Israel’s war in Gaza. Protesters have blocked major roads in New York and San Francisco and airport access roads in Chicago and Seattle.”

Students who are pro Israel’s war, may feel they are increasingly in a minority on most campuses, but the charges of anti-Semitic violence by students protesting the war are baseless and no examples are given.

What is left out of this narrative is that there is a significant section of Jewish students who are part of the pro-Palestine actions and often play a leading role for example on Columbia, where the Jewish Voices for Peace is playing such a leading role since November, and was one of the organizations Columbia officially banned then, but JVP has carried on.

Monday April 22 was the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover, that celebrates the liberation of Jews from Egypt, and has come to mean liberation for all oppressed people.

Celebrations of Passover occurred in many of the campus occupations. The staunchly pro-Israel New York Times did admit that: “On the first night of Passover, the singsong of the Four Questions echoed from Jewish homes and gatherings around the world, including from unlikely, contested spaces: the center of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia and other universities where demonstrations are taking place.

“As evening fell over Columbia’s tent encampment on Monday, about 100 students and faculty gathered in a circle around a blue tarp heaped with boxes of matzo and food they had prepared in a kosher kitchen. Some students wore kaffiyehs, the traditional Palestinian scarf, while others wore Jewish skullcaps. They distributed handmade Haggadahs — prayerbooks for the Passover holiday — and read prayers in Hebrew, keeping to the traditional order.”

So much for the “anti-Semitism” of pro-Palestinian students.

One final thought. There have been various commentators who raise the similarity of these occupations to those that occurred in the 1960s. Are we seeing a new wave of student radicalization?

Students erect pro-Palestinian encampments on Canadian universities

By Gary Porter

 Quebec Premier Francois Legault said on Thursday the encampment at Montreal's McGill University should be dismantled as more students erected pro-Palestinian camps across some of Canada's largest universities, demanding they divest from groups with ties to Israel.

The Canadian protests come as police have been arresting hundreds on U.S. campuses and the death toll in Gaza has been mounting.

While McGill had requested police intervention, law enforcement had not stepped in Thursday to clear the encampment and said in a statement Thursday evening it was monitoring the situation.

Students also set up encampments at Canadian schools including the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, the University of Ottawa and campuses from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island. Students are demanding that University endowment funds and pension funds divest from Israeli companies and bonds, boycott Israeli suppliers and speakers. These demands go well beyond the early cease fire demands, which remain as valid as ever, right to the heart of Israeli imperialist apartheid

"We want the camp to be dismantled. We trust the police, let them do their job," a spokesperson for Legault said.

There was also a pro-Israel counter-protest in Montreal Thursday. The two sides were kept separate.

On Thursday morning, students at the University of Toronto set up an encampment in a fenced-off grassy space at the school's downtown campus where some 100 protesters gathered with dozens of tents.

According to a statement from organizers the encampment will stay until the university discloses its investments, divests from any that "sustain Israeli apartheid, occupation and illegal settlement of Palestine" and ends partnerships with some Israeli academic institutions.

Israel says it does not participate in apartheid and that its assault on Gaza does not constitute genocide.

A university spokesperson told Reuters it was "in dialogue with the protesters" and that, as of midday, the encampment was "not disruptive to normal university activities."

University of Toronto graduate student and encampment spokesperson Sara Rasikh told Reuters they will remain until their demands are met.

"If public disruption is the only way to get our voice heard, then we are willing to do that," she said.

Some Jewish groups have accused protesters of being anti-Semitic. Organizers deny that charge, noting that some protesters are Jewish.

Asked to comment on the encampments, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's office pointed to a statement he made on Tuesday, saying "Universities are places of learning, they’re places for freedom of expression ... but that only works if people feel safe on campus. Right now ... Jewish students do not feel safe. That’s not right." 

Of course Trudeau is lying. As a strong supporter of Israeli racism, apartheid and genocide, in fact complicit in the genocide he represents being anti apartheid as anti Semitism. Nothing could be further from the truth. In almost every encampment, organizers include Jews. Many camps observe the Sabbath. It is the Israeli state and it’s supporters who are the racists, who support butchering Palestinians because they see them as subhuman. It is the students and the much wider movement supporting Palestine who are anti racist