Following the police crackdown on the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at Columbia University and City University in New York City on April 30, students across Turtle Island continue establishing their encampment protests for Palestine.
The movement, inspired by the Palestinian struggle, calls for universities to divest from companies profiting from genocide and the occupation of Palestine.
Student demands
The encampments are part of a wave of student protests that began at Columbia University and multiplied across the United States as the Columbia administration initially brought in police on April 18 and ordered the arrest of over 100 students.
Encampments for Palestine have sprung up across the country at McGill University, the University of British Columbia (UBC), the University of Victoria, the University of Ottawa (uOttawa), the University of Toronto (U of T), Western University, and McMaster University.
Elias Kebeh of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) in Toronto told Spring Magazine,
“In the last two weeks, we have witnessed students all over North America lead a resurgence in mobilization and organization to call for an end to apartheid and full Palestinian Liberation. From the war in Vietnam to BLM protests and opposing apartheid South Africa, students have long played a crucial role in liberation movements. We will continue to support students as they lead on a long track of revolutionary history in this critical time in the struggle for a liberated Palestine.”
The outbreak of university protests draws upon a rich history of student organizing that has been at the forefront of revolutionary movements for decades.
“Not since the 1960s have we witnessed students rise on campuses against war and imperialism,” said Moe Alqasem, a trade unionist and organizer with Labour for Palestine. “They are asking for their universities to no longer invest in companies that make the weapons and planes used by Israel to conduct its genocide in Gaza. The demand is simple: stop investing students’ tuition fees into the bombs that drop on Gaza.”
Students demand divestment from apartheid
Alqasem expanded on this demand at the core of the student protests:
“The main demand [divestment from Israeli apartheid] mirrors the demand made by student activists during the late 1970s and 1980s to divest from the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. Today, the main demand is that our academic institutions cut all their ties with manufacturers and weapons companies profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
Student activists demanding university divestment from South African apartheid played a vital role in the popular movement that moved the broader Canadian public to oppose apartheid. In October 2004, after the fall of South African apartheid, various South African organizations and unions, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), endorsed the call for a comprehensive boycott of Israel issued by solidarity groups. Boycotts, divestments, and sanctions were vital parts of the fight against South African apartheid, and they remain core pillars of the student movement for Palestine.
At the University of Ottawa, the student encampment echoes the demand. Sumayya Kheireddine from INSAF uOttawa said, “We’re here to send a message to the decision-makers at the University of Ottawa. Our demands are simple: disclose your investments and divest from genocide.”
Sarah Abdul-Karim of the Palestinian Youth Movement—Ottawa expanded on the message’s popularity: “The student movement here and around the world is leading the way in pushing for the end of money to genocide, and the community has come together to support and uplift our students.”
The encampment at McMaster University keeps the disclosure and divestment demands close, with an additional demand for change in how the university addresses (and fails to address) anti-Palestinian racism and the ongoing genocide. SPHR McMaster issued the following statement:
The students at McMaster University have gathered on the BSB field as a part of a peaceful encampment to call for urgent action in support of the Palestinian people in Gaza. This encampment serves as a symbol of solidarity and a plea for justice. The goal is to call the university to
1. Disclose: their investments in companies on the Boycott, Divestments, Sanctions (BDS) list, weapons companies, and defense contractors.
2. Divest: from companies on the BDS list, weapons companies, and defense contractors.
3. Boycott: Israeli academic institutions, companies on the BDS list, weapons companies, and defense contractors. Terminate all exchange programs and partnerships with these companies and institutions.
4. Declare: We demand that McMaster to write a statement condemning Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the destruction of the education system in Palestine, occupation against Palestinian people and call for an immediate ceasefire. The university must also place the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA) definition of Anti-Palestinian racism within its institutional framework to support Palestinian students and their allies in their identities and advocacy. Lastly, McMaster must reject the attempted suppression of pro-Palestinian speech and narrative.
Through this encampment, McMaster students are fulfilling their commitment to human rights and the belief that through collective action, we can help bring about meaningful change.
The story is much the same in Toronto, as Sara Rasikh, the spokesperson of Occupy UofT, told Spring Magazine:
We, the University of Toronto students, have established our encampment on the People’s Circle for Palestine (formerly King’s College Circle), and we will not leave until our administration meets our demands with a serious response. We demand that the University of Toronto:
1. Divest the university’s endowment, capital assets, and other financial holdings from all direct and indirect investments that sustain Israeli apartheid, occupation, and illegal settlement of Palestine;
2. Disclose all investments held in endowments, short-term working capital assets, and other financial holdings of the university hereafter;
3. Terminate all partnerships with Israeli academic institutions that either: a. Operate in the illegal settlements in occupied Palestine or b. Sustain or support the apartheid policies of the state of Israel and its ongoing genocide in Gaza.
We will continue to uphold our steadfastness as long as it takes for the administration to listen to our demands of ending material support to the genocide in Gaza and all forms of support to Israeli Apartheid.
Dana, an organizer with Toronto4Palestine, told Spring Magazine:
“From Columbia to Harvard to McGill to the University of Toronto and beyond, we stand in solidarity with the wave of student encampments for Gaza emerging across the country. Our demand is clear: disclose and divest from the Israeli occupation of Palestine. These students—tomorrow’s leaders—represent a turning point in the decades-long liberation struggle—by placing our academic institution’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
Students and faculty members continue to join the protest and support the divestment demand.
Labour solidarity with students
While various encampments have faced counter-protests and police brutality, the students and their supporters refuse to back down, as illustrated in Toronto. On the first day of the encampment at U of T, named the People’s Circle for Palestine, the university issued a statement banning tents from protests and imposing a 10 pm curfew on protesters.
The pushback from the community was swift and decisive. Labour leaders like Fred Hahn, President of CUPE Ontario, and JP Hornick, President of OPSEU, issued urgent calls for solidarity to defend the students. Union members flew flags within the encampment fences to show their support, including members from United Steelworkers.
Shortly before the university’s 10 pm deadline, hundreds of community members rallied at an emergency rally to support the student movement. Forced to relent, the university administration backed down and allowed the encampment to continue.
Professor Chandni Desai, Assistant Professor in the Critical Studies of Equity and Solidarity at the U of T, spoke in support of the students, saying, “Students are on the right side of history, reclaiming their university spaces globally and demanding divestment, inspired by the anti-apartheid divestment campaigns.”
Desai further noted that “their work builds on generations of pro-Palestine student activists and the Palestine Solidarity Movement that has for decades organized against Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism, occupation, and genocide.”
The strong show of working-class support has helped foster the sense of community that organizers have cultivated at the encampments. As one organizer described the encampment at UBC:
“If you come to the encampment you can really see that there is a strong sense of safety here and the community is really protecting ourselves. We are building a world that is centered around solidarity, around the liberation of Palestine, around liberation from colonialism, and you can see aspects of that world here today.”
Global solidarity
Ameed Faleh, a student from the West Bank in Occupied Palestine, told CBC News, “the fact that students are able to organize themselves very effectively, it was timely, it was very much needed, for the cause…set the standard for pro-Palestine activism from now on.”
Faleh described the response by Zionist groups, university administrations, and police forces reflects how support for Israel in the West has reached a “breaking point…where it cannot sustain itself by regular hasbara [propaganda]” in light of the genocide of over 40,000 people in Gaza.
Student protests across Canada, the US, and the world are a turning point. They echo demonstrations calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and strive for peace and justice in a free Palestine.
The student protests are already putting the university administrations on notice. At Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, a student group emailed the administration demanding disclosure of and divestment from the university’s investments with Israel, promising “more assertive forms of peaceful action” if the administration did not meet their demands. The university immediately agreed to a meeting with the students that ended in a promise to disclose investments and address student concerns about divestment. Similarly, the protest at Brown University in the United States led the university administration to meet with students to discuss the possibility of divestment.
The worldwide student movement for Palestine is a critical step in the Palestinian liberation struggle. Our persistent support of these movements will significantly contribute to advancing the movement for a free Palestine, just as it did during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
Did you like this article? Help us produce more like it by donating $1, $2, or $5. Donate