May 20, 2024
Students who have established college encampments across the nation are in collective struggle to end the settler colonial, Zionist occupation of Palestine so that Muslims, Jews, Christians, and all peoples can coexist. Such a peace was a reality prior to the emergence and creation of the apartheid state of Israel by European empires in 1948, led by Britain. Beyond this historical precedent, amity is possible because I have attended multicultural protests, marches, forums, and read literature (books and articles in scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers) that evinced this value. Moreover, I have witnessed, listened to, and studied the work of Jewish American scholars, activists, students, and community members who support the struggle of their Palestinian brethren against the brutal Israeli attacks, ethnic cleansing, and dispossession of villages well prior to October 7th.
Our mediocre news media fails to report this crucial historical context. Why? Because to do so would significantly erode public support from the tendentious pro-Zionist policy of the US government since 1967 and currently perpetuated by President Joe Biden.
Nonetheless, heart wrenching coverage on television and social media has exposed the state of Israel’s merciless collective punishment of Palestinian civilians, ever so demonstrating that our government is on the wrong side of history in supplying prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime with billions of dollars of bombs. According to the Council of Foreign Relations, from 1946 to 2023, the US has funded Israel’s war machine with over $200 billion in aid and another $81 billion in economic assistance. And this April, President Biden demonstrated his “ironclad” support for Israel in signing a bill allocating an additional $17 billion in weaponry despite the military’s abuses and Netanyahu’s expressed resolve to advance Israel’s campaign on the Gaza city of Rafah. This is while the International Criminal Court required Israel on January 26 to ensure that it does not commit acts “that might fall within the scope of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of genocide.”
Consequently, whereas Hamas’ October 7th attack slew some 1,200 people, approximately half the number soldiers, Israel’s military has killed over 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza alone, the vast majority civilians and up to 13,000 children. Moreover, over a million Palestinians face famine due to Israel’s near complete land and sea blockade of food and medicine into Gaza.
This lop-sided war is the causation of student encampments throughout the US. At my campus, California State University Channel Islands, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), faculty, and community members bivouacked its Central Mall on Monday, May 13. And like their peers at other universities, they issued a list of demands. First, the full disclosure of the university’s direct and indirect investments with Israel. Second, the divestment from the apartheid state of Israel. Third, to boycott any partnership with institutions that invest in and support Zionism. Fourth, that the university condemn the Israeli occupation, colonization, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people and call for a permanent cease fire against Gaza. Fifth, advance amnesty for students, staff, and faculty who support of the cause of Palestinians. Sixth, the prompt representation of the banner of Palestine to the United Nations flag collection at the university’s John Spoor Broome Library.
In addition to these prerequisites, SJP of CSU Channel Islands demand that university president Richard Yao publicly negotiate with them as the campus is an institution supported by taxpayer dollars as the students understand that the success of their cause is rooted in the community and will not be divorced from them. Examples for such community forums on boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) exist at San Francisco State University, Sacramento State University, and the University of California at Riverside. Similar public dialogues are taking place across the country: Brown University, Evergreen State College, Portland State University, and the Union Theological Seminary in the city of New York to name a few.
During a BDS teach in led by John Caravello, a CSUCI lecturer and California Faculty Association campus chapter executive board member and facilitated by Leah Dehmohseni of Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, students interrogated the nature of the California State University’s financial contracts, auxiliary entities, and investments. As students addressed questions, Nazmi Qutami—a community resident and survivor of Al Nakba (The Catastrophe) of 1948 in which his family was one of 750,000 Palestinians expelled from their homeland by the Israeli government—listened. He commended the students on their successes: establishing their encampment of twenty tents, talking with President Yao, and winning access to bathrooms afterhours. In a social media message, Qutami implored President Yao to heed the wisdom of students as anything is possible to realize divestment from institutions that profit from killing.
In other words, the California State University must only invest in peace not war.
C/S
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