In Our Thousands, In Our Millions: The Student Intifada, Oct 1-9
In Our Thousands, In Our Millions: The Student Intifada, Oct 1-9
Vigils in the US, assemblies in France, millions of protesters across the world taking to the streets, and much more from The Student Intifada.
Welcome and welcome back.
Since our last newsletter, a lot has changed. A new school year has begun for those in the global North. Students around the world have headed back to their universities, facing heightened security and restrictions on protest. Israel’s genocidal violence has massively expanded in Lebanon, where more than 2000 people have been martyred in just a few weeks. In the North of Gaza, an ethnic cleansing is taking place.
A lot has not changed. Israel and its Western arms providers are bombing five countries — Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen — while claiming those protesting against genocide are the real villains. The Zionist project in higher education continues to be one of violent repression, as students are arrested or suspended for their activism. But the repression is failing. Student activists and organizers continue to rebel. We cannot and will not be silenced. We will see a Free Palestine in our lifetimes.
What did we miss? September 2024
Czechia
On Monday 2nd September, Academics Against Apartheid in Prague organised a Liberated Conference in response to the Prague-Weizmann Summer School on Drug Discovery. The Weizmann Institute of Science is a key part of the Israeli military-educational complex. The Liberated Conference was organised on the piazza outside the Summer School in Prague, and speakers covered subjects such as scholasticide, scientific progress as a tool of oppression, preventing access to education as a means of ethnic cleansing, and transnational academic solidarity. Speakers also read out an open letter by Gaza academics to the world. AAA demanded an end to the uncritical cooperation of Czech academic establishments with Israeli institutions.
Poland
On Monday 30th September, the Academy for Palestine Collective published a statement saying they will decamp by October 15th. They have occupied part of a building in Jagiellonian University since late May. Organizers stated they have made gains in their negotiations, which has led to their decision:
Wywalczyliśmy zobowiązanie oraz podjęcie konkretnych kroków przez UJ, aby ściągnąć z naszej uczelni hańbę, jaką jest utrzymywanie współprac z izraelskimi podmiotami akademickimi wspierającymi okupację oraz łamanie praw człowieka w Palestynie. To nie koniec - trzymamy rękę na pulsie i kontynuujemy walkę oraz działania na rzecz wolnej Palestyny!
We have secured a commitment and concrete steps from UJ to remove the disgrace from our university that is maintaining collaborations with Israeli academic institutions, supporting the occupation and human rights violations in Palestine. We will stay vigilant and continue the fight and actions for a free Palestine!
International response to the one-year anniversary of Israeli genocide
After 76 years of occupation, decades of oppression, and a year of genocide, protests around the world were particularly heightened on the October 7th anniversary. Huge numbers of people took to the streets all over the world, and students also organised their own ways of expressing support for the Palestinian resistance.
Morocco: Students at the University of Technology Mohammed VI organized a commemoration in honor of all the victims of the Palestinian genocide. Comrades from the Rabat and Benguerir campuses also took part in their minute of silence.
Italy: Thousands of students from Politecnico di Torino took part in a march around the city, which ended with a bonfire. “Our anger burns and we burn the flag of Israel”, organizers stated.
Sweden: Students at Lund University organised a silent march through campus. Several protesters, including a photojournalist and an elderly person, were attacked. At the same time, activists from Malmo University dropped a Palestinian flag from a University building's indoor terrace, and chanted through a loudspeaker; police came but did not intervene.
Balkan Region: Fourteen pro-Palestine student and non-student collectives from Balkan countries published a statement in solidarity with Palestine in its struggle for liberation. “We, the undersigned collectives, call in unison for an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza, for an end to the occupation, for a free Palestine, and for freedom for all oppressed peoples.”
Egypt: Activists at the American University of Cairo raised two banners on one of their University buildings. One of the banners read: "Today it's your neighbor, tomorrow it's your home."
United States: More than 480 students at Pomona College, one of the seven Claremont Colleges in California, walked out of class as part of a rally calling for the colleges to divest from Israel and and weapons manufacturers. Part of the rally was dedicated to mourning the Palestinian martyrs. This walkout and rally then led to the occupation of Carnegie Hall for several hours.
United Kingdom: Students and staff gathered in their hundreds in the central campus of the University of Edinburgh, despite threats by their administration, to show that they will not be intimidated and will continue to fight. Students at SOAS and Kings College London led a mass student walk-out of the London universities.
Updates from the intifada, October 1-9
France
On Saturday 5th, students in the Ile de France region organised a communal solidarity event in Paris. Students from Sciences Po, Sorbonne University, and the Jussieu Campus were among those participating. Around 900 people attended for an afternoon of presentations, round table discussions, conferences, and dabke lessons.
On Monday 7th, the Palestine Emergency Committee of the University of Lille set up a stall on campus informing new students about Palestine, Lebanon, and all peoples who are the victims of colonization.
United States
Students at the University of Columbia have been holding study-ins in the Butler Library, starting in late September, displaying signs in protest of the genocide in Gaza and Israel’s recent bombardment of Lebanon. Columbia University Apartheid Divest and Columbia SJP also held nightly vigils on the Low Library steps from October 2nd-9th, commemorating the Palestinians murdered in Gaza since the start of the genocide.
On Tuesday 8th, students at UC Berkeley held a walkout protesting Israel’s genocide in Palestine and their military campaigns in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. As part of their demands, students called upon Berkeley to recognize “that “Israel’s” onslaught on Gaza and Lebanon is illegal, and an integral part of a historical, systematic colonial Zionist policy of territorial expansion and genocide against the indigenous Palestinian people, backed by the United States”. They also demanded that the University end all connections with Israeli institutions, and any institutions that benefit from the genocide in Gaza.
Germany
On Tuesday 8th, Students for Palestine Dortmund were forced by German police to dismantle their camp, after the students invited Greta Thunberg to speak at one of their events. This comes after nearly four months of encampment. The previous day, Greta had attended a pro-Palestine protest in Berlin, which police had stormed.
Also on Tuesday, Students for Palestine Bonn and their allies launched a new Palestine solidarity camp called the Handala Institute for Liberation Studies, oriented towards education about the struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom. The Handala Institute has issued demands to the University of Bonn for thorough investigations of their ties with Israeli institutions, and an immediate freeze of any partnership that is breaking international law.
On the second day of the camp, about 20 riot police vans arrived to confiscate students’ wooden pallets, despite having previously approved them to keep the ground dry. For the first hour, police surrounded the whole camp and people were blocked from entering or leaving. “Of course this was all theatre”, students from the University commented.
Our comrades in Germany are facing extreme repression and violence from the police and state institutions; solidarity with those in resistance.
Belgium
On Tuesday 1st, KU Leuven students (Shaimaa College) gathered more than 500 demonstrators in a protest march in the streets calling for an academic boycott.
On Thursday 3rd, organizers at the University of Ghent launched their Intifada kick-off to encourage new students to take action in the fight against the Palestinian genocide.
Throughout the last week, comrades in Belgium from the University of Louvain, University of Antwerp, Université Populaire de Bruxelles and Vrij Universiteit Bruxelles have all organised students in mass protests in their respective cities. They are calling for academic boycotts, the end of the genocide, and for their institutions to act in solidarity with Palestine.
Italy
On Wednesday 2nd, a professor from Università La Sapienza made a speech in a pro-Palestinian public assembly at his University in Rome. Following this, he was attacked by media outlet Rete 4 and Italian politician Matteo Salvini for his positions. In response, a wave of solidarity has emerged in support of the professor, with many defending his right to express his views on Palestine.
United Kingdom
On Friday 4th, students at the University of Cambridge wrote the names of martyred Palestinian children on the road in front of a University administration building. They drew attention to the University's inaction on the conditions that it had agreed to during the summer:
Their ineptitude and disorganisation is violence. Every day that the university continues to invest in arms, more blood falls on their hands. Every 15 minutes israel murders a Palestinian.
On Monday 7th, the World Academic Summit was held at the University of Manchester. Political and educational leaders from across the world gathered to discuss, among other things, the social responsibility of universities. Students from the University of Manchester, University of Cambridge, University of Loughborough, University of Oxford, and others from all over the country demonstrated in front of the summit as participants arrived. They protested against the silence and complicity of their Universities through their alliances with Israel, and drew attention to the irony of this summit taking place on October 7th.
Poland
On Tuesday 1st, students from the University of Wrocław, University of Warsaw, students in Poznan, and others across the country disrupted the official inaugurations of the academic year. Security at the University of Warsaw pushed activists around and blocked the entrances.
Spain
From Friday 4th to Monday 7th, Spanish workers and students mobilized in large numbers against the Palestinian genocide and the repression they were suffering. Among protesters were students from Universitat de Barcelona, Universitaria de Sevilla, Universidad de La Rioja, the Universidad de Granada, and many others.
Parting thoughts
An extract from “Moving Towards Life”, written by Marina Magloire for Los Angeles Review of Books.
[Audre] Lorde is famous for the maxim “Your silence will not protect you,” but in this case, Lorde’s initial silence on Palestine did protect her career and her flourishing afterlife as a patron saint of the oppressed. Meanwhile, [June] Jordan’s decades of writing and advocacy on behalf of the Palestinian people have been woefully underappreciated. Jordan once wrote, “I say we need a rising up, an Intifada, USA,” and for her, intifada was not a metaphor. Unlike Lorde, Jordan intended her writing to be a weapon, a public act in the service of Palestinian liberation. Despite their biographical similarities, Jordan and Lorde had differing practices of solidarity. How can we add nuance to the historical narrative of Black feminist solidarity with Palestine? After all, even 40 years later, US-based solidarity movements are still threatened by the same fault lines that felled Lorde and Jordan’s friendship.
The article (linked here) is recommended by a comrade at TSI, and we hope reading it enriches your week.
In solidarity and resistance, The Student Intifada.
Written this week by comrades from the UK, Germany, India, France, the US, and Belgium.
thank you publishing for this article