Revolution Is Possible: The Student Intifada, Dec 5-11
Severed ties in the US, Sumud in Belgium, Strikes in the Netherlands, and much more from The Student Intifada.
Welcome and welcome back.
The Assad regime has fallen. The prisoners have been set free. A new flag flies over Damascus. In less than a week, resistance forces swept through Syria and ended one of the most brutal dictatorships in recent history.
Most of us could not have predicted this. A week ago, it seemed impossible. And even though the regime is finished, the future is still uncertain. But after decades of protest, resistance, and civil war, Syrians are embracing loved ones who have been liberated after decades of torture and imprisonment. The end of the brutal 54 year regime is something to be celebrated.
What is certain is that we need to be on our guard. Already, Western propaganda has infiltrated pro-Palestinian spaces. This week, promoted videos showing a Syrian resistance fighter ripping down a poster have shown up on social media feeds with captions about the poster being of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, implying the Syrian rebels are backed by Zionist interests. We’ve seen pro-Palestinian social media accounts reposting it, but the poster is actually for Liwa al-Quds, a pro-Assad brigade. Nuanced, well-informed conversations about the connections between Syria and Palestine – and why it’s important to not just frame one through the lens of the other – have gained less traction than easy, reductive statements that play to fear and misunderstanding.
This isn’t just a moment that could fracture the pro-Palestine movement – it’s a moment of vulnerability for Syria and for the broader region. After Assad fled, Zionist ground forces deployed into and beyond a demilitarized buffer zone for the first time in 50 years. israel’s aerial bombardment earlier this week was “the most violent in Damascus in 15 years”. Russian, Turkish, and American interests are already intervening and attempting to capitalize on the instability, before Syrians are given the chance to govern Syria themselves.
Many of us are conflicted between optimism and caution about post-Assad Syria. We must fight the urge to police our comrades’ hope and fear, while not succumbing to nihilism or naïvety. Our conflicted emotions cannot impede our solidarity with the Syrian people, nor hamper our vigilance against imperialism and authoritarianism.
We are looking for people to write for us and increase our coverage!
What did we miss?
Canada, November 29th
Students from the University of British Columbia joined community members to shut down Delta Port, Western Canada’s largest port, for four hours. This disrupted the flow of weapons and military equipment to israel.
Germany, December 4th
A student at the Freie Universität Berlin won a court case related to the encampment of May 2024. The University, whose website extols its radical legacy from the 1968 student movement, has pressed 126 criminal charges against its own students in the past twelve months. The number is surpassed only by Humboldt University, who have pressed over 230 charges.
Updates from the intifada, Dec 5-11
United Kingdom
On Friday 6th, seven student activists at the London School of Economics had their disciplinary procedures finalized. While one student had the case against them dropped, the other six received formal written warnings. All seven are now back on campus after having been banned for many months.
Also on Friday 6th, students at University College London held a vigil and protest to mark the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Dr Refaat Al-Areer, a poet, author, scholar, and alumnus of the University.
Also on Friday 6th, students from Edinburgh Justice for Palestine organized a study session in the University of Edinburgh Law Library and were met with signs demanding that no flags, banners, or posters of any kind be displayed in the library.
On the same day, after two weeks of occupation, students at the University of Cambridge ended their occupation of Greenwich House, which they had renamed Kanafani House. Rather than engaging with students, the University’s administration ended all negotiations during the occupation. Activists stated:
Cambridge may delay and attempt to ignore our urgent calls for disclosure and divestment from death, but we have, and will continue, to take matters in our own hands. Kanafani House was just the beginning.
Denmark
On Friday 6th, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi arrived in Copenhagen. Hundreds of students and activists from across Sweden and Denmark protested the visit by waving flags, chanting, and holding signs condemning his government’s complicity in genocide.
France
On Friday 6th, several student activists from French universities including La Sorbonne, Sciences Po Paris, EHESS-Condorcet, and the University of Lille took part in a united campaign for the release of Georges Abdallah. Abdallah, a Lebanese activist involved in resistance against israel, has been wrongfully imprisoned for 40 years in France. The next day, student activists gathered outside the police station in the 13ᵉ arrondissement of Paris in support of a comrade who was taken into custody following the campaign.
Poland
On December 4th a human rights exhibition was co-organized by the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts with the City of Warsaw. Students from Warszawskie ASP z Palestyną protested, and said in a statement:
we feel obligated to recall and emphasize that the authorities of our academy have still not taken a stand on war crimes committed in the name of imperial policy of the State of Israel… As long as the academy will cooperate with Israeli universities, it will legitimize the violation of human rights.
Belgium
On Wednesday 4th, several student circles at the Université Libre de Bruxelles circulated a white paper exposing the hypocrisy of their rector. She banned Mohammed Khatib's lecture, but allowed that of GL Bouchez (president of the right-wing MR party) and Louis Sarkozy (son of right-wing former president Nicolas Sarkozy) to go ahead. These two fascists made shocking and inappropriate remarks, legitimizing the ongoing genocide in Palestine. After no changes were made, a rally of around 200 people took place on Monday 9th outside the premises where the conference was being held.
On Sunday 8th, activists from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) united with other collectives to organize the Sumud festival. Sumud is a term that expresses the steadfast maintenance of Palestinian life, in particular by continuing to take part in everyday tasks. The festival lasted all day and ended with an action in support of Georges Abdallah.
Also on Sunday, the Watermelon fundraising collective, in collaboration with students from the Katholiek Universiteit van Leuven, organized a market. The funds raised were donated to the families of those affected by the genocide in Gaza and the Middle East.
Germany
On Thursday 6th, the theology department of Leipzig University canceled a guest lecture with israeli historian Benny Morris on the Nakba 1948, after successful student pressure. In a social media campaign, the students exposed the speaker’s racist views on Palestine, quoting Morris: “I’d rather be a racist than a bore”. In reaction to the cancellation, several press outlets inaccurately framed the students’ protest as violent.
Netherlands
On May 29th 2024, Tilburg University formed an “Advisory Committee on Collaborations” to assess its academic partnerships, as a direct result of students calling for the end of relationships with israeli universities. On Friday, December 6th, the committee issued its official report and recommendation, that the University should break ties with israeli academic partner institutions. The report states:
There is a high degree of interconnectedness between Tilburg University’s partner universities under investigation and the Israeli defense; the partner universities do not take a sufficiently critical stance towards the aforementioned violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms […] the Advisory Committee concludes that Tilburg University, as a moral actor, cannot remain passive and must act.
From December 9th to 12th, staff at the University of Amsterdam were on strike for Palestine. They demanded that the University end its links with all israeli institutions, set up an independent and democratic commission, and protect the right to demonstrate on campus.
On Tuesday 10th, students at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) inaugurated ‘The Liberation Library’. It serves as a place of learning and discussion about Palestine, and the links between TU/e and israeli institutions.
United States
On Thursday 5th, autonomous activists from New York University picketed NYU’s Senate Meeting demanding divestment and the shutting down of NYU Tel Aviv, its satellite campus in collaboration with Tel Aviv University. Students protested and wrote to the Senate members, reading in part: “As a purportedly educational institution, NYU has no business in settler-colonial projects. Members of the University Senate: you have a position of power. Use it”.
Also on Thursday, students at the University of Colorado, Boulder occupied the University Memorial Center to show solidarity with Gaza. UCB administration had previously suspended student activists and deregistered the campus’s SJP chapter, failing to provide any explanation for doing so.
Also on Thursday, Oberlin College students bypassed security and disrupted the Board of Trustees’ Investment Committee meeting, calling for divestment. Over 50 students occupied the hotel lobby and maintained noise disruptions for almost the entire scheduled meeting time. Security guards were violent with students. Oberlin 4 Palestine stated:
Students turned out in high numbers to make their voices heard, conducted personal risk assessment and acted according to their interests, and used their bodies with confidence to protect others and work together to push the line.
At the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents meeting on Friday 6th, 19 student activists were met with police violence and detained for speaking out in support of Palestinian liberation and demanding transparency about the University’s investments in israeli apartheid.
On Saturday 7th, it was announced that the University of Illinois-Chicago’s School of Public Health ended its contract with the Jewish United Fund (JUF). This was a huge victory following six years of relentless organizing. Students commented that it is “a defining moment that proves student activism can challenge complicity and demand justice”.
On Sunday 8th, at the University of New Mexico’s annual Hanging of the Greens event, UNM SJP members displayed signs to donors reading “Free Palestine”, “Students Demand Divestment”, and “UNM Funds Genocide”.
Also on Sunday, students at Yale University voted in favor of the University divesting from all weapons manufacturers. 76% of students voted in favor of divestment, and, according to the Yale Daily News, an additional 79.5% voted in favor of Yale “act[ing] on its commitment to education by investing in Palestinian scholars and students”.
On Monday 9th, students at Barnard College rallied to honor the women of the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon. They denounced the pinkwashing of israel’s genocide, holding up signs reading “a woman’s place is in the resistance” and “all the women are resistance”.
On Wednesday 11th, PhD student Prahlad Iyengar appealed his suspension from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Iyengar’s suspension effectively ends his 5-year National Science Foundation fellowship, jeopardizing his career and education. One reason for Iyengar’s suspension is an essay he wrote for the student zine Written Revolution. In the edition in question, he wrote:
I argue that the root of the problem is not merely the vastness of the enemy we have before us – American imperialism and Zionist occupation – but in fact in our own strategic decision to embrace nonviolence as our primary vehicle of change. One year into a horrific genocide, it is time for the movement to begin wreaking havoc, or else, as we’ve seen, business will indeed go on as usual.
Parting thoughts
This month has seen unexpected victories for resistances and revolutions. A week before the Assad regime fell, a mass mobilization in South Korea faced down martial law and prevented a coup.
It’s hard for anyone to see these victories coming, but they always happen because people have prepared. What is achieved “suddenly” in a matter of hours and days is built on a foundation of years and decades of organizing, solidarity, and active resistance.
The Marxist philosopher Rosa Luxemburg is often quoted as having said, “Before a revolution happens, it is perceived as impossible; after it happens, it is seen as having been inevitable.” Like elsewhere, the fight for Palestine will seem endless until it ends. And it will end – Palestine will be free.
In solidarity and resistance, The Student Intifada.
Written this week by comrades from the UK, Belgium, Germany, France, and the US.