“Azaadi” (Freedom)

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”

“From the sea to the river, Palestine will live forever”

–Pro-Palestinian protest chants

From Berlin’s Free University and Amsterdam University to Ivy Leagues, State Universities, UCs, and numerous other public and private Universities, students all over the world are starting peaceful protests, raising liberation zones, and boycotting supporters of Israel. They are demanding an immediate and permanent ceasefire, our government's divestment (cessation of support) from Israel, and the equality and liberation of Palestine. Encampments have been gatherings of justice-minded communities to share stories, feed each other, speak about injustice, and stand in support of those being killed in Palestine. Encampments such as the one at Columbia University are being supported by Jewish Voices for Peace and IfNotNow, both Jewish organizations looking for peace and the prevention of genocides like the holocaust. These safe peaceful gatherings soon were faced with SWAT and local PD officers. Students protesting on University campuses have been suspended, denied proper graduation, threatened with expulsion, spat on, mocked, and arrested. There have been walkouts at graduations and uplifting valedictorian speeches. There have been thousands arrested as administrations crack down on encampments. Protestors form circles around their praying peers while the police, in riot gear, wait to arrest them. While being detained, protestors smile for cameras to humanize themselves before the masses as a form of protest and to gather solidarity and sympathy for the movement. Tens of thousands have been arrested across the country. Alice Sakakini-Ashkar, a Palestinian-American lawyer has offered free legal counsel to students arrested at Pro-Palestinian campus protests.

“I think ‘from the river to the sea’ specifically is more like ‘end apartheid from the river to the sea.’ Free all the oppressed people, and make sure everyone can be equal […] It’s absolutely not calling for the eradication of everyone in Israel. The people in Israel aren’t doing anything wrong. It’s the government, and the system the government is running.” –Viviano Cunningham, Albert Levine, and Madyline Jaramillo, student protesters at the Sonoma State encampment

Protesters on social media are wondering how police have entered and shut down encampments on their university campuses with such brutal efficiency and speed while police waited 40 minutes to enter Columbine High School in 1999 and again 73 minutes, over an hour, to enter Uvalde Elementary School just two years ago. They believe the police’s priorities stand with the silencing of free citizens rather than the protection of them. These priorities also appear in the lack of media coverage of the genocide currently occurring in Ukraine, Congo, Nigeria, Sudan, Syria, Afganistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, and Ethiopia as wells as the dozens of countries at risk. These injustices seem to be finding backing in our government officials with our tax dollars.

“It’s the most horrific abuses of human rights — forced starvation, mass murder, women and children slaughtered, academics slaughtered, universities bombed, hospitals bombed [...] every quality for defining genocide is being met [...] It’s the most abhorrent thing I’ve ever seen our U.S. tax dollars going to support. And every bone in my body cries out to stop this genocide.” –Julie, a Jewish employee at Santa Rosa Junior College

This idea is supported by the training of Maryland, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Washington, and DC police in Israel by their military and in the U.S by Israeli officials. “Many of these trips are taxpayer funded while others are privately funded. Since 2002, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains to train in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).” The U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations have recognized Israels police as “carrying out extrajudicial executions and other unlawful killings, using ill treatment and torture(even against children), suppression of freedom of expression/association including through government surveillance, and excessive use of force against peaceful protesters.” (Amnesty International) There are many concerns about the moral education of our law enforcement, only highlighted by the atrocities not being brought to the media by university students and other protestors in recent months.

“My great grandmother was killed in the Holocaust […] I know what Nazism is and what genocide is. I also know that U.S. Congress adopted HR 894 last December that recognizes that denying the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state — the core definition of Zionism — constitutes antisemitism.” –Lev Luvishish, a father of a Santa Rosa Junior College student

Many protesters insist upon the use of the name Palestine instead of the sole reference to Gaza. This assertion comes from the idea that Israel is attempting to erase Palestine to create an overwhelming Jewish majority to ensure the establishment of a Jewish state. By speaking about Palestine instead of Gaza — the Palestinian children instead of the children in Gaza, reporters in Palestine rather than reporters in Gaza — they are keeping Palestine alive in their hearts and minds, rebelling in yet another way against the genocide of a people and the silencing of a culture. By cheering for the safety of Palestinians and the extinction of apartheid (racial segregation), the U.S. divestment from Israel, and the liberation of Palestine and all those within — the imprisoned innocents, the murdered reporters and children and parents, the propagandized civilians — they are making sure Palestine will never be forgotten. They know they will end up on the right side of history, like the Vietnam-War, South African Apartheid, WWI, WWII, and Holocaust resistance and protesters before them, and they intend to ensure the end of the Palestinian genocide by the means they have been afforded by a government they had thought to propagate freedom.

“Free, Free Palestine”

“Viva, Viva Palestina”

“The people united will never be defeated”

“Joe Biden, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide.”

–Pro-Palestinian protest chants