The arrests of more than a hundred Columbia University students, who were protesting against Israel’s actions in Gaza, shed more light on arguably the most energetic pro-Palestinian movement in the US: the one taking places on college campuses around the country.
Since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October, in response to terrorist attacks by Hamas, students have launched protests, sit-ins and, most recently, encampments, in a wave they hope will encourage universities to divest from companies which have ties to Israel’s military.
Some have been hospitalized due to hunger strikes, others have devoted their lives over the last six months. Dozens of students are waiting to find out whether they will face criminal charges after arrests at Columbia, Brown University, Yale University and elsewhere.
But protesters say the months-long efforts are worth it. They point to US colleges previously responding to student divestment campaigns by selling financial stakes in companies which invested in apartheid-era South Africa, and divesting from companies which did business with the Sudanese government as it took part in a bloody civil war, as evidence that their strategies can work.
Here are the stories of some of the students involved.
Rania Amine
After she went on hunger strike in February, Rania Amine ended up spending six days in hospital. The 25-year-old McGill student, who was born in Morocco, didn’t eat for a total of 34 days: part of a relay system of hunger strikes that is still ongoing at the university.
“I definitely experienced physical symptoms, but it was nothing compared to what we know that people in Gaza are going through every day,” Amine said.
“It’s been a while now that I’ve been out of the hospital. In terms of my physical health, I’ve recovered, there’s nothing that I know of that is problematic. But the mental health toll is very real.”
Since October students at McGill, in Montreal, Canada, have held rallies and protests, calling for the school to divest from companies that supply weapons and other items to Israel’s military. Documents on McGill’s website show that it holds investments in companies including Lockheed Martin, a defense contractor that has sold fighter jets to Israel, and Safran, a French air and defense company.
Amine compared the student protests to anti-apartheid movements on campuses in the 1980s, which led to many universities divesting from companies which operated in South Africa.
“When you see the students rise up, that’s when you know that something has to change, and things will change,” she said.
Ariela Rosenzweig
“I do believe that as a Jewish person, I have a particular responsibility to resist the instrumentalisation of my heritage, and to say that I do not believe that genocide in Gaza or occupation and apartheid in greater Palestine is supportive of my personal safety,” said Ariela Rosenzweig, a 23-year-old student at Brown University in Rhode Island.
Since October, Rosenzweig says she has “basically been a full-time organizer on college campus”. During a recent hunger strike students set up a daily 8am-11pm “occupation” of the main student building on campus, where they hosted Palestinian speakers and had lectures from professors.
“The space was really full every day of people who were honestly and genuinely learning a lot – people who were not the same crew of 100 people who are diehard and had been at everything, but really like the whole university community coming around and really engaging.”
More than 60 students at Brown University have been arrested since October, and in November there was widespread horror after a Brown student, Hisham Awartani, and…
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