timeMore than a hundred Columbia University students have been arrested for protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza, shedding light on what is arguably the most active pro-Palestinian movement in the United States: one taking place on college campuses across the country.
Students have staged a wave of protests, sit-ins and, most recently, camps since Israel launched war on Gaza in October in response to Hamas terror attacks, hoping the wave would encourage universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel. .
Some are hospitalized due to hunger strikes, and some have dedicated their lives over the past six months. Dozens of students are waiting to learn whether they will face criminal charges after being arrested at Columbia University, Brown University, Yale University and elsewhere.
But protesters say the months-long effort has been worth it. They point to U.S. universities previously selling financial stakes in companies with investments in apartheid-era South Africa in response to the student divestment movement and divesting from companies doing business with the Sudanese government involved in a bloody civil war as evidence of their The strategy is effective.
Here are some of the stories of the students who got involved.
Rania Amin
Rania Amine ended up spending six days in hospital after going on hunger strike in February. The 25-year-old McGill student, who was born in Morocco, has gone without food for 34 days: part of an ongoing hunger strike relay system at the university.
“I did experience physical symptoms, but it was nothing compared to what we know the people of Gaza go through every day,” Amin said.
“I’ve been out of hospital for a while. As far as my physical health is concerned, I’ve recovered and there’s nothing wrong that I know of. But the mental health toll is very real.
Since October, students at Canada’s McGill University in Montreal have held rallies and protests calling on the school to divest from companies that supply weapons and other items to the Israeli military. Documents on McGill’s website show the company holds investments from companies including defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which sells fighter jets to Israel, and French aerospace and defense company Safran.
Amin compared the student protests to the anti-apartheid movement on campus in the 1980s, which led many universities to divest from companies operating in South Africa.
“When you see students standing up, you know something has to change and things will change,” she said.
Ariela Rosenzweig
“I do believe that as a Jew I have a special responsibility to resist the instrumentalization of my heritage and to say that I do not believe that the genocide in Gaza or the occupation and apartheid in greater Palestine can support my personal security,” Rowe said. said Ariela Rosenzweig, a 23-year-old student at Brown University in Texas.
Rosenzweig said she has been “basically a full-time organizer on college campuses” since October. In a recent hunger strike, students “occupied” the campus’s main student building from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, where they hosted Palestinian speakers and received lectures from professors.
“This space is filled with people every day who honestly and genuinely learn a lot – they are not the same team of 100 people who are stubborn and have done it all, but really love the whole university community. Coming, very attractive”.
More than 60 Brown students have been arrested since October, and in November a Brown student, Hisham Awartani, and two friends were arrested in Vermont while wearing a headscarf and speaking Arabic. He was shot and injured, causing widespread panic. Avatani, his friends and many of his supporters believe the attack was racially motivated.
“We know that college campuses really speak clearly for the nation’s young people, and that student movements are influential all the way to the White House,” Rosenzweig said.
“So I can say, like my life completely revolves around this fact, the urgency of this moment is 100 percent worth it.”
Catherine Elias
“When I was 19, I spent my summer vacation teaching English in a refugee camp in Palestine. I think that was a really transformative experience for me,” said Catherine Elias, a Columbia University student with Lebanese- Irish ancestry.
“It’s a completely different perspective to see it firsthand: to see the checkpoints, to see the violence, to see the sheer brutality of the occupation that Palestinians live with every day.”
Elias lived and worked in Palestine for five years before moving to New York last year. A member of the Columbia University Desegregation Divestment Coalition, she was arrested along with dozens of others at an encampment on the university campus in early April. She was also part of a group that set up a camp last week calling on the university to divest from weapons manufacturers with ties to Israel.
“I think what really led to this moment, this encampment, was that we tried every other tactic imaginable to hold universities accountable to the democratic will of their student body,” Elias said.
“Columbia has implemented divestment in the past in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, as well as divestment from private prisons. So the university has a precedent for divestment.
Avery Eddy
After spending a week in the West Bank and four weeks in Israel in 2019, Avery Eddy said they felt compelled to take action.
“Witnessing the brutal horrors of apartheid absolutely destroyed me and destroyed my worldview,” Eddie said.
“For example, walking through Bethlehem, where there are separate walkways and cage passages for Arabs or people with darker skin tones, feeling the bullet holes in the wall as these kids showed me where their families were killed, Like: I don’t know about seeing this and staying silent.
Eddie, 24, went on a hunger strike for eight days as Yale students called for the university to divest from military manufacturers. They felt dizzy, had mood swings, and lost 16 pounds: “But it still doesn’t compare to the hunger of half a million people in Gaza. I have a roof over my head, access to clean water, and I don’t have to worry about being bombed, shot at, or shot at.” Forcibly taken from home.
At least 47 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested on the campus of Yale University in Connecticut on Monday, with the university claiming that hundreds violated “policies and directives regarding the occupation of outdoor spaces.”
“I believe that the fight for a free Palestine is a fight for the imagination that other worlds are possible and that injustice should not be accepted,” Eddy said.
Erum Salam contributed reporting
