CUNY stands with Palestine liberation, despite what the chancellor says

Editor’s Note: The following statement was issued by CUNY for Palestine on October 14, 2023.

[Sign in support of this statement here]

On October 11, 2023, City University of New York (CUNY) Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez released a statement on behalf of CUNY referring to “the enormity of the attacks on Israel by Hamas” and expressing empathy for the victims of these attacks and their loved ones.

In the 457 words of the chancellor’s statement, the words “Palestine” or “Palestinian” did not appear once. 

The statement makes one point entirely clear: CUNY’s administration values some lives at the expense of others, and excludes from the “CUNY community” the university’s Palestinian students, staff, and faculty. It also ignores the broad support for Palestine liberation across the CUNY community as expressed in numerous solidarity statements, most recently the joint statement of CUNY Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters and statements by the Jewish Law Students Association at CUNY School of Law (JSLA), Lehman College SJP, City College SJP, Hunter College Palestine Solidarity Alliance, and CUNY Law SJP, as well as this resolution from the executive committee and stewards of the Graduate Center chapter of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union.  

At the time the chancellor released his statement, Israel was four days into a mass aerial bombardment, escalating the blockade on the already besieged people of Gaza and bombing the only crossing out of Gaza with Egypt. Hospitals were running out of generator power because Israel had cut off fuel supplies, food and water were scarce, and those 2.3 million people held hostage within Gaza were at the mercy of indiscriminate Israeli bombing. Despite the onslaught, the Palestinian people of Gaza are steadfast in their refusal to be ethnically cleansed, declaring “we prefer to die and not to be humiliated.”

As of October 14th, over 6000 Israeli bombs have been dropped in six days, killing over 2200 people, including over 700 children, and displacing more than 423,000. Ahead of Israel’s planned ground invasion it ordered the displacement of residents of the northern Gaza Strip within 24 hours, including Gaza City’s 1.1 million residents. It also “commanded” the evacuation of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society from the Al Quds hospital. Upon announcing his intention to reduce parts of Gaza to “rubble,” Netanyahu ordered leaflets dropped from the sky telling Palestinians in the Gaza strip, of which 50% of the population are children, to “leave now,” knowing full well that there is absolutely nowhere they can go. This is a public declaration of intent to commit the international crime of forced population transfer. Israel justified its decision to suspend all entry of food, water and fuel into Gaza on Monday — two days before the chancellor released his statement — by claiming that it was fighting “human animals.” As we have seen with past examples of imperialist intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, such dehumanizing language is used to manufacture consent for genocidal violence. 

Chancellor Matos Rodríguez’s statement erases the history, lived realities and humanity of the Palestinian people, who have been subjected to 100 years of imperialist backed dispossession, including 75 years of Israeli settler colonial rule. In doing so, it reproduces and justifies the narrative of the Israeli state, which erases all historical and political context, projecting its own violence onto the victims of its brutality in order to accuse Palestinians of “pure unadulterated evil.”   

The chancellor’s statement expressed no empathy for the Palestinian victims of Israel and their loved ones. We can only interpret these inconsistent valuations of human life and calculated omissions as an endorsement of Israel’s ongoing perpetration of ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and genocide against the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. The chancellor’s parroting of Israeli narratives also contributes to an environment in which attacks against CUNY students and workers are more likely, as we saw with Councilwoman Inna Vernikov showing off a gun at a Brooklyn College rally on October 12th. 

The vast majority of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are refugees from the same colonized lands that Palestinians reentered on October 7th in dramatic scenes, including a bulldozer breaking through the highly militarized and surveilled border fence. That same section of the border was the site of the Great March of Return, a 2018-2019 peaceful protest which Israel responded to with deadly force, killing 214 Palestinians, including 46 children, and injuring 28,939. Israel imposed a direct military occupation on the Gaza Strip in 1967, retiring its military bases and settlements in 2005 but maintaining authority over all land and sea borders and air space, while continuing to control people through the population registry, travel permits and by limiting the flow of resources. From 2007, Israel imposed a total siege on the whole of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, which has transformed the 365-square-kilometers of the Gaza Strip into an open air prison. Israel conducted full-scale military attacks on Gaza on more than five occasions in those years, killing thousands and destroying civilian neighborhoods, hospitals, and schools.

Israel has consolidated all these tactics of extermination in the current attack on Gaza, including the prohibited use of white phosphorus weapons in densely populated urban areas. In addition, Israel is arming settlers with an additional 10,000 assault rifles, which has already further galvanized attacks on Palestinian communities in the West Bank. This, combined with the fact that all Jewish Israelis over the age of 18 must serve in the military, highlights the contradictions of claiming civilian status in a settler colonial state. 

Chancellor Matos Rodríguez claimed in his statement that Hamas’s actions “serve only to further divide Jews and Muslims all over the world, including on our campuses.” This inaccurate and irresponsible claim employs the tired trope of religious conflict to mask the reality of settler colonial violence and dispossession, essentializing and racializing both Jewish and Muslim communities. 

All over the world and including at CUNY, people of all faiths and backgrounds are united in their opposition to apartheid, occupation, genocide and settler colonialism. The CUNY community is represented by those of us on the campuses and the streets, and we came together this week across Baruch College, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, College of Staten Island and John Jay College to express our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people.

While Matos Rodríguez has spoken on behalf of CUNY, CUNY is nothing without us, its students and workers. We refuse to be complicit in Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza, funded by US tax dollars and enabled by US weapons. We are inspired by the revolutionary spirit of Palestinian resistance, and we stand firmly in support of the Palestinian people and their right to resistance, return and liberation. 

We affirm: 

• The right of Palestinians to resistance, including armed resistance, as they face the violence of colonization, occupation, apartheid and genocide. This right is upheld by United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution 37/43, which asserts “the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for their independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.” At the same time, as noted in a powerful statement by the Union of Professors and Employees at Birzeit University in the West Bank, “resistance does not need the authoritative pre-approval of static international codes. Our history gives us that authority.”
• That the violence occurring in Palestine stems from Israeli settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid, all of which were erased in the chancellor’s statement. Justice and peace can only occur with an end to these systems of oppression and dispossession. 

We demand: 

• That the CUNY chancellor retract his October 11 statement and publicly condemn Israel’s genocidal violence against Palestinian people in Gaza. 
• That the CUNY administration defend its students and workers, who are routinely doxxed and attacked when voicing support for Palestine, including several attacks over recent days specifically targeting Arab and Muslim students. It must also retract and apologize for its defamatory statement regarding CUNY law graduate Fatima Mohammed after her commencement speech in May 2023 condemned settler colonialism, racial capitalism and police violence. 
• That the CUNY administration publicly condemn the actions of New York Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, who illegally brought a gun to intimidate Brooklyn College students and workers expressing solidarity with Palestine at an October 12th demonstration at the campus gates. Paired with her public statements, Vernikov’s actions can only be interpreted as an incitement to violence. The CUNY administration must call for Vernikov’s resignation from the City Council and permanently ban her from all CUNY campuses.
• That the CUNY administration retract its public condemnation of student rallies and instead uplift the First Amendment rights of CUNY students and workers to gather and speak out for Palestine. 
• That the CUNY administration publicly declare and divest from all financial ties with “the State of Israel and all Israeli and international companies that sustain Israeli apartheid,” including those held by the members of its Board of Trustees.
• That the CUNY administration immediately cease its campaign of intimidation against students and workers who take part in the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, and honor the right of CUNY workers and students to stand by resolutions made in support of the Palestinian people.

CUNY for Palestine

October 14, 2023

Sign in support of this statement here

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See list of statement signers here