Youth, students, and university workers in Palestine: we stand with our comrades in the campus movement!

We, a group of Palestinian youth, students, and university workers, stand shoulder to shoulder, in solidarity and pride, with our comrades who are protesting on university campuses across the United States, Europe, Egypt, Australia, and other parts of the world. We hear you, we appreciate your struggle, and together we will triumph against oppression.  

These protests mark a decisive turning point in the struggle for our collective liberation. Emerging from a long tradition of global struggles for the freedom of colonized and subjugated people, the ongoing protests mark the most significant moment in recent history of people across the world putting their bodies, freedoms, and futures on the line to force an end to the ongoing 76-year genocide and perpetual war against the Palestinian people.

As protesters are met with brutal violence that vilifies the legitimacy of the struggle, institutions of higher education professing to be spaces of critical thinking and freedom of expression sanction the repression. Rather than defending the academy’s public role and the students’ right to protest, these institutions have dropped their democratic façade to unequivocally side with the Zionist regime and its allies, who continue to unleash a genocide on the Palestinian people while live-streaming it for the world. The genocide in which these institutions are complicit has thus not only wreaked havoc on the lives of Palestinians, but has also shattered the democratic and liberal values that these institutions purport to uphold. 

We condemn the use of brutal and militarized state force against protestors. Although not surprising, it is appalling that police forces are brutalizing and arresting students and faculty members. 

But your struggle has joined the hundreds of students and faculty members from Palestinian universities and educational institutions who have been killed, incarcerated, tortured, and brutalized by the Zionist regime. The tactics used to shut down the global protest movement that is shaking the imperial core highlight the material and discursive links between colonial and oppressive regimes in quelling political and social mobilization while affirming the interconnectedness of our struggles. Today, it is clearer than ever before: we need to abolish these inherently violent and racist systems.

As you erect tents across campuses, as you demand that colleges and universities divest from companies profiting from genocide, as you demand to put an end to academic programs with Israeli institutions, you are making history! Your loud cry for Palestinian liberation is being heard and is slowly but forcefully resonating around the world. 

Together, we are collectively making history as we fortify our long tradition of resistance against injustice and fight for a just, free, and liberated future.

The Palestinian Educational Collective