A year ago this month, students at Columbia University established the first Gaza Solidarity Encampment, inspiring a wave of campus protests throughout the country.
A lot has changed since then. Those actions led to police crackdowns, new university protocols, and further targeting of protesters. There’s a new administration in power, and it has intensified suppression against the Palestine movement to an unprecedented level. We have watched students get their visas revoked. We have witnessed students forced to flee the country. We have seen videos of students kidnapped off the street by masked men in broad daylight and sent to detention centers.
There’s at least one thing that hasn’t changed since last spring: Israel continues to kill Palestinians with U.S. weapons and face no consequences for its actions.
While I type this, at least 39 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in the last 24 hours.
A recent bombing sparked a fire at a school sheltering displaced people in Gaza City.
“Children are being burned while they sleep in the tents of the displaced,” wrote Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif after the attack. “There are no safe areas, and no survivors of this genocide. Gaza City and its northern areas have been subjected to heavy Israeli shelling and artillery fire for hours.”
After an Israeli airstrike hit a tent encampment “safe zone” in Khan Younis last week, witnesses described what they saw to Mondoweiss correspondent Tareq Hajjaj.
“We heard the sound of an explosion, and then intense and strong flames erupted,” explained one. “We couldn’t get close enough to help them. We got as close as we could, but we saw the women and children burning and dying right before our eyes. We saw them, and our children saw and heard everything. The bodies were completely blackened. Only the skeletons remained. Even the bones were melted.”
“They said this was the safe zone where we must stay to save our lives,” he continued. “It was a trap to kill and burn us. Where do we go to be safe? We bury our children as skeletons and melted bones.”
Since Israel began attacking Gaza in October 2023, the campus movement has fought to end such horrors. Insofar as mainstream media covers the protests, they often omit this wider context, which is an ongoing genocide.
“I am just so proud to be amongst people who are fighting for liberation,” a Pomona College student told me last spring, shortly after getting arrested and suspended over their protest. “It’s a collective struggle and we’re all in it together. We are. We are all fighting for our liberation and the students across all campuses understand that none of us are free until Palestine is free.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this momentum before, and I don’t think it’ll end until divestment actually happens at every university,” said a Columbia student at the time.
The collective struggle’s momentum hasn’t subsided, but Trump’s vast crackdown on dissent has undoubtedly forced many activists to recalibrate their tactics.
A sign of that shift was seen this week, after Yale University students erected eight tents on campus and announced they intended to carry the protest at least throughout the night.
At around 11:30 p.m., the protesters shut down the encampment after threats of “retribution” from administrators.
Their concerns turned out to be valid, and the school retaliated despite the fact that the protest had dispersed. The next day, the university de-registered Yalies4Palestine, Yale’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
“Today, the Yale Administration revoked Yalies4Palestine’s status as an official student organization,” wrote the group in a statement. “Disbanding a group doesn’t stop a movement. They cannot silence us. FREE PALESTINE.”
Students at Columbia University will reportedly erect encampments at the school again this week.
“Any action that we do will bring police, will bring repression and we thought about that deeply and we’re aware of that,” said one organizer. “And we’re stuck in this situation where inaction is also violence.”
Here’s some of our encampment coverage:
Long live the student resistance
A note to fellow Columbia faculty on the current panic
The student protests for Palestine are awe-inspiring. But we must not get distracted from Gaza.
Announcing the Harvard University Liberated Zone
We are occupying Emory University to demand immediate divestment from Israel and Cop City
Students protest Israel’s genocidal war
20 Pomona College students were arrested over a Gaza sit-in, but it hasn’t slowed their campaign
Students across Philadelphia launch Gaza solidarity encampment at UPenn
Inside the first French university encampment for Palestine at Sciences Po Paris
NYPD clears Columbia student occupation, arrests hundreds across the city
Pro-Israel groups vs. student democracy at McGill
‘They’ve sparked resistance around the world’ — a Columbia ’68er salutes the ’24 uprising
‘I was arrested for trespassing on my own campus’: an Emory student on the school’s Gaza protest
Gazans salute university students’ uprising for Palestine
Ben-Gvir visit
The aforementioned Yale encampment was erected to protest a visit to New Haven from the far-right Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir gave a speech at Shabtai, a Jewish intellectual society founded by Yale affiliates.
Ben-Gvir has been convicted of supporting terrorism and inciting anti-Arab racism. He was even exempted from conscription into the Israeli military over his extremist views. He kept a portrait of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein on his living room wall and has pulled a gun on Palestinians multiple times.
“My right, and my wife’s and my children’s right, to get around on the roads in Judea and Samaria is more important than the right to movement for Arabs,” he declared in 2023. He says that Israel can’t withdraw from any area of Gaza and has taken credit for delaying a ceasefire deal in the region.
He’s a huge fan of Donald Trump and has expressed support for the President’s ethnic-cleansing proposal in Gaza.
“We will win. Am Yisrael Chai!” he yelled at the Yale protesters.
A Daily Wire “journalist” posted a video of protesters chanting at attendees of Ben-Gvir’s off-the-record speech with the caption, “Jewish students being screamed at for attending a lecture at Yale.”
It’s unclear who is still falling for this ridiculous stuff outside the contours of right-wing websites. However, such hasbara need not be implemented on most Congress members, who already agree with Ben-Gvir’s anti-Palestinian agenda.
After a stop at Mar-a-Lago, the Israeli official tweeted, “I had the honor and privilege of meeting with senior Republican Party officials at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. They expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed..”
“I see the reports about the debate over who should bring ‘humanitarian’ aid into Gaza,” he said in a statement later. “Well, it’s a fundamentally stupid debate, because the entire Strip should not receive any ounce of aid as long as our hostages are being held there.”
This week U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, admitted that Israel is purposely blocking humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza, a clear war crime under international law.
There’s no accountability for such actions, but rest assured that students will be punished for protesting this kind of thing.
Statement from Mohsen Mahdawi
Mohsen Mahdawi, dictated this statement from ICE detention to his lawyers:
I don’t want people to lose hope. Stay positive and believe in the inevitability of justice.
This is hearing is part of the democratic system, as it prevents a tyrant from having unchecked power.
I am in prison, but am not prisoned.
A system of democracy guarantees freedom of speech. Speaking of Palestine doesn’t not only qualify as freedom of speech but it is also about our humanity.
Keep the hope alive.
I will see you under ths sun.
Odds & Ends
👮🏽♀️ FBI and police raid homes of Palestine activists in Michigan
📰 Mainstream obituaries are erasing Pope Francis’s deep concern for Palestine
✝️ How Christian Zionism is helping to crucify the birthplace of Christ
🇺🇸 Meet Trump’s radical new antisemitism envoy
🇵🇸 Americans find it easier to mourn the death of free speech than the death of 60,000 Palestinians
🥫 Responsible Statecraft: Huckabee admits Israel blocking food to people he once said don’t exist
👮 Zeteo: ICE Ambushed Mohsen Mahdawi in a ‘Trap’ and Had a ‘Clear Plan to Ship Him to Louisiana’
🚓 In These Times: “You Are Not Welcome Here:” DHS Plans to Monitor Immigrants’ Social Media
🗺️ Middle East Eye: Rubio unveils sweeping State Department overhaul, taking aim at human rights bureaus
🚫 Drop Site News: Cisco, a Major Contributor to Israel’s Military Technology, Fired a Pro-Palestine Employee
🍿 Electronic Intifada: Hollywood acts bizarrely in response to Palestine protests
🍑 Jewish Insider: Jewish Georgia leaders say Ossoff is making amends, but still has more work to do
[“Amends” was voting against the Bernie resolutions, that would have blocked an arms sale to Israel]
💧 New York Times: Protesters Hurl Water Bottles at Israeli Official at Event Near Yale
👀 NBC News: Columbia University students plan to build tent encampments this week, sources say
🪖 Counterpunch: The Ever-Expanding War Machine
🇨🇦 Truthout: Advocates Put Palestinian Rights on the Ballot as Canada’s Election Nears
🙏 Common Dreams: Pope Francis’ Legacy of Love and Peace
Stay safe out there,
Irish band Kneecap leads thousands in chant of “Free Palestine” at Coachella festival: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/21/mkwv-a21.html
Thank you Michael Arria, you quote Terrorist Ben Gvir and Dr. Reverend Elmer Gantry/Huckabee: clearly the way forward for Israel is killing more children ; the ultimate goal of Ben Gvir’s bacchanalia of Genocide.
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“The list of signatories is wonderful to read—” Bill McKibbon
BRAVO to Agnes Scott President Leocadia I. Zak, the ONLY GA College president to stand up to Trump and fight for students. Thank you Agnes Scott for showing real leadership to the likes of Genocide Greg Fenves @- Emory and the cowards of the entire “University System of Georgia”.
At Last, College Presidents Are Standing Up to TrumpA letter signed by more than 400 university heads offers a sharp rebuke to the bully-in-chief.BILL MCKIBBEN
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/harvard-university-college-presidents-letter-trump/
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Will the funeral for Pope Francis pause Israel’s bacchanalia of Genocide ? Could the most moral army stop killing children Saturday?