Student organizations in the Gaza Strip in solidarity with U.S. student Intifada

The following statement was posted on Samidoun Palestinian Political Prisoners Network on April 25, 2024.  Go to samidoun.net

We, the students of Gaza, salute the students of Columbia University, Yale University, New York University, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, and dozens of universities across the United States who are rising up in solidarity with Gaza and to put an end to the Zionist-U.S. genocide against our people in Gaza. 

As we remain under the bombs of occupation, resisting Nazi genocide, grieving for our martyred colleagues and faculty, and witnessing the destruction of our universities, we welcome the examples of solidarity offered by students facing arrest, police violence, suspension, eviction, and expulsion in order to demand that their universities end their complicity in the Zionist-U.S. genocide and renounce their support for the occupation and the war profiteers that arm it.

We have seen hundreds of students arrested across the United States as they work to transform their universities into “Popular Universities for Gaza.” Students, faculty, and staff members are disrupting university operations and making clear that while universities in Gaza are being bombed, university business cannot continue as usual in the United States. 

These actions come as university administrations collaborate with members of Congress to discredit conscientious student activists and faculty, expel students, ban events, shut down student organizations, such as Students for Justice in Palestine, and condemn activists working to end the Nazi genocide. At the same time, these same universities invest in the same companies that profit from the continued sale of weapons to the Zionist regime to continue its genocidal offensive.

Our students – and our educational system as a whole – in occupied Palestine are subjected to ongoing genocidal aggression: our universities are destroyed and bombed, our student organizations banned, and our student leaders subjected to torture, assassination and mass imprisonment.

However, in Palestine and around the world, the student movement has always been a driving force of our struggle for liberation. 

When we see videos and images from U.S. universities today, we are reminded of our history of student struggle as well as the student uprisings of 1968, which challenged imperialism from Vietnam to Palestine and reshaped the face of Europe and the United States. Now, in 2024, the student movement is once again leading the way.

From here in Gaza, we see you and salute you. Your actions and activism matter, especially in the heart of the empire, in the United States. As members of Congress agree to provide $26 billion in additional weapons to bomb our people and continue the Zionist-U.S. genocide, you are taking meaningful action to shut down the war machine on your campuses. 

It is clear that a new generation is rising that will no longer accept Zionism, racism and genocide, and that stands with Palestine and our liberation from the river to the sea.

Your global student solidarity is breaking boundaries, and it is time to smash the U.S. imperialist war machine. From Gaza to Columbia, to Ann Arbor and Berkeley, our hands are joined to end Nazi genocide and achieve our collective liberation.

Student Frameworks Secretariat

• ⁠Islamic Bloc – Islamic Resistance Movement
• Student Unity Bloc – Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• ⁠Union of Student Struggle Committees – Arab Liberation Front
• Union of Palestinian Student Struggle Committees – Palestinian Arab Front
• Islamic League – Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine
• Fatah Youth – Fatah movement
• Al-Mubadara Student Gathering – the Palestinian National Initiative Movement
• Student Action Front – Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
• Palestine Liberation Youth – Palestine Liberation Front
• Al-Istiqlal Student Bloc – Palestinian Democratic Union Fida
• Student Struggle Bloc – Palestinian Popular Struggle Front
• The Land and Man Bloc – Popular Front (General Command)
• Progressive Student Union Bloc – Palestinian People’s Party