“We need to focus on real student issues.” That’s a sentence I have been hearing more often than I would have hoped as we pass the one-year mark of the advancement of the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
As a MUN student born and raised in Newfoundland and Labrador, I reject the assertion that solidarity with Palestine is not a student issue. Are disability rights a student issue? Disabled students exist. Of course they are a student issue. Are queer rights a student issue? Queer students exist. Of course, they are a student issue.
Are all students disabled? Are all students queer? No, but we still advocate for the rights of disabled students and queer students. Why would we treat our Palestinian peers any different?
Palestine is a student issue because it impacts MUN students. To me, the student movement rests on solidarity and recognition of our shared struggle, as well as our unique challenges. It is a moral duty to stand by your peers when they are facing marginalization, of any kind.
It matters if a student is food insecure. It matters if a student struggles to pay tuition. It matters if a student is experiencing mental health challenges. It matters if a student is unable to access appropriate housing. It certainly matters if a students’ friends, family, and community members are under attack and living under apartheid.
Not only is it necessary to stand beside your fellow students, it is important for MUN students to act in the face of our university’s complicity with the genocide in Palestine. A grassroots student group, MUN Students 4 Palestine (MS4P) has been actively campaigning within the existing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to make MUN’s investments transparent and ensure that the university is not complicit in funding human rights violations.
An institution of higher learning has no place investing in genocide
MUN’s official statement on June 19 committed to disclosing their direct investments yearly, and revealed that at least 0.297% of their investment portfolio is on the boycott lists provided by MS4P. In July, The Muse reported that a memo further disclosed that MUN directly invests $7.1 million dollars in Motorola, RTX, and Textron.
Motorola is listed on the UN database of companies complicit in Israeli settlements, and rakes in over a billion dollars each year in revenue related to surveillance equipment, known to be used in illegal settlements.
RTX Corporations (formerly Raytheon) both manufactures engines for fighter jets and provides missiles and bombs to the occupation forces.
Textron is one of the largest weapons manufacturers globally and is one of the top suppliers of weapons to Israel.
These are clear violations. Violations of morality, international law, ethical investing, and MUN’s very integrity. The amount of the investment is not relevant. If even one dollar is funding killings and violence, it’s unacceptable. An institution of higher learning has no place investing in genocide, weapons, or armed conflict of any kind.
Since the disclosure, MUN has refused to budge on divesting these investments in genocide. Instead, MUN and administrators have attempted to silence concerned students and repressed dissent, argued that investments are ‘complex,’ ignored student voices, and removed awareness posters.
This came to a head in July when MUN called police on peaceful student protestors, resulting in trespassing charges being laid against three students participating in the MS4P-led encampment in the Arts and Administration building. This extreme action taken by MUN administration is not only harmful to students, but could actually be an infringement on students’ right to protest, according to legal scholar, Dr. Heidi Matthews.
The decision to call police to crackdown on protests reflected a clear escalation in MUN’s approach. It is truly shameful that a post-secondary institution, especially one that was founded in memory of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians killed by senseless war and violence, would fund genocide and call police on students who are speaking out against unchecked violence and militarism.
There are no universities left in Gaza
As part of the genocide, the occupation has also committed scholasticide, a term described by the group Scholars Against the War on Palestine as the systemic destruction of the educational life of a particular ethnic, religious, or racial group. Since October 2023, Israel has bombed all eleven of Gaza’s universities and killed thousands of students and educators.
The occupation forces have imprisoned educators and students. According to reports from the UN imprisoned Palestinians have been subjected to torture. While education in Gaza is destroyed, the Israeli academic world is largely complicit in the horrendous human rights abuses and scholasticide committed against Palestinians.
Palestinian academic Abdel Razzaq Takriti of Scholars Against the War on Palestine says the University of Tel Aviv has held deceased Palestinians for the purposes of research, as well as keeping Palestinian cultural artifacts stolen by the occupation forces. Some academics are even directly involved in the genocide, serving as reservists in the military.
The level of destruction in Gaza and the intensifying of violence in the rest of occupied Palestine is unconscionable. As an academic institution memorializing the dead lost to war, it is appalling that we would stay silent or contribute to this horror in any capacity. Millions of students and faculty around the world, including MUN’s own Faculty association, have decided enough is enough, and have demanded their universities, colleges, and workplaces immediately divest from corporations and institutions contributing to the indiscriminate killings of men, women and children in Palestine.
Palestine is a student issue because it impacts students
“Politics” is so often a concern when the occupation, apartheid, and genocide faced by Palestinians is discussed, but it is not that advocating for the rights of Palestinians is propagating a specific political ideology; it is that agitators and complicit bystanders have politicized the lives & the very survival of Palestinians, to the point that even making a statement against genocide is seen as a kind of political propaganda. Even still, the framing of Palestinian rights as a uniquely political (and controversial) issue, misunderstands the ubiquity of politics in elements of daily life.
The housing crisis, food insecurity, and inaccessible education are all highly political issues that disproportionately and directly impact students, including MUN students. There are very few issues that are not political in nature and there are zero human rights issues that do not involve politics.
The world is a political place whether we like it or not. Some may be privileged enough to choose whether or not to engage with politics, but for Palestinians, their very existence is political. As students, we all face different challenges, but it is important to recognize the privileges that all of us hold.
I am privileged to attend university. I am privileged to have clothes to wear and food to eat. I am privileged to wake up every morning. I would never abandon a student in their struggle, in whatever way that looks for them. Why should we abandon our Palestinian peers? Palestine is a student issue because it impacts students.
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