IndyMedia - Vrij Media Centrum Nederland

Waar: UvA, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Wanneer: 06/05/2024 - 11:24

"Besiege your siege... there is no other way." - Mahmoud Darwish

We, students of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Amsterdam University College (AUC), and the Vrije Universiteit (VU), are taking back this campus in solidarity with the people of Palestine, in the spirit of the encampments which have emerged on university campuses across the United States and the world over the past month.

This escalation is a result of seven months of peaceful protests against our universities' ties to Israeli institutions, during which the universities have chosen to sanction and arrest their own students rather than condemn the genocide of the Palestinian people and end their complicity with the Zionist apartheid regime. 

For seven months, and as a barbaric escalation of almost a century of Zionist colonial violence in Palestine, Israel - with the complete material and moral support of the Dutch government and society - has been destroying hospitals and schools, killing civilian men, women, and children, blocking humanitarian aid, and committing countless war crimes with no repercussions. The situation in Gaza is only growing more severe: as of May 2024, over 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, and 1.1 million are facing imminent starvation. Throughout this genocide, our universities have claimed that they are neutral, apolitical institutions of research and education. This is a farcical statement in the face of their extensive complicity with and support of Israeli settler-colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. Our universities are not "neutral" while they fund research into weapons used to commit atrocities in Gaza. Our universities are not "apolitical" while they take authoritarian measures against students and faculty members who stand in solidarity with Palestine. To claim "neutrality" while Palestinians are being subjected to ethnic cleansing and genocide is despicable and inhumane.

As students, our universities teach us to actively engage with what we learn, to criticize and fight injustice where we see it, and to use our education to make a difference in the world. Yet, when we put this education into practice for Palestine, the universities respond by cracking down on our free expression, demonising us with dangerous, hostile rhetoric, and weaponsing police violence against us, putting us, especially those of us who are racialised and marginalised, at great risk.

We are accused of making the campus unsafe when we stand with Palestine, but how can we ever be safe at a university that profits from the occupation, apartheid, and genocide of the Palestinian people? We are accused of disturbing the processes of education, but how can we attend classes about international law and write papers on decolonisation while our tuition fees are funding a settler colonial state committing a genocide?

In this encampment, we are creating a space dedicated to liberation and freedom from oppression. As a movement in solidarity with Palestine, we reject all forms of bigotry and discrimination, which have no place within our protest, our goals, and our movement. Any form of racism, including anti-semitism and Islamophobia, will not be tolerated in this liberated zone centered on solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian people.

We will not accept any half-measures or empty promises from the university; we will stay here until all our demands are met by UvA, VU, and AUC. These are as follows:

1.    Fully comply with the Freedom of Information case, i.e. disclose the university’s ties with Israeli institutions and companies, including educational institutions, as well as companies that profit from genocide, apartheid, and the exploitation of the Palestinian people and their land. 
2.    Cease all academic collaborations with Israeli institutions that participate in genocide, apartheid, and the exploitation of the Palestinian people and their land.  
3.    Cease all contracts with and divest from Israeli companies, and international companies/funds, that profit from genocide, apartheid, and exploitation of the Palestinian people and their land. 

There are no universities left in Gaza - Israel destroyed them all. In fact, Israel has damaged or destroyed nearly 90% of Gaza's educational infrastructure, killed at least 5,479 students, 261 teachers, and 95 university professors, and deprived at least 625,000 students of their right to education. Gaza faces not only genocide at the hands of Israel, but also scholasticide, the "systemic obliteration of education through the arrest, detention or killing of teachers, students and staff, and the destruction of educational infrastructure". As academic institutions and places of education, UvA, VU, and AUC can no longer stay silent regarding the destruction of Palestinian academia and the murder of their fellow academic colleagues. ​​​​​​​