Main pic: assembly at the encampment of Leioa’s campus (Ikasle Abertzaleak)
Footage from the Basque TV, EiTB: www.eitb.eus
On the 6th of May, university students have started their encampments on the campuses of the 4 capitals of Euskal Herria (EH) (Basque Country): Ibaeta in Donostia, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Leioa (Bizkaia) and the campus of the Public University of Navarre in Iruñea. (here more)
- Statements by the Basque University, UPV-EHU, and the CRUE (Conference of Rectors of Spanish Universities) on behalf of Palestine
Thus, Basque students are also joining the movement created under the name #StudentsForGaza, and in this article we have brought what has happened so far in other places, as we have translated several reports and articles about it published by CrimethInc.
Now, as we write this, more than 2,000 people have already been arrested in the US. The protest must take root and become international for the state of Israel to stop the massacre once and for all.
The educational community has also called for a protest in support of Palestinian children and adolescents. Representatives of dozens of Basque educational centres, with the support of the trade unions ELA, LAB and Steilas, have called to join the demonstration on 10 May in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
The Palestinian educational community has publicly thanked the support shown to Gaza by student movements worldwide and has called for joining the pressure measures.
As stated by the Basque branch of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), it also joins and supports and promotes the encampments promoted by different student groups in the universities of Euskal Herria.
Meanwhile, the camps are being replicated in some 100 universities and educational centres in the USA and Canada, and around the world (181). In addition to Donostia, Gasteiz, Bilbo and Iruñea, camps have started in Lisbon, Valencia, Barcelona, Bologna, Naples, Paris, Gent, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Cardiff, Oxford, Warwick, London, Paris, Cambridge, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Dublin, Northumbria, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Berlin, Vienna, Tunisia, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras), Mexico, İstanbul, Tokyo or even in Birzeit in Israel! In Australia in Queensland, Sydney, Melbourne.
Yesterday, 8th May, French police detained 86 people in an operation to remove a pro-Palestinian occupation led by students at the Sorbonne university in Paris (see footage).
On 2 May, one also began in Mexico, which we will now report on. It was planned to last until Sunday 12 May, but will continue until at least next week. The next assembly will consider whether to extend it.
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Why the State Can’t Compromise with the Gaza Solidarity Movement
A 4-day student Intifada in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Utrecht )
On 9 May students and staff are brutally attacked by riot police, with tear gas, dogs and bulldozers, on the 3rd day of the Dutch Intifada. Dozens of people have been arrested and injured. The images are shocking.
On Monday, hundreds of students started their encampment on the Roeterseilandcampus of the University of Amsterdam (UVA).
Their demands were: 1) break all ties with Zionist institutions; 2) boycott all Zionist institutions; 3) divest from all Zionist institutions. At 03:00 AM, the police forcibly evicted the camp with violence and bulldozers, arrested 140 students and seriously injured many of them. Two students remain in detention.
The next day, Tuesday, a solidarity protest organised by the UVA staff mobilised thousands of people. They managed to drive the police off the campus and marched through the streets of Amsterdam, evading police blockades. In the early afternoon, the UVA buildings in Oudemanhuispoort were occupied and barricaded.
On Wednesday, after negotiating for an hour, the UvA board of trustees abandoned the negotiations and sent in the riot police. Thousands of students, staff and Palestinian supporters joined the occupation to defend the students. The battle of Amsterdam is still going on. The police are using all weapons and extreme violence.
Meanwhile, students in the Dutch city of Utrecht have also begun their second occupation, after their first occupation on Tuesday was brutally evicted the same night.
We commend the students of the Netherlands for their courage and steadfastness. Remember that you are not alone in this global student intifada.
From London to the USA via Paris and Berlin
At the beginning of March we reported on the occupation of a university building by Goldsmiths students in London. The action was part of many actions in solidarity with the people of Palestine, against genocide and against the arms factories that feed the Israeli army. This occupation lasted no less than 5 weeks, starting on 20 February and ending on 27 March.
Now, a new occupation has taken place at Columbia University, where an encampment was repressed by the police, Israel sympathisers, Zionists and other specimens, but managed to remain. This initiative inspired students at other universities in the United States to replicate the encampments: New York, Yale, Austin (Texas), Southern California, Harvard, Brown, Berkeley, Pittsburgh… and in Europe, as in Paris and Berlin.
After police were sent to break up Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampment, dozens of other universities launched demonstrations in solidarity. US police arrested some 550 people, including professors, for exercising their right to peaceful protest. The number of people detained now exceeds 2000.
Despite the fact that the International Court of Justice almost unanimously found it «plausible» that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Israel has killed more than 14,500 children, destroyed 70 per cent of Gazan homes and displaced 75 per cent of the population, yet the US police are suppressing protest as far as they can. This is also replicated in Europe, where governments and the EU continue to justify the crimes of the state of Israel.
In addition to calling for a permanent ceasefire and an end to arms sales to Israel, the protesters are also demanding that their respective universities cut ties with individuals and companies linked to Israel.
In Paris, riot police on Wednesday 24 evicted about 60 students occupying the Saint Thomas campus in Saint Germain des Pres. But then the prestigious university of social sciences, Sciences Po, has been closed by the students.
Berlin police on Friday began evicting a pro-Palestinian camp («Besetzung Gegen Besatzung» – «Occupation against occupation») set up in front of the German parliament by activists demanding that the government stop arms exports to Israel and end what they see as the criminalisation of the Palestine solidarity movement. This camp began on 8 April, coinciding with the start of the International Court of Justice hearings in the case of Nicaragua v. Germany for providing military aid to Israel, and continued until the 26th (18 days).
In Germany, anti-Palestinian repression has intensified, condemning any expression as anti-Semitic. A Palestinian flag in a window is enough for the police to raid and arrest someone. Three weeks ago even the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace was condemned as anti-Semitic and its pro-Palestinian conference in Berlin violently shut down. In fact, that very repression was the trigger for the creation of a Gaza solidarity camp near the German parliament.
Here are the different articles that CrimethInc! has prepared and that we have contributed to translate with testimonies and communiqués from the different experiences in Columbia (New York) and from Arcata (California) and Austin (Texas). The first and most inspiring was Columbia, which in turn, as they explain in a detailed context, is based on other historical experiences.
But all of them draw from the process of occupations of university buildings that took place from 2008 to 2010 within the movement that became known as Occupy. It was the time of the financial crisis that began in the United States and devastated the world economy, and as always, the consequences were suffered by the working class: structural adjustments, company closures, layoffs, thousands of people literally on the streets… and the occupation of Wall Street gave rise to other occupations all over the country. 14 years later, it is interesting to learn about them and to continue to take up strategies (READ HERE).
Meanwhile, the Zionist machine continues, led by none other than the same president who is driving this genocide, Benjamin Netanyahu, who shows, once again, how they use lies and manipulation to cement their crime: «Anti-Semitic mobs have taken over the main universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish professors. This is reminiscent of what happened at German universities in the 1930s». From the information received, no one is spreading anti-Semitism, just as no one has attacked Jewish students or professors simply because they are Jewish.
But they continue with their farce, evoking the genocide suffered by the Jewish people in Germany and the countries occupied by Germany in World War II to justify the take-over of palestinean land and the genocide.
The occupation of Goldsmiths with Palestine
The occupation of Goldsmiths University in London lasted no less than 5 weeks, from 20 February to 27 March. But the occupation was lifted on 27 March with a commitment that action and protest would continue at Goldsmiths «until Palestine is free».
This occupation opened up a physical, social and political space to talk about Palestine and the ongoing genocide in a university where this was unacceptable. They held over 50 meetings and events, transforming the building into what a university could and should be: teaching and learning by and for collectives led by ordinary students and staff. The occupation was a space of democracy, protest and hope in a university on the brink of destruction.
In addition to introducing the Palestinian issue and its genocide into the university, the occupation succeeded in getting the management to make compromises. Thus the leadership of Goldsmiths University was forced to make new joint statements with the students, to sit in open meetings with its students and to confront the university’s complicity in the genocide.
It is a victory in itself to have maintained an occupation in one of the largest buildings on campus for over a month, raising the demand for Palestinian liberation everywhere. In a way, it has also been an inspiration for the student occupations we have since seen across the country.
