The Student Movement against the War in Gaza Continues in the United States and Spreads across North America

Pro-Palestinian mobilization at universities continues in the United States. This is the case, for example, on the campus of George Washington University in Washington after police dismantled encampments at Columbia and UCLA. The campus occupation movement is now spreading to Canada and Mexico.

Calm prevails in the garden of George Washington University in Washington less than a mile from the White House. There are no slogans, no drums or shouting on loud speakers, but in a matter of days, the encampment has grown considerably. It now spills out onto the street, which is closed to traffic.

The police are not equipped with anti-riot gear Some of them even smoke cigars. It is quite far from the tension and violence in New York and Los Angeles. The images from those cities are shocking to student protesters like Kayla.

“It’s really tragic, she says, to see that in certain cases, the authorities, the people who promised to protect us, brutalize our students or do nothing to protect them. And I think that simply shows the complicity of America in the suppression and in this occupation. That shows that our universities are very much linked to this genocide, that they actively finance it, that they are ready to reprimand and attack their own students for the sake of not satisfying our demands.”*

Among the demands, there is notably the abandonment of financial ties between the university and the companies that the protesters consider to be participating in the war in Gaza. They discuss this in organized workshops in an encampment that the university asked the police to take down. But so far, the mayor of Washington is opposed to police action.

6 Encampments at Canadian Universities

This campus occupation movement against the Israeli offensive in Gaza has now further spread to Canada, where there are six encampments on university campuses. At the moment, the police have not dismantled any of them but are monitoring the sites, according to our Quebec reporter Pascale Guéricolas.

It has now been a week since students built about 100 tents on the campus of English-speaking McGill University in Montreal. The protesters are demanding that the institution divest from weapons companies involved in the conflict in Gaza.

For Safia Chabi, a student who supports the Palestinian cause, the response from university directors remains largely insufficient: “The only thing the university president has promised McGill students is that they will hold a formal discussion to discuss concerns after dismantling the encampment. Certainly, students will never accept that.”*

As in Montreal, students are also mobilizing at the University of Toronto, where there are around 60 tents. This is the same situation in Vancouver, and in Ottawa, where students have asked the university to dissociate from a Canadian bank that invests in an Israeli arms company.

Like the police, university directors are observing the situation. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said universities are places with the right to debate, but everyone must feel safe there.

Blockades at the Largest University in Mexico

Students at the prestigious National Autonomous University of Mexico are also participating in the protest movement in support of the Palestinian people. In Mexico, an encampment was set up in front of the university, The students want the higher education establishment to end its collaboration with Israeli institutions, a collaboration that reflects the Mexican government’s support for Israel.

Náme Villa del Ángel, a student organizer interviewed by RFI’s Angelica Perez, denounced the “hypocrisy” of the Mexican government that “spouts criticism without taking serious measures against the Israeli government,” a government that Mexico “maintaisn financial, economic, and institutional relations with allowing the ‘genocide’ in Gaza.” He also deplored the “police brutality” against student organizations and pointed to having been “arrested himself at a protest against the Palestinian ‘genocide’.”

The attack carried out by Hamas on Oct. 7 in southern Israel led killed 1,170 people, primarily civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse report based on Israeli data. More than 250 people were kidnapped during the attack and 128 remain hostages in Gaza, including 35 who are dead, according to the Israeli army. The Israeli offensive aginst Hamas in Gaza has killed 34, 700 people, mostly civilians, according to the Minister of Health of the Palestinian movement.

*Editor’s note: While accurately translated, these quoted remarks could not be independently verified.