The Underlying Motives of University Encampments
As Israel continues to wage its genocidal destruction on Palestinians in Gaza, the world watches, wondering if an end is in sight. The Biden administration, in an effort to secure votes for his upcoming re-election campaign, has tried to find what they deem a ‘compromise,’ asking Prime Minister Netanyahu to allow humanitarian aid in, while simultaneously funding the Israeli war machine. Biden’s lack of action has many students across the country furious, seeing it as a moral responsibility to demand their universities to withdraw from institutions funding Israel. However, most, though disheartened by the conflict, continue to move on with their lives, assuming there is no effect they could have from across the world (largely shown by lack of voting across universities). Through a moral appeal, aided by personal experiences, I hope to argue against that point of view: that instead we do have a say, as many examples in the past suggest.
This withdrawal that the encampments push for includes a divestment of university funds from companies profiting off of Israel’s genocide, under the broader movement known as ‘BDS’, or boycott, divest, and sanction. Launched in 2005, “the Palestinian BDS call urges nonviolent pressure on Israel until it complies with international law.” The blockade of the Gaza Strip and the development of settlements are only to name a few violations Israel has become prone to.
Recent encampments, championing BDS values by demanding their Universities divest from Israel’s apartheid regime, have been met with counter-protesters, deployments of state police, and violent shutdowns. Rather than profoundly engaging with the conflict, many students choose to take a sideline point of view, often causing a reduced population within encampments and protests, lessening its cause in the eyes of university administration. So, why should students care? The movement, through peaceful protest, puts emphasis on the moral importance of divesting during a time of mass killing. It is the means for students to generate impact to a sometimes seemingly hopeless situation.
Though I knew of all this before an encampment started at UVA, it was distressing to imagine seeing it with my own eyes. Then I went to the protests on May 4th. I am heartbroken and fed up. Fed up because this was no encampment enclosed with violence, but one of solidarity for the oppressed, holding praying and dancing rituals to comfort students at UVA, many who have loved ones in Gaza. It united those who cannot understand how a genocide progresses while the supposed leader of the free world freedom unconditionally aids it. Fed up that students continue to see acts of violence not initiated by student protesters, but by our institutions. By the state police - police who not only tore down an encampment, but harassed, attacked, and pepper sprayed its own students for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Throughout the 1980s, apartheid continued in South Africa, with conditions comparable to that of the Jim Crow. With the United States continued role in the apartheid, students began pushing for divestment, with eventual success throughout the 1980s. Peaceful protest is the means to generate change in our country: a democratic action of free speech to show persistence in the cause of merely not funding an apartheid state. By exercising our rights to freedom of speech and assembly, students have brought forth moral clarity into our nation. To the leaders who continue to turn a blind eye to the plight of the Palestinians, driven into famine, out of their homes and into trapped areas of relentless bombing: we are fed up with your cowardice and inhumanity.
Pushing university administrations to divest from Israel can have success; proving a tiny amount of optimism a student can have in hoping to have an impact. The severity of university responses to encampments must not go unnoticed; a state responding to peace with violence must undergo reformation, starting from students. So, to those who remain indifferent in the push for divestment, I ask why? Do you see the protesters as ‘Hamas supporters’? When speaking with these students, instead you will find a push for peace, for ceasefire, for less death, which is completely inequitable to any support for Hamas. I beg students at UVA to ask themselves why they seem to lack an opinion, why they refuse to protest as lives continue to be taken?