On May 18th, 2021, as Palestinians across historic Palestine struggle for life and land against compounded violence by the Zionist settler project, we, students across occupied Turtle Island, affirm our unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people and their pursuit for liberation, self-determination, and decolonization.

In the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, illegal Jewish Israeli settlers continue to attack and torment Palestinian families with death threats, live ammunition, and physical violence in an effort to expel them from their homes and settle in their place. Palestinian freedom fighters are confronting the violent military apparatus of a settler-colonial project against all odds, as they have done for decades, even as their occupiers and colonizers arrest their youth en masse, lynch them in the streets, assault them with skunk water and tear-gas, and destroy their property. These tactics, however, have utterly failed to stifle the Palestinian spirit and its longing for freedom, as we have seen in recent days.

This past Saturday marked 73 years since the Nakba--or catastrophe--began, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and over 500 of their villages and towns were destroyed. Since then, 750,000 has become 7 million, and these Palestinian refugees around the world continue to raise their fists with keys clenched and exclaim, “len nerhel w snerja'a”; we will not leave, and we will return. As we witness Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah defy the daily threat of expulsion by Israel, we are reminded that the Nakba is not a moment in history; rather, it was the beginning of an ongoing, ever-intensifying process of displacement and colonization.

Palestinians in Gaza – one of the most densely-populated places in the world and home to millions of Palestinian refugees internally displaced since 1948 – celebrated Eid al-Fitr under a cascade of bombs and missiles bankrolled by the US and unleashed by the Israeli war machine. Over the past week, Israel has stolen the lives of over 130 Palestinian parents and children and injured thousands. This devastation, this massacre, is compounded by Israel’s imposition of an illegal siege on Gaza for the past decade, sealing it off from the rest of the world and trapping its two million residents inside this tiny strip of land. As a result, conditions in Gaza were already dire before the pandemic. Severe shortages of life-saving medicines, food, electricity, and clean water continue to make life unsafe and unbearable— a humanitarian catastrophe deliberately manufactured by a violent colonial project that sees enemies everywhere, whether in orphanages or in schools.

And while students mobilize their campuses in support of Palestinian liberation, our universities remain complicit by subsidizing occupation and the ongoing Nakba with our tuition dollars. Every year, millions are spent purchasing products made on or with stolen Palestinian land and resources. Every year, millions are poured into investments in companies and corporations complicit in the murder, dispossession, and colonization of indigenous people. Every year, millions are spent on death and destruction, whilst students struggle to support themselves under the crushing weight of student loans. Indeed, our universities force us into complicity; therefore, we must proactively and definitively proclaim: we reject Zionist colonization of historic Palestine, from the river to the sea.

WE DEMAND an end the university partnerships with institutions, businesses, and investors that perpetuate and profit off the colonization of the Palestinian people.

WE DEMAND an end to the deadly exchange on campus, from University Police Departments relationships with the Israeli National Police, to teach-ins about counterterrorism.

WE DEMAND an end to institutional relationships with the Anti-Defamation League, which seeks to delegitimize and surveil Palestine solidarity organizing through codified anti-Palestinian racism.

As students unequivocally dedicated to Justice in Palestine, we affirm our unwavering commitment to the liberation of Palestine. We uplift the demands coming out of Sheikh Jarrah, and in pursuit of freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people, will continue to struggle for institutional Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions on Israel. We will remain steadfast until liberation is realized; from Jerusalem, to Haifa, to Lydd, to Gaza.