Palestinian students continue to come under attack by Israeli occupation forces, even as the international campaign to free Palestinian students is escalating. Over 325 organizations have now signed on to support the campaign, including the All Nepal Peasants’ Federation, the American Association of Jurists, the Confederation of Workers from Turkey in Europe – ATIK, the National Lawyers Guild in the U.S., and the Landless Workers Movement/Movimento Sem Terra in Brazil, among a wide range pf political parties, Palestinian and solidarity organizations, churches, labor unions and social justice groups. (See the full list of endorsers.)
In Austin, Texas, the Palestine Solidarity Committee displayed banners over a major highway in support of Palestinian students and a demand to end U.S. aid to Israel as part of the campaign launch on 25 February.
In Toulouse, France, members of the Collectif Palestine Vaincra along with fellow campaign endorsers Le Poing Levé et l’Union des Etudiant·e·s de Toulouse organized a photo campaign and solidarity signs in support of Palestinian students as part of a day of student action against economic and social precarity on 3 March.
Many more organizations are planning actions, events and interventions. For more information, suggested actions and resources, please reach out to us at samidoun@samidoun.net.
The importance of this campaign is highlighted by the ongoing attacks on Palestinian students. At Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, occupied Palestine, Israeli occupation forces invaded the campus on 26 February in an attempt to launch a campaign of terror against Palestinian students, threatening students’ education with a “hit list” of students targeted for arrest and political persecution. Armed occupation soldiers posted signs with the photos of arrested Palestinian students with a red “X” through each of their pictures, leaving blank outlines at the bottom with question marks to ask, “who will be arrested next?”
The posters bore the title, “Graduation of the Islamic Bloc 2021,” boasting of students being denied their right to education because of their involvement in student activity on campus, and hung on the gates of the university and gathering locations in and around the university.
Only days later, on 3 March, many students at Al-Quds university received text messages from the Shin Bet — Israeli occupation intelligence — on their mobile phones, offering funds for collaboration. The message reads:
“Dear university students, your future is in your own hand. To whomever needs support to finish their education. Contact Captain Shaker,” followed by the agent’s phone number. This is another blatant attempt to intimidate, terrorize and coerce Palestinian students and undermine their right to education.
Occupation forces continued to detain Palestinian students. Majd Jarrar and Waleed Hamad, two students from Bir Zeit University, were seized and taken to the notorious Al-Moskobiyeh interrogation center after heavily armed Israeli soldiers invaded the two students’ homes on 2 March. Three students at Al-Najah University in Nablus, Asim Shtayyeh, Malik Shtayyeh, both engineering students, and Musa Dweikat, a medical student, were seized by occupation forces on 2 March, while at the University of Hebron, Ezz-el-Din Abu Hussein, Muthanna al-Qawasmi and Thameen Halaika were all seized by occupation forces on 1 March.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network urges all friends of justice in Palestine to join the #FreePalestinianStudents campaign. This campaign brings organizations together in a global call to urge the immediate freedom of imprisoned Palestinian students and the protection of Palestinian students’ right to education, right to political expression and involvement and right to determine their own futures. The Israeli occupation has targeted Palestinian students and, specifically, the Palestinian student movement and Palestinian student organizations for harsh repression and political detention and imprisonment.
We join together to call for action and support for Palestinian students behind bars, including:
Boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, including Israeli academic institutions, which are fully complicit in the systematic deprivation of Palestinian rights.
Ending all military and economic aid, military transactions, joint projects and direct funding to the Israeli occupation regime by governments around the world.
Challenging “normalization” programs that aim to legitimize Israeli occupation — this is an attempt to legitimize the criminalization and targeting of Palestinian students.
Organizing to build direct links of solidarity with Palestinian students and the Palestinian student movement, to ensure that they will not be isolated from their global community of support despite all attempts by the Israeli occupation.
For the full campaign statement, resources, posters, photos and more, including translations in eight languages, please visit: https://freepalestinianstudents.org/
#FreePalestinianStudents Twitter Storm and Social Media Campaign
Thursday, 11 March
10 am Pacific – 1 pm Eastern – 7 pm central Europe – 8 pm Palestine
Use the hashtag: #FreePalestinianStudents
Join the #FreePalestinianStudents campaign – supported by over 300 organizations around the world – for a social media action and Twitter storm on Thursday, 11 March!
Hundreds of Palestinian students are routinely detained by the Israeli occupation, especially those who are part of student organizations involved with campus political life. At Bir Zeit University alone, approximately 74 students were detained by occupation soldiers during the 2019-2020 academic year. They are among nearly 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners jailed by Israel. The work of student organizing, from holding book fairs to organizing events and participating in student elections, is criminalized by the Israeli occupation. Still more students are detained for joining demonstrations or posting on their social media profiles.
Palestinian students have been seized by Israeli occupation forces and abducted for their participation in the student movement in their homes, at their workplaces and on their campuses.
Once arrested, Palestinian students are routinely subjected to torture under interrogation — subjected to stress positions and stretched out over chairs, suspended from walls and forced to stand on tiptoe, deprived of sleep, cuffed and pressured on injured limbs, and beaten.
Palestinian students may be sent to administrative detention — imprisonment without charge or trial, indefinitely renewable in six-month periods. Palestinians routinely spend years jailed with no charges, no trial and no real challenge to the deprivation of their rights. They may be brought before Israeli military courts, which convict over 99% of the Palestinians charged there.
The targeting Palestinian students is an attack on Palestinian futures. It is a systematic attempt to undermine the capacity of young Palestinians to organize with one another for a liberated future for their people: One free of colonization, apartheid and occupation.
On March 11, join us to demand: #FreePalestinianStudents!
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network has chapters and affiliates in the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Palestine and Lebanon and we work with groups around the world. Would you like to form a local chapter or become an affiliate? Contact us at samidoun@samidoun.net.
