🚨 Students at Harvard University launched an encampment in support of Gaza in Harvard Yard moments ago, calling for an end to Harvard's moral and material complicity in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
Harvard has invested over $200 million of its over $51 billion endowment in companies with ties to zionist settlements in the West Bank, while most of its investments to the zionist entity are kept secret.
The students are demanding financial transparency regarding investments related to the zionist entity, as well as genocide and occupation in Palestine; divestment from these investments and reinvestment in Palestine; and dropping all charges against student activists.
The University has suppressed student voices in support of Palestine time and time again, suspending the Palestine Solidarity Committee just this week on baseless grounds. They have also enabled attacks on pro-Palestinian students from the media and politicians. Today, the students say enough is enough, and that they will no longer tolerate their institution's support for genocide.
This brings the number of ongoing encampments to 19, with more to come.
94-year-old Naifa Rizq al-Sawada, who suffered from Alzheimer's and was unable to walk or speak, was in her home in the vicinity of the al-Shifa Medical Complex in the west of Gaza City on 21 March when the Israeli military invaded stormed her home post-midnight and forcibly evicted her family at gunpoint, forcing them to leave her behind.
Yesterday, her sons who were able to return home after Israeli forces' withdrawal, discovered her home engulfed in flames by the Israeli army. Inside, they found her charred remains on her bed.
Maternity kits, medical threads and scissors, water testing kits, anesthetics, mobile desalination units, etc do you see the pattern? Israel is not only starving the people of Gaza but it also wants to ensure the spread of disease through contaminated water and surgical tools, as well as ensuring injured Palestinians suffer through horrendous pain.
Not just thousands of Palestinian children, but tens of thousands of Palestinian youths, men, women, and the elderly. 5% of Gaza's population has been either severely disabled/injured, has gone missing, or has been genocided. From destroying orchards and farms, to the destruction of Gaza Infrastructure to the point where it has collapsed in many spaces -especially their medical complexes, to the complete lack of access to fresh and clean water. Israhell is also still starving Palestinians -is still committing war crimes, and now this? The zionists are continuing their illegal settler-colonial project full steam ahead apparently, and it's beyond horrific.
Dispatches from the Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University
https://crimethinc.com/Columbia2024
In this in-depth report, participants offer a blow-by-blow account of the events at Columbia, appraising the tactics that the demonstrators have employed and the challenges that they face.
This is Freddy Zebara, the owner of King of Falafel and Shawarma. He is Palestinian. As many of you know, Palestinians outside of Palestine are facing many challenges regarding discrimination and hate crimes.
We must be there for our Palestinian sisters and brothers no matter where they are.
If you live in New York, heck if you like to try good food, please support Freddy at his shop.
The US single-handedly blocked the UN from recognizing Palestine by vetoing a draft resolution in the Security Council that recommended that “the State of Palestine be admitted to membership of the UN.” With 12 council members voting yes, a clear majority voted in favor; only the UK and Switzerland abstained.
Meanwhile, 139 of the 193 UN member states already recognize Palestine, virtually all of the world safe for the Global North and its closest allies.
Even in the EU, several countries are set to recognize Palestine soon. Since 2012, the Palestinians have been a non-member observer state to the UN, a de facto recognition of statehood granted by the UN General Assembly.
However, the Security Council and then at least two-thirds of the General Assembly must approve an application to become a full member of the world body.
The Palestinian push for full membership came six months into Israel’s devastating war of extermination against the Gaza Strip, and as Israel is expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, which the UN already considers to be illegal.