Encampment at McMaster Joins in Defending Gaza
Students at McMaster University have organized an encampment for Palestine and are calling on the university to divest from companies supporting the U.S./Israeli genocide. Several demonstrations have been held on campus supporting the resistance in Gaza, including in front of President Farrar's office. Students say that the encampments spreading across Canada and the U.S. will persist and students and faculty will pursue their demands for the end to complicity of academic institutions in apartheid, occupation, and genocide.
Students denounce the silence of the McMaster University administration and its failure to take a stand against scholasticide, in support of academics and students in Gaza whose universities have been obliterated. The statement from McMaster University Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (MUSPHR) calls on the administration to uphold their duty to oppose this wrecking of the education system in Gaza. It states, "As you face your moral duty and work to uphold the preservation of knowledge, you must do everything in your might to take a principled stance against this deliberate scholasticide." It adds, "Your silence, McMaster University, has rendered you a passive bystander to the genocide of the Palestinian people. By observing the ongoing scholasticide of a whole generation of students, educators, and academic infrastructure without condemnation, you have become complicit through your inaction."
The statement quotes from an open letter from Birzeit University in Palestine to international academic institutions, dated October 15, 2023:
"Birzeit University calls upon the international academic community, unions, and students to fulfill their intellectual and academic duty of seeking truth... and holding the perpetrators of genocide and those complicit with them accountable." The letter condemns Israeli universities for their role in contributing to the development of weaponry, military doctrines, and legal justification for the mass killing of Palestinians. It concludes, "Birzeit University urges the international community to immediately intervene to stop this barbaric aggression" and to defend "Palestinians from the dramatic escalation of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing throughout all of Palestine." Students, faculty and staff at McMaster, like many others, answered that call.
The statement also points out that when the struggle against South African apartheid was raging, McMaster also failed to take a stand against it. The statement from MUSPHR concludes by demanding that McMaster University condemn Israel's scholasticide and complete destruction of Gazan society and call for an immediate ceasefire. It also demands, "That McMaster University terminates any and all relationships that might be connected to 'plausibly genocidal acts' within the terms of the International Court of Justice ruling, including your recruiting and/or financial relationships with weapons manufacturers."
This article was published in
Volume 54 Number 32 - May 9, 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS54327.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca