I'm outraged.

Yesterday, over 100 peaceful pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University were arrested by police clad in riot gear and carrying zip ties. They were arrested after they set up an encampment on Columbia's campus, which they dubbed the "Gaza Solidarity Encampment". They set up the encampment in an attempt to get Columbia University to divest from Israel. According to the University, the students were breaking the protest rules at the University- even though the University has a history of student protest that it's proud of. Columbia University's president, Nemat Shafik, has been trying to crack down on pro-Palestine student protests after she said that the University needs to do more to combat "antisemitism"- a.k.a., the rise in pro-Palestine protests. She has been attempting to suspend and fire anybody who dares to speak out about Palestine (she has said that certain slogans that pro-Palestine protesters use are antisemitic), and this recent mass arrest incident is just another way that the University's president is attempting to censor pro-Palestine speech. Columbia University has also previously suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, two pro-Palestine groups (I find it odd that Nemat Shafik keeps talking about combatting antisemitism on Columbia University's campus yet banned Jewish Voice for Peace from speaking up about Palestine... how suspicious). Calling for students to be arrested for exercising their right to protest, whether or not those students were breaking the "rules", is utterly abhorrent. How dare the University try to censor pro-Palestinian speech while Palestinians are being massacred every single day. Shame on Columbia University. Free Palestine, and ACAB! 

Edit: I'm coming back to this blog post a few days after originally writing it to say that I am extremely unhappy with how the mainstream media has been covering the Columbia University protests. After the 108 students were arrested, other students rebuilt the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and continued to protest for a free Palestine. In response to these protests, the University has temporarily moved their classes online. The University has been saying that they have moved the classes online due to antisemitic things that were said by some (heavy emphasis on some) of the pro-Palestinian protesters (I should make it clear that I condemn any antisemitic speech; it is never okay to be antisemitic, and the things that some of the protesters were saying were indeed antisemitic). The mainstream media has taken the fact that some of the protesters said antisemitic things and blown that out of proportion. They are using these recent protests to paint all pro-Palestinians as antisemitic, which is flat out wrong. I have also noticed that the mainstream media seems to be assuming that all 5,000 Jewish students who go to Columbia have been made to feel unsafe due to these protests, which is a broad generalization that does not account for the fact that there are Jewish students who go to Columbia who have said that they do not feel unsafe on the campus and are actually pro-Palestinian. The mainstream media is refusing to talk about the demands of the students (and if it does, it only mentions these demands briefly) and is instead choosing to focus on the actions of a few antisemitic pro-Palestinian protesters. All of this is incredibly infuriating, because the more time the media spends talking about how some protesters were antisemitic, the less time it spends talking about the genocide in Palestine, which is what the protesters are fighting against in the first place. Need I remind you that Palestinians are facing a purposeful starvation campaign? Need I remind you that 34,000 Palestinians are now dead? Need I remind you that more than 200 bodies were recently found in a mass grave near Nasser hospital in Gaza? Need I remind you that countless cultural, civilian, and historical sites have been reduced to rubble? Need I remind you that this genocide is not only having an impact on the Palestinian people, but the environment of Palestine as well? Where is the empathy? Where is the humanity?!

Edit 2: As of right now, pro-Palestinian college students across the U.S., inspired by what is going on at Columbia, are organizing their own protests and setting up their own encampments in support of Palestine. I am so very proud of them. This is HUGE. 

Read this: https://truthout.org/video/historic-gaza-protests-spread-to-campuses-across-the-country/