Robert Azzi is a photographer and writer living in Exeter. His columns are archived at his robertazzitheother.substack.com.
Simply identify the growing list of American campuses (currently over 100, including Dartmouth and UNH on Wednesday) who oppose American cooperation and support for Israel’s ongoing famine, genocide, and ethnic cleansing. It would be easy to write. In the occupied territories, students and teachers are confronting each other to express solidarity with the Palestinian people.
That’s too easy.
Nonviolent conflicts, mostly centered around issues of cooperation and divestment, are spreading faster than I can list them, and I’m very proud of the growing political activity and engagement of America’s youth.
From Gaza to Ferguson: Resist!
I stood shoulder to shoulder with all of them, standing up to force and intimidation by police in riot gear, summoned by a despicable regime to violently attack encampments centered primarily on non-violent student movements and civil disobedience. to crush.
I stand firmly with the student movement in this country, proudly reflecting the tradition of the 1960s anti-war movement, the transformative protests against apartheid in the 1980s, and more recently supporting Black Lives Matter.
Last Saturday, Steve Tamari, a history professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, was among the protesters and observers arrested at a protest at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and asked WashU to withdraw from Boeing. I asked for
Tamari was arrested Saturday when police launched an on-campus arrest and was caught recording footage of students and activists at a pro-Palestinian encampment.
“For the past seven months, I have suffered as I watched the Palestinian people being slaughtered by American bombs and money,” Tamari said. I joined a student-led protest on Saturday to stop the genocide and support and protect students. ”
“I was crushed and crushed by the weight of several St. Louis County police officers, and I was dragged around campus by police,” Tamari said. As a result of police brutality, I am currently in hospital with multiple broken ribs and a broken hand,” he said, adding that one doctor told him he was “lucky to be alive.” . “If I had punctured my lung, I could have died.” I sat on the ground as they abused me. ”
As a child of the 60’s, I’m on a par with Steve Tamari.
Today, as someone who grew up in a land where Dr. Benjamin Spock and Yale University Chaplain William Sloan Coffin Jr. were persecuted for their opposition to the Vietnam War, I believe that institutional and governmental restrictions on protesters’ First Amendment Abuse and denial of rights is not unknown. to me.
As a child of the ’60s, I remember where I was in 1963 when I learned that President Kennedy had been assassinated.
We remember the assassinations of Medgar Evers (1963), Malcolm X (1965), and MLK (1968).
I believe that the movement against America’s involvement in the Vietnam War began in the mid-’60s, began at the University of California, Berkeley in 1965, and continued to challenge America for more than a decade, creating a broader political and cultural movement that defined America. , I remember growing into a social movement.
I remember the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four young black girls.
I remember Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman. Reminds me of Jonathan Daniels.
I remember arriving at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles minutes after Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968.
I remember my last political activity while still living in the United States was in Chicago’s Grant Park during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Soon after, I moved to Beirut to pursue a career in photojournalism in the Middle East.
I believe that years of student protests and activism on college campuses have only made America aware of the caste bias and systemic inequalities and injustices that divide our people by color, class, and ethnicity. I clearly witnessed that they played a central role in asking us to learn from them, rather than learning from them. both from the activity and how the state responded to that activity.
It is centered around challenging all Americans to strive to become a nation that truly evolves and sees all people as equals.
That is my history, and today, students are standing up on campus to demand a permanent ceasefire in Palestine, to demand a divestment from the military and Israeli interests, and to fight the war being waged against the Palestinian people. We remember it when we proudly witness demands for an end to America’s complicity in crime. People from the occupied territories of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank.
Students call for an end to the genocide, suffering, brutality, and erasure of the Palestinian people.
Without them, students of freedom and justice will be living in a world where most Americans will never recognize the Palestinian story.
Without these students, the U.S. government, and most Americans, would have no idea that the Palestinians have a centuries-old history.
Sadly, for many Americans, there is no Palestinian people, no Palestinian right to self-determination, and no Palestinian homeland.
Edward Said said, “Facts say nothing by themselves,” “but in order to absorb, preserve, and disseminate them, we need socially acceptable narratives.” .
The facts don’t exist, not because they don’t exist, but because Americans don’t demand them. They don’t appear in mainstream media, they don’t appear in white Christian pulpits, and when they do appear in academia they are often falsely accused of being anti-Semitic and unworthy of consideration.
While it is true that liberation and civil rights movements can be infiltrated by anarchists and anti-Semites, as was just witnessed at Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, such malicious infiltration is more likely to occur than a sovereign non-government organization. As a colonial state, it does not take away the rights of the Palestinian people.
There are no two sides to this issue.
One is the occupier and the other is occupied. They do not have equal agency.
The occupier (Israel) and the occupied (Palestinians) today are not equal in political representation or regional negotiations around the world, especially since the United States refuses to constrain Israel in its areas of competence. , the imbalance of power between the two is not what makes one nation superior to the other. It just means you have a free army.
Israel has used the power of the strong to impose its will on the occupied Palestinian people for generations. Despite numerous wars, targeted assassinations, administrative detentions, settlement construction, land confiscation, house seizures and demolitions, and a discriminatory legal system, Palestinians continue to stand.
Despite the power asymmetry, and despite the racism of some Israelis, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said on Monday, “There are no half-measures. [The Gazan cities of] Rafah, Deir Al Bala, Nusayrat – complete annihilation. The memory of Amalek will be wiped out from under heaven.” The Palestinians will persist until they are liberated.
“Palestinians are neither threatened nor persuaded to give up. That is a sign of great will and purpose,” Edward Said wrote. “From that point of view, all the collective measures and constant humiliation of Israel turned out to be ineffective. As one of their generals said, to surround the Palestinians and stop their resistance is to stop the resistance It’s like trying to drink the sea…”
This is true. Just as Palestine cannot win a war of liberation, Israel cannot permanently suppress Palestinian resistance. Moreover, in a world with so much violence, fear, and death, it is clear that neither racism nor hatred can continue to exist. Occupation or war of liberation?
In “Anatomy of Genocide”, “Report of the Special Rapporteur” [Francesca Albanese] A report to the Human Rights Council on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 (published in March 2024) reads in part:
“Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is an escalating step in a long-standing process of settler decolonization. For more than 70 years, this process has divided Palestinians as a group, demographically, culturally, economically and The ongoing Nakba, which seeks to politically suffocate, displace the Palestinians, and expropriate and control their land and resources, must be stopped and completely remedied. It is a duty to the victims of possible tragedies and to future generations of this land.”
This is a duty to all people.
