Members of Fossil Free London, Energy Embargo for Palestine and the Free West Papua Campaign gathered outside BP’s London HQ in St James’s Square last night ahead of BP’s AGM, taking place today.
BP: stop fuelling genocide
Campaigners held a banner reading ‘stop fuelling genocide and climate breakdown’, and chanting ‘Shut down BP’:
Since the wake of Israel’s genocide on Gaza, BP has come under fire for its supply of energy supplies to Israel. In September 2024, Energy Embargo for Palestine identified in a research report that 30% of Israel’s total energy supplies passes through the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which has gone on to fuel military operations in Gaza:
Last month it was additionally revealed that the gas licences awarded to a consortium of oil companies, including BP, off the coast of the Gaza strip have now been renewed. Following ICJ’s ruling on Israel; human rights experts have warned that countries and corporations supplying oil to Israeli armed forces may be complicit in war crimes and genocide.
The last financial year has also seen BP roll back on its climate pledge and investments, the intended resignation of their energy transition-conscious Chair, Helge Lunde, and an increase in their oil investments:
In February, BP announced they are increasing its investment in oil and gas to $10bn a year while cutting more than $5bn from its low-carbon investment plans. BP’s CEO Murray Auchincloss said the company has gone “too far, too fast” towards the energy transition, despite the Grantham Research Institute finding BP’s former transition plans didn’t constitute a “credible plan”.
This announcement comes in just as the UK is predicted to see the hottest April since records began.
Destroying the planet, killing people
Lila from Energy Embargo for Palestine said:
As BP abandons its renewable energy commitments and doubles down on oil and gas production, we know that this is not a departure from its usual operations. From the gas flares in Iraq to the ecocide in Palestine, BP’s operations is premised on the destruction of both people and planet.
Robin Wells, director of Fossil Free London, said of the company:
Its corporate greed kills millions through the fuelling of a genocide and through the climate breakdown that continues at pace.
The writing is on the wall. BP doubling down on oil and gas is just part of the standard functioning of Big Oil. This will never change. It’s clearer than ever that is no place for oily, greed-driven corporations in the world we need to build. Shut BP down.
Featured image and additional images via Andrea Domeniconi/Fossil Free London
One year ago, Columbia University became ground zero for the student-led Gaza solidarity encampment movement that spread to campuses across the country and around the world. Now, Columbia has become ground zero for the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on higher education, academic freedom, and the right to free speech and free assembly—all under the McCarthyist guise of rooting out “anti-semitism.” From Trump’s threats to cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia to the abduction of international students like Mahmoud Khalil by ICE agents, to the university’s firing and expulsion of Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers union president Grant Miner, “a tremendous chilling effect” has gripped Columbia’s campus community. In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with: Caitlin Liss, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University and a member of Student Workers of Columbia-UAW (SWC); and Allie Wong, a PhD student at the Columbia Journalism School and a SWC member who was arrested and beaten by police during the second raid on the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia on April 30, 2024.
Additional links/info:
Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2710 website
April 17: Day of Action to Defend Higher Ed website
Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are continuing our urgent coverage of the Trump Administration’s all out assault on our institutions of higher education and the people who live, learn and work there. Today we are going deeper into the heart of authoritarian darkness that has gripped colleges and universities across the country and we’re talking with two graduate student workers at Columbia University. Columbia has become ground zero for the administration’s gangster government style moves to hold billions of dollars of federal funding hostage in order to bend universities to Donald Trump’s will to reshape the curricula culture and research infrastructure of American higher ed as such and to squash our constitutionally protected rights to free speech and free assembly, all under the McCarthy’s guise of rooting out supposed antisemitism, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism of an opposition to the state of Israel.
The political ideology of Zionism and Israel’s US backed genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians just one year ago. Columbia University was also ground zero for the student-led Palestine solidarity protests and encampments that spread to campuses across the country and even around the world. It was exactly one year ago that the first Gaza solidarity encampment began at Columbia on April 17th, 2024 and that same month on more than one occasion, Columbia’s own president at the time minutia authorized the NYPD to descend on campus like an occupying force, beat an arrest protestors and dismantle the camps. Now fast forward to March of this year. On Friday, March 7th, the Trump administration announced that it was canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia claiming that the move was due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students. The very next day, March 8th Mahmud, Khalil was abducted by ICE agents at his New York City apartment building in front of his pregnant wife and disappeared to a Louisiana immigration jail.
Khalil, a Palestinian born legal resident with a green card had just completed his master’s program and was set to graduate in May. He had served as a key negotiator with the university administration and spokesperson for the student encampment last year. He’s not accused of breaking any laws during that time, but the Trump administration has weaponized a rarely used section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, invoking the Secretary of States power to deport non-citizens if they supposedly believed their presence in the country could negatively affect US foreign policy. Just days after Khalil’s abduction, the university also expelled grant minor president of the Student Workers of Columbia Union, a local of the United Auto Workers, and that was just one day before contract negotiations were set to open between the union and the university. On March 13th, I was expelled from Columbia University for participating in the protest movement against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, minor rights in an op-ed for the nation.
I was not the only one. He continues, 22 students, all of whom like me had been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, were either expelled, suspended for years or had their hard earned degrees revoked on the same day all for allegedly occupying a building that has been occupied at least four times throughout Columbia’s history. And then there’s Y Sao Chung, a 21-year-old undergraduate and legal permanent resident who is suing the government after ICE moved to deport her, following her arrest on March 5th while protesting Columbia’s disciplinary actions against student protestors. I mean, this is just a small, terrifying snapshot of the broader Orwellian nightmare that has become all too real, all too quickly at Columbia University and it is increasingly becoming reality around the country and things got even darker last week with the latest development in Mahmood Khalil’s case as the American Civil Liberties Union stated on Friday in a decision that appeared to be pre-written, an immigration judge ruled immediately after a hearing today that Mahmud Khalil is removable under US immigration law. This comes less than 48 hours after the US government handed over the evidence they have on Mr. Khalil, which included nothing more than a letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that made clear Mr. Khalil had not committed a crime and was being targeted solely based on his speech. He’s not yet scheduled for deportation.
Listen, this isn’t just a redux of McCarthyism and the red scare. It has elements of that absolutely, but it is also monstrously terrifyingly new. I don’t know how far down this road we’re going to go. All I know is that whatever comes next will depend on what people of conscience do now or what they don’t do. Will other universities cave and capitulate to Trump as quickly as Columbia has? Will we see instead faculty, staff, students, grad students, parents, community members and others coming together on campuses across the country to fight this or will fear submission silence and self-censorship went out? What is it even like to be living, working and studying at Columbia University right now? Well, today you’ll hear all about that firsthand from our two guests. With all of this going on, I got to speak with Caitlin Liss, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University and a member of Student workers of Columbia, and I also spoke with Alie Wong, a PhD student at the Columbia Journalism School, and a student workers of Columbia member who was arrested and beaten by police during the second raid on the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia on April 30th, 2024.
Here’s my conversation with Caitlin and Allie recorded on Saturday April 12th. Well, Caitlin, Allie, thank you both so much for joining us today on the show. I really appreciate it, especially in the midst of everything going on right now. And I basically wanted to start there and ask if you could tell us from your own firsthand experience as student workers at Columbia, like what is the mood on campus and in your life right now, especially in light of the latest ruling on Mahmud Khalil’s case?
Caitlin Liss:
Okay. Yeah, so thank you for having us. I’m happy to be here. The mood on campus has been, you probably won’t be surprised to hear pretty bleak, pretty bad. We found out yesterday that Mahmood Kalila is not going to be released from jail in Louisiana. I think a lot of us were hoping that this ruling that was coming up was going to be in his favor and he would be released and be back home in time to be there for the birth of his baby. And it didn’t happen. And I think it’s just another horrible thing that has happened in a month, two months of just unrelenting bad news on campus. So stuff is feeling pretty bad. People are afraid, especially international students are afraid to leave their house. They’re afraid to speak up in class. I hear from people who are afraid to go to a union meeting and even those of us who are citizens feel afraid as well.
I mean, I wake up every day and I look at my phone to see if I’ve gotten a text message telling me that one of my friends has been abducted. It’s really scary. And on top of the sort of personal relationships with our friends and comrades who are at risk, there’s the sense that also our careers are industry are at risk. So, and many other members of student workers of Columbia have spent many years dedicated to getting a PhD and being in academia and it’s increasingly starting to feel like academia might not exist for that much longer. So it’s feeling pretty bleak.
Allie Wong:
Yeah, I would definitely agree. And again, thank you so much Max for having us here. It’s a real pleasure to be able to share our stories and have a platform to do that. Yeah, I would agree. I think that there is a tremendous chilling effect that’s sunk in across the campus. And on one hand it’s not terribly surprising considering that’s the strategy of the Trump administration on the other. It is really a defeating feeling to see the momentum that we had last year, the ways that we were not only telling the story but telling it across the world that all eyes were on Columbia and we had this really incredible momentum. And so to see not just that lack of momentum, but the actual fear that has saturated the entire campus that has indiscriminately permeated people’s attitudes, whether you’re an American citizen or not, whether you’re light-skinned or not, has been something that’s been incredibly harrowing.
I know that after Mahmood, I at least had the anticipation of quite a bit of activity, but between that ranjani the other students and Columbia’s capitulation, it actually has gone the opposite way in that while I expected there to be tons of masks on campus after Columbia agreed to have a total mask ban, there was no one when I expected to see different vigils or protests or the breakdown of silos that have emerged across the campus of different groups, whether they’re student groups or faculty groups, I’m just hoping to see some kind of solidarity there. It hasn’t, and I think it’s largely because of the chilling effect because that this is the strategy of the Trump administration and unfortunately it’s such a dire situation that I think it’s really squashed a lot of the fervor and a lot of the fearlessness that many of us had prior to this moment.
Maximillian Alvarez:
It feels like a ice pick to the heart to hear that, especially knowing not just what we saw on campuses across the country just a year ago, but also the long tradition of campus protests and universities and higher education being a place of free speech, free thought free debate and the right to protest and lead with a moral consciousness like movements that help direct the whole of society to see that this is what is happening here now in front of all of us. And since I have so much more, I want to ask about the past month for you both on campus, but while we’re on that subject that Allie just brought up about the expectation right now, which I have heard echoed a lot of places online and offline of why aren’t there mass protests across higher ed in every state in the country right now, you would think that the generation of the sixties would do just that if Nixon had tried such a thing. And a lot of folks have been asking us why aren’t we seeing that right now? And so I wanted to ask if y’all had any thoughts on that and also if that would in your mind change things like if you saw other campuses that weren’t being targeted as intently as Columbia is, if you saw students and faculty and others protesting on behalf of what’s happening to you, would that change the mood on campus you think?
Caitlin Liss:
I mean that there’s a few things going on. Part of it is, like Allie said, the chilling effect of what’s been happening is making a really large percentage of our members and people in our community afraid to publicly take action. International student workers make up a really big percentage of our membership, and a lot of those people are afraid to even sign their name to a petition. In my departments. We sent a joint letter to the departments about what was going on, and a bunch of students didn’t want their names appearing on this letter that was just being sent the chair of the departments. So the chilling effect is real and very strong, and I think that that’s preventing a lot of people from showing up in ways that they might have done otherwise. I think that another part of it is just the kind of unrelenting nature of what’s been happening.
It has been one horrible thing after another and trying to react to everything as it comes in is difficult, but I don’t think it’s the case that we’re not doing anything. We are doing quite a bit and really trying through many different avenues to use our power as a union to fight back against what’s happening. We are talking with other unions on campus, we talk to other higher ed unions across the country, and so I think that there is quite a lot going on, but it does sometimes feel like we can’t keep up with the pace of the things that are happening just because they are happening so quickly and accumulating so fast.
Allie Wong:
Yeah, I mean I would definitely agree. I think that it’s the fire hose strategy, which has proven to be effective not just on Columbia but across the nation with the dismantling of the federal government attack on institutions, the arts, the legal processes and legal entities. And so I think that again, that that’s part of the strategy is to just overwhelm people with the number of issues that would require attention. And I think that’s happening on Columbia’s campus as well. If we take even divestment as an example where it was a pretty straightforward ask last year, but now we’re seeing an issue on campus where it’s no longer about Palestine, Israel divestment, it’s about immigration reform and law enforcement. It’s about the American dream class consciousness. So many of these different things that are happening not just to the student body, but to faculty and the administration.
And so I think that in terms of trying to galvanize people, it’s a really difficult ask when you have so many different things that are coming apart at the seams. And that’s not to say it’s an insurmountable task. As Caitlin mentioned, we are moving forward, we are putting infrastructure in place and asks in place, but I think it’s difficult to mobilize people around so many different issues when everyone already feels not only powerless but cynical about the ability to change things when again, that momentum that we had last year has waned and the issues have broadened.
Caitlin Liss:
Just in terms of your question about support or solidarity from other campuses, I think that one of the things that has been most dispiriting about being at Columbia right now is that it’s clear that Columbia is essentially a test case for the Trump administration. We were the first school to be and are still in many ways kind of the center of attention, but it’s not just us, but it feels like the way that Columbia is reacting is kind of setting the tone for what other universities and colleges can do across the country. And what Columbia is doing is folding, so they are setting an example that is just rolling over and giving up in terms of what other colleges can do. I think we’re seeing other universities are reacting to these kinds of attacks in ways that are much better than Columbia has done. We just saw that Tufts, I think filed some legal documents in support of Ru Mesa Ozturk because she is a student there.
Columbia has done no such thing for Ranjani, for Uno, for Mahmood. They haven’t even mentioned them. And so we can see other universities are reacting in ways that are better. And I think that that gives us hope and not only gives us hope, but it gives us also something to point to when people at Columbia say, well, Columbia can’t do things any differently. It’s like, well, clearly it can because these other universities are doing something. Columbia doesn’t have to be doing this. It is making a choice to completely give in to everything that Trump is demanding.
Allie Wong:
And I would also add to that point, and going back to your question about Mahmood and sort of how either us individually or collectively are feeling about that, to Caitlin’s point, I think there’s so much that’s symbolic about Columbia, whether it has to do with Trump’s personal pettiness or the fact that it was kind of the epicenter of the encampments list last year. I think what happened with Mahmood is incredibly symbolic. If you look at particularly him and Ranjani, the first two that were targeted by the university, so much of their situations are almost comical in how they planned the ambiguity of policy and antisemitism where you look at Mahmud and he, it’s almost funny that he was the person who was targeted because he’s an incredibly calm, gentle person. He provided a sense of peace during the chaos of last year. He’s unequivocally condemned, Hamas, very publicly condemned terrorism, condemned antisemitism.
So if you were looking for someone who would be a great example, he’s not really one considering they don’t have any evidence on him. And the same thing for Ranjani who literally wasn’t even in the country when October 7th happened in that entire year, had never participated in the protests at most, had kind of engaged with social media by liking things, but two really good examples of people who don’t actually quite fit the bill in terms of trying to root out antisemitism. But in my mind it’s really strategic because it really communicates that nobody is safe. Whether you’ve participated in protests or not, you’re not safe, whether you’ve condemned antisemitism or not, you’re not safe. And I think that plays into the symbolic nature of Columbia as well, where Trump is trying to make an example out of Columbia and out of Columbia students. And we see that very clearly in the ruling yesterday with Mahmud.
Again, that’s not to say that it’s not an insurmountable thing, but it’s disappointing and it’s frankly embarrassing to be a part of an institution that brags about its long history of protests, its long history of social change through student movements. When you look at 1968 and Columbia called the NYPD on students arrested 700 students, and yet it kind of enshrines that moment in history as a place of pride, and I see that happening right now as well where 20, 30, 50 years from now, we’ll be looking at this moment and Columbia will be proud of it when really they’re the perpetrators of violence and hatred and bigotry and kind of turning the gun on their own students. So yeah, it’s a really precarious time to be a Columbia student and to be advocating for ourselves and our friends, our brothers and sisters who are experiencing this kind of oppression and persecution from our own country.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Allie, Caitlin, I want to ask if we could again take that step back to the beginning of March where things were this terrifying new reality was really ramping up with the Trump administration’s freezing and threatening of completely withholding $400 million in federal funds and grants to Columbia just one day before Mahmood Khalil was abducted by ice agents and disappeared to a jail in Louisiana thousands of miles away. So from that point to now, I wanted to ask, as self-identified student workers at Columbia University, how have you and others been feeling throughout all of this as it’s been unfolding and trying to get through your day-to-day work? What does that even look like? Teaching and researching under these terrifying circumstances?
Allie Wong:
For me, it has been incredibly scary. As you mentioned, I was someone who was arrested and beaten last year after the second Gaza solidarity encampment raid and have spoken quite publicly about it. I authored a number of pieces around that time and since then and have been pretty open about my involvement being okay serving as a lightning rod for a lot of that PR stuff. And so for me, coming into this iteration of students battles with the university, it’s been really scary to kind see how many of the students that I was arrested with, many of my friends and colleagues are now either being targeted because of their involvement or living in the fear of being targeted because there is an opacity around what those policies are and how they’re being enforced and implemented. So it really does feel quite McCarthys in the sense that you don’t really know what the dangers are, but you know that they’re there, you’re looking over your shoulder all the time.
I don’t leave my house without wearing a mask just because through this whole process, many students have been doxed. Both Caitlin and myself have been doxed quite heavily through Canary mission and other groups online, and many folks have experienced offline behavior that has been threatening or scary to their own physical emotional security. And so that’s been a big piece for me is just being aware of my surroundings, being mindful of when I leave the house. In many respects, it does feel like I am growing in paranoia, but at the same time I consider it a moral obligation to be on the front lines as a light-skinned US citizen to be serving as a literal and figurative shield for my international brothers and sisters. And so it’s an interesting place as particularly a US citizen to say, what is my responsibility to the people around me?
What’s my responsibility to myself and keeping myself and my home safe? What’s my responsibility for sticking up for those who are targeted as someone who has the privilege of being able to be a citizen? And so I think it’s kind of a confusing time for those of us on the ground wanting to do more, wanting to help, wanting to offer our assistance with the privileges that we have and everyone’s level of comfort is different, and so my expectation is not that other people would take the kinds of risks I’m taking, but everyone has a part to play and whether that’s a visual part or a non-visual part, being in the public, it doesn’t really matter. We all have a part to play. And so given what we talked about just about the strategy of the Trump administration and the objectives to make us fearful and make us not speak out, I think it’s more important now than ever for those of us who are able to have the covering of US citizenship, to be doing everything in our power with the resources we’ve been given to take those risks because it’s much more important now in this administration than it’s ever been.
Caitlin Liss:
And I think on top of the stuff allie’s talking about, we do still have to continue doing our jobs. So for me, that is teaching. I’m teaching a class this semester and that has been very challenging to do, having to continue going in and talking about the subject matter, which is stuff that is very interesting to me personally and that I’m very excited to be teaching about in the classroom, but at the same time, there’s so much going on campus, it just feels impossible to be turning our attention to Ana and I hear from my students are scared, so part of my job has become having to help my students through that. I have heard lots of people who are trying to move their classes off campus because students don’t want to be on campus right now.
ICE is crawling all over campus. The NYPD is all over the place. I don’t know if you saw this, but Columbia has agreed to hire these 36 quote peace officers who are going to be on campus and have arresting power. So now essentially we have cops on campus full time and then on top of all of that, you have to wait in these horrible security lines to even get onto campus so the environment on campus doesn’t feel safe, so my students don’t feel safe. I don’t think anyone’s students feel safe right now. My colleagues who are international students don’t feel safe. I had a friend ask me what to do because she was TAing for a class and she wasn’t allowed to move it off campus or onto Zoom, and she said, I don’t feel safe on campus because I’m an international student and what am I going to do if ice comes to the door?
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in that situation. And so the students are scared, my colleagues are scared. I’ve even heard from a lot of professors who are feeling like they have to watch their words in the classroom because they don’t want to end up on Canary mission for having said something. So that’s quite difficult. Teaching in this environment is very difficult and I think that the students are having a really hard time. And then on top of that, I am in the sixth year of my PhD, so I’m supposed to be writing a dissertation right now, and that is also quite difficult to be keeping up with my research, which is supposed to be a big part of the PhD is producing research and it’s really hard to do right now because it feels like we have, my friends and my colleagues are at risk right now, so that’s quite difficult to maintain your attention in all those different places.
Allie Wong:
Just one more piece to add because I know that we’ve been pretty negative and it is a pretty negative situation, so I don’t want to silver line things. That being said, I do feel as though it’s been really beautiful to see people step up and really beautiful to see this kind of symbiotic relationship happening between US students and international students. I’m at the journalism school, which is overwhelmingly international, and I was really discouraged when there was a report that came out from the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about a closed town hall that we had where our dean, Jelani Cobb more or less said to students, we can’t protect you as much as I would love to be able to say here are the processes and protocols and the ways to keep yourself safe and the ways that we’re here to support you, but he just said we can’t.
And he got a lot of flack for that because that’s a pretty horrible thing for a dean to say. But I actually really appreciated it because it was the most honest and direct thing he could have said to students when the university itself was just sending us barrages of emails with these empty platitudes about values and a 270 year history of freethinking and all this nonsense. That being said, I think that it was a really difficult story to read, but at the same time it’s been really beautiful to see community gather around and clinging together when there are unknowns, people taking notes for each other when students don’t feel comfortable going to campus, students starting to host off campus happy hour groups and sit-ins together and things of that nature that have been really, again, amazing to see happen under such terrible circumstances and people just wanting to help each other out in the ways that they can.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Caitlyn, Allie, you were just giving us a pretty harrowing view of your day-to-day reality there as student workers of Columbia PhD working on your PhDs and dealing with all of this Orwellian madness that we’ve been talking about today. When I was listening to you both, I was hearing so many kind of resonances from my own experience, just one sort of decade back, right? I mean, because I remember being a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan during the first Trump administration and co-founding for full disclosure, I was a member of the grad union there. I was a co-founder of the campus anti-fascist network. I was doing a lot of public writing. I started this podcast in that sort of era, and there were so many things that y’all were talking about that sounded similar from the fear of websites like Canary Mission, putting people’s names out there and encouraging them to be doxed and disciplined and even deported.
That resonated with me because it just ate nine years ago. That was groups like Turning Point USA, they were the ones trying to film professors in class and then send it to Breitbart and hopefully get it into the Fox News outrage cycle. And I experienced some of that. But what I’m hearing also is just that the things we were dealing with during the first Trump administration are not what y’all are dealing with now. There is first and foremost a fully, the state is now part of it. The state is now sort of leading that. It’s not just the sort of far right groups and people online and that kind of thing, but also it feels like the mechanisms of surveillance and punishment are entirely different as well. I wanted to ask if y’all could speak a little more to that side of things. It’s not just the university administration that you’re contending with, you’re contending with a lot of different forces here that are converging on you and your rights at this very moment.
Caitlin Liss:
Yeah, I mean I think the one thing that has been coming up a lot for us, we’re used to fighting Columbia, the institution for our rights in the workplace for fair pay. And Columbia has always been a very stubborn adversary, very difficult to get anything out of them. Our first contract fight lasted for years, and now we’re looking at not just Columbia as someone to be fighting with, but at the federal government as a whole. And it’s quite scary. I think we talked about this a little bit, about international students being afraid to participate in protests, being afraid to go to union meetings. We’re hearing a lot of fear from people who aren’t citizens about to what extent participating in the union is safe for them right now. And on the one hand you want to say participating in a union is a protected activity.
There’s nothing illegal about it. You can’t get in trouble. In fact, it’s illegal to retaliate against you for being in a union. But on the other hand, it doesn’t necessarily feel like the law is being that protective right now. So it’s a very scary place to be in. And I think that from our point of view, the main tool we have in this moment is just our solidarity with one another and labor power as a union because the federal governments does not seem that interested in protecting our rights as a union. And so we have to rely on each other in order to fight for what we need and what will make our workplace safe.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and I was wondering, Allie, if I could also toss it to you there, because this makes me think of something you said earlier about how the conditions at Columbia, the structure of Columbia, how Columbia’s run, have sort of made it vulnerable to what’s happening now or the ways that Columbia talks about itself versus what Columbia actually is, are quite stark here. And connecting that to what Caitlin just said, I think it should also be understood as someone who has covered grad student campaigns, contract campaigns at Columbia and elsewhere, that when these sorts of strikes are happening when graduate student workers are taking action against the administration, the first ones that are threatened by the administration with punitive measures including potentially the revocation of their visas are international students. They have always been the most vulnerable members of grad student unions that administrations have actually used as leverage to compel unions to bend to their demand. So I make that point speaking only for myself here as a journalist who has observed this in many other times, that this precedent of going after international students in the way the Trump administration is like didn’t just come out of nowhere.
Allie Wong:
Exactly. Yeah. So I mean I think if you even look at how Trump campaigned, he really doubled down on immigration policy. I mean, it’s the most obvious statement I can say, but the high hyperbole, the hatred, the racism, you see that as a direct map onto what’s happening right now. And I think that’s part of what maybe isn’t unique about Columbia, but as we’re starting to see other universities take a stand, Caitlin mentioned Tufts. I know Princeton also recently kind said that they would not capitulate. So there is precedent for something different from how Columbia has behaved, and I think you see them just playing exactly into Trump’s hands folding to his kind of proxy policy of wanting to make Colombian example. And it’s a really disappointing thing from a university that prides itself on its liberal values, prides itself on its diversity on protecting students.
When you actually see quite the opposite, not only is Columbia not just doing anything, it’s actively participating in what’s happening on campus, the fact that they have yet to even name the students who have very publicly been abducted or chased out of the country because of their complicity, the fact that they will send emails or make these statements about values, but actually not tell us anything that’s going to be helpful, like how policies will be implemented when they’re going to be implemented, what these ice agents look like, things of that nature that could be done to protect students. And also obviously not negotiating in good faith. The fact that Grant was expelled and fired the day before we had a collective bargaining meeting right before we were about to talk about protections for international students, just communicates that the university is not operating in good faith, they’re not interested in the wellbeing of their students or doing anything within their power, which is quite a tremendous power to say to the Trump administration, our students come first. Our students are an entity of us and we’re going to do whatever we can in our power to block you from demonizing and targeting international students who, as you said, are the most vulnerable people on our campus, but also those who bring so much diversity and brilliance and life to our university and our country.
Caitlin Liss:
And I think on the subject of international students, you, you’re right that they have always been in a more precarious position in higher ed unions. But on the other hand, I think that that shows us what power we do have as a union. I’m thinking. So we’ve been talking a lot about to what extent it’s safe for international workers to stay involved in the union, and our contract is expiring in June, which is why we’re having these bargaining sessions and we’re talking about going on strike next fall potentially. And there’s a lot of questions about to what extent can international students participate now because who knows what kind of protections they’re going to have? And I’ve been thinking about the last time we went on strike, it was a 10 week strike and we were striking through the end of the semester. It was the fall semester and we were still on strike when the semester ended.
And Columbia said that if we didn’t come off strike that they weren’t going to rehire the workers who were striking for the next semester. So anyone who was on strike wouldn’t get hired for a position in the spring semester and for international students that was going to affect their visa status. So it was very scary for them. And we of course said, that’s illegal. You can, that’s retaliation for us for going on strike. You can’t do that. And they said, it’s not illegal because we’re just not rehiring you. And it was this real moment of risk even though we felt much more confident in the legal protection because it felt like they could still do it and our recourse would have to be going to court and winning the case that this was illegal. So it was still very scary for international students, but we voted together to stay on strike and we held the line and Columbia did not in fact want to fire all of us who were on strike, and we won a contract anyway, even though there was this scary moment for international students even back then. And I have been telling people this story when we are thinking about protections for international students now, because I think that the moral of the story is that even under a situation where there’s a lot more legal security and legal protection, it’s still scary. And the way that you get over it being scary is by trusting that everyone coming together and standing together is what’s going to win and rather than whatever the legal protection might be.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Caitlin and Allie, I have so many more thoughts and questions, but I know that we only have about 10 minutes left here and I want to use the time that we have left with y’all to sort of tug on the thread that you were just pulling there. Caitlin, looking at this through the union’s perspective or through a labor perspective, can you frame these attacks on higher ed and the people who live, learn and work there through a labor and working workers’ rights perspective, and talk about what your message is to other union members and other people who listen to this show who are working people, union and non-union, why this is important, why they need to care and what people can do about it.
Caitlin Liss:
It’s very clear why it’s important and why other workers should care. The funding cuts to Columbia University and other universities really threaten not just the university, but the whole ecosystem of research. So these are people’s careers that are at risk and careers that not only they have an interest in having, but careers that benefit everyone in our society, people who do public health research, people who do medical research, people who do research about climate change. These are really important jobs that the opportunities to pursue them are vanishing. And so that obviously is important. And then when we’re looking at the attacks on international students, if m kil can be abducted for speaking out in support of Palestine and against the genocide and Gaza, then none of us are safe. No worker is safe if the governments can just abduct you and deport you for something like that.
On the one hand, even people who aren’t citizens are protected by the first amendments, but also it’s not clear that that’s where they’re going to stop. I think that this is a moment that we should all take very seriously. I mean, it’s very serious for the future of higher education as a whole. I feel like we are in sort of an existential fight here. And at the moment, Columbia is just completely welcoming this fascist takeover with open arms and it threatens higher ed as an institution. What kind of university is this? If the Middle Eastern studies department is being controlled by some outside force who says what they can and can’t teach, and now Trump is threatening to put all of Columbia under some consent decree, so we’re going to have to be beholden to whatever the Trump administration says we’re allowed to do on campus. So it is a major threat to higher education, but it’s also a threat I think, in a much larger sense to workers all over the country because it is sending the message that none of us are safe. No one is safe to express ourselves. We can’t expect to be safe in the workplace. And it’s really important that as a labor union that we take a stand here because it is not just destroying our workplaces, but sort of it’s threatening everyone’s workplace.
Allie Wong:
Exactly. That’s exactly what I was thinking too. I know it’s such an overused word at this point, but I think a huge aspect of this has to do with precedent and how, as we were mentioning, Columbia is so symbolic for a lot of reasons, including the fact that all eyes are on Columbia. And so when Columbia sets a precedent for what can and cannot not be done by University of Administration in caving to the federal government, I think that sets a precedent for not just academic institutions, but institutions writ large and the workers that work in those institutions. Because what happens here is happening across the federal government and will happen to institutions everywhere. And so I think it’s really critical that we bake trust back into our systems, both trust in administrations by having them prove that they do have our backs and they do care about student workers, but also that they trust student workers.
They trust us to do the really important research that keeps the heartbeat of this university alive. And I think that it’s going to crumble not just Columbia, but other academic institutions if really critical research gets defunded. Research that doesn’t just affect right now, but affects our country in perpetuity, in the kinds of opportunities that will be presented later in the future, the kinds of research that will be instrumental in making our society healthier and more equitable place in the future. And so this isn’t just a moment in time, but it’s one that absolutely will ripple out into history.
Caitlin Liss:
And we happen right now to be sort of fortunately bargaining a new contract as we speak. So like I said before, our contract is expiring in June. And so for us, obviously these kinds of issues are the top of mind when we’re thinking about what we can get in the contract. So in what way is this contract that we’re bargaining for going to be able to help us? So we’re fighting for Columbia to restore the funding cuts we’re fighting for them to instate a sanctuary campus and to reinstate grant minor, our president who was expelled, and Ronan who was enrolled, and everyone else who has been expelled or experienced sanctions because of their protests for Palestine. And so in a lot of ways, I think that the contract fight is a big part of what we’re concentrating on right now. But there’s also, there’s many unions on Columbia’s campus.
There’s the postdoc union, UAW 4,100, there’s the support staff and the Barnard contingent faculty who are UAW 2110. There’s building service employees, I think they’re 32 BJ and the maintenance staff is TW. So there’s many unions on campus. And I think about this a lot because I think what we’re seeing is we haven’t mentioned the trustees yet, I don’t think, but recently our interim president, Katrina Armstrong stepped down and was replaced by an acting president, was the former co-chair of the board of trustees Claire Shipman. And in many ways, I think what we’ve been seeing happening at Columbia is the result of the board of trustees not caving, but welcoming the things that Trump is demanding. I think that they’re complicit in this, but the board of trustees is like 21 people. There’s not very many of them. And there’s thousands of us at Columbia who actually are the people who make the university work, the students, the faculty, the staff, thousands of people in unions, thousands of non-unionized students and workers on campus as well.
And we outnumber the trustees by such a huge amount. And I think that thinking about the power we have when we all come together as the thousands of people who do the actual work of the university as opposed to these 21 people who are making decisions for us without consulting us that we don’t want, and that’s the way we have to think about reclaiming the university. I think we have to try and take back the power as workers, as students, as faculty from the board of trustees and start thinking about how we can make decisions that are in our interests.
Allie Wong:
One more thing that I wanted to call out, I’m not sure where this fits in. I think Caitlin talking about the board of trustees made me think of it is just the fact that I think that another big issue is the fact that there’s this very amorphous idea of antisemitism that all of this is being done under the banner of, and I think that it’s incredibly problematic because first of all, what is antisemitism? It’s this catchall phrase that is used to weaponize against dissent. And I think that when you look at the track record of these now three presidents that we’ve had in the past year, each of them has condemned antisemitism but has not condemned other forms of racism, including an especially Islamophobia that has permeated our campus. And because everything is done under the banner of antisemitism and you have folks like Claire Shipman who have been aligned with Zionist organizations, it also erodes the trust in of the student body, but then especially student workers, many of whom are Jewish and many of whom are having their research be threatened under the banner of antisemitism being done in their name. And yet it’s the thing that is stunting their ability to thrive at this university. And so I think that as we talk about the administration and board of trustees, just calling out the hypocrisy there of how they are behaving on campus, the ways that they’re capitulating and doing it under the guise of protecting Jewish students, but in the process of actually made Jewish students and faculty a target by not only withholding their funding but also saying that this is all to protect Jewish students but have created a more threatening environment than existed before.
Caitlin Liss:
Yeah, I mean, as a Jewish student personally, I’m about to go to my family’s Seder to talk about celebrating liberation from oppression while our friends and colleagues are sitting in jail. It’s quite depressing and quite horrific to see people saying that they’re doing this to protect Jews when it’s so clearly not the case.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I wanted to ask in just this final two minutes that we got here, I want to bring it back down to that level to again remind folks listening that you both are student workers, you are working people just like everyone else that we talk to on this show. And I as a former graduate student worker can’t help but identify with the situation that y’all are in. But it makes me think about the conversations I had with my family when I was on the job market and I was trying to go from being a PhD student to a faculty member somewhere and hearing that maybe my political activism or my public writing would be like a mark against me in my quest to get that career that I had worked so many years for and just having that in the back of my mind. But that still seems so far away and so minuscule in comparison to what y’all are dealing with. And I just wanted to ask as act scholars, as people working on your careers as well, how are you talking to your families about this and what future in or outside of academia do you feel is still open to you and people, graduate student workers like yourselves in today’s higher ed?
Caitlin Liss:
I mean the job market for history, PhDs has been quite bad for a long time even before this. So I mean, when I started the PhD program, I think I knew that I might not get a job in academia. And it’s sad because I really love it. I love teaching especially, but at the end of the day, I don’t feel like it’s a choice to stop speaking up about what’s happening, to stop condemning what’s happening in Gaza, to stop condemning the fascist takeover of our government and the attacks on our colleagues. It’s just I can’t not say something about it. I can’t do nothing, and if it means I can’t get a job after this, that will be very sad. But I don’t think that that is a choice that I can or should make to do nothing or say nothing so that I can try and preserve my career if I have to. I’ll get another kind of job.
Allie Wong:
Yeah, I completely agree. How dare I try to protect some nice job that I could potentially have in the future when there are friends and students on campus who are running for their lives. It just is not something that’s even comparable. And so I just feel like it’s an argument a lot of folks have made that if in the future there’s a job that decides not to hire me based off of my advocacy, I don’t want that job. I want a job based off of my skills and qualifications and experience, not my opinions about a genocide that’s happening halfway across the world, that any person should feel strongly against the slaughtering of tens of thousands of children and innocent folks. If that’s an inhibitor of a potential job, then that’s not the kind of environment I want to work in anyway. And that’s a really privileged position to have. I recognize that. But I think it’s incredibly crucial to be able to couch that issue in the broader perspective of not just this horrific genocide that’s happening, but also the future of our democracy and how critical it is to be someone who is willing to take a risk for the future of this country and the future of our basic civil liberties and freedoms.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Alright, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Caitlin Liss and Allie Wong of Student Workers of Columbia, and I want to thank you for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you Allall back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. And we need to hear those voices now more than ever. Sign up for the real new newsletter so you never miss a story. And help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other, solidarity forever.
This war would not have been possible without the unlimited U.S. support for the occupation, whether through military funding, political and diplomatic backing, or arms deals that kill our children, women, and elderly every day. The U.S. administration under Trump has continued what the previous administration started, becoming a direct accomplice in genocide, ignoring the voices of millions inside and outside OF the United States, and an overwhelming majority of the nation, who reject this brutal aggression.
Therefore, we call on you, the American labor unions, to translate your solidarity into effective actions that go beyond statements and speeches and create real pressure to stop this dirty war.
On April 14, Palestinian Columbia University student and leading pro-Palestine activist Mohsen Mahdawi was detained by immigration agents as he attended an interview as part of his application for US citizenship in Colchester, Vermont.
Mahdawi is the second Palestinian Columbia University student activist to be kidnapped by immigration authorities, after Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest which has earned international attention as demands for his release grow.
With Mahdawi’s detention, pro-Palestine groups have renewed calls to end Trump’s attacks on students and free speech.
Two people have been arrested after occupying the roof of GRiD Defence Systems, Elbit’s military hardware supplier, on Wednesday 16 April. The activists were, of course, from Palestine Action – and the protest was over the company’s complicity with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
This morning, two activists from Palestine Action successfully evaded security, to occupy the roof of ‘GRiD Defence Systems’ at Holtspur Lane, High Wycombe.
The military hardware firm is a key supplier to Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest weapons maker, manufacturing a range of military computers and processors, as well as other military electronics.
The Maldives announced on 15 April an immediate ban on the entry of Israelis into the island nation in response to Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
President Mohamed Muizzu ratified the legislation on Tuesday after it was approved by parliament.
“The ratification reflects the government’s firm stance in response to the continuing atrocities and ongoing acts of genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinian people,” the president’s office said in a statement.
“The Maldives reaffirms its resolute solidarity with the Palestinian cause.”
The Maldives, a small Islamic republic of 1,192 strategically located coral islets in the Indian Ocean, is a popular luxury tourist destination known for its beaches.
The United Arab Emirates and Israel had hoped to extract strategic victories in Sudan, taking advantage of the fall of the nation’s former dictator and the descent into civil war. But newly released satellite images suggest that Tehran’s renewed ties with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) may be unraveling those ambitions.
Satellite images, initially reported by Russian state broadcaster RT, reveal an extensive underground tunnel complex under Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) control, allegedly constructed with assistance from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG), a nongovernmental grassroots mass movement comprised of more than 2,000 taxpayers who have been protesting their congressional representatives’ votes to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza, filed an unprecedented report with the UN Human Rights Council on April 7.
“We have gone through all the channels open to us in our effort to stop U.S. officials from using our tax dollars to fund genocide. We have called and met with these officials, we have peacefully protested, and we have taken them to federal court. To date, none of this has stopped them,” Seth Donnelly, lead taxpayer plaintiff in the federal lawsuit, told Truthout.
Israel’s defense minister has pledged a permanent military occupation of the “buffer zone” that constitutes over half of Gaza and an indefinite continuation of the total aid blockade, vowing an escalation of Israel’s plans for the genocide as Israeli officials dubiously accuse Hamas of rejecting ceasefire deals. In a statement on Wednesday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the Israeli…
Two people have been arrested after occupying the roof of GRiD Defence Systems, Elbit’s military hardware supplier, on Wednesday 16 April. The activists were, of course, from Palestine Action – and the protest was over the company’s complicity with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Palestine Action: going off GRiD
This morning, two activists from Palestine Action successfully evaded security, to occupy the roof of ‘GRiD Defence Systems’ at Holtspur Lane, High Wycombe:
The military hardware firm is a key supplier to Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest weapons maker, manufacturing a range of military computers and processors, as well as other military electronics:
The two actionists took to the roof – before cops delivered a heavy-handed response as always:
In addition to supplying Elbit, GRiD provide key components to other arms manufacturers who have been up to their necks in the Gaza Genocide, including Lockheed Martin. manufacturers of F-35 ‘fighter’ jets, Leonardo, who produce Apache attack helicopters, and Instro Precision who make weapons sights, target acquisition systems, and electronic optics systems for the Israeli military.
Palestine Action last visited GRiD in June 2024, with four activists barricading themselves inside the plant, and destroying military hardware found there.
At the time, a Palestine Action spokesperson warned “GRiD is just one of the companies we know to be supplying Elbit. From intel gleaned from actions, to information passed on by whistleblowers – we know who you are, and any firm doing business which enables genocide should not be surprised when they too are shut down”.
Dismantle the war machine
The aim of Palestine Action, in stopping production at GRiD, is to intervene in the genocidal supply chain, which allows British companies to manufacture weapons, in whole or in part, which are then used to devastating effect against the civilian population of Gaza.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action said:
Since our previous occupation of the GRiD Defence Systems site, Gaza has been reduced to rubble, its entire infrastructure laid waste, and the population systematically massacred. Israel threatens the very existence of the Palestinian people, in Palestine, and while they commit war-crime after war-crime, Keir Starmer, and his corrupt and morally-bankrupt front bench, say nothing.
In marked contrast, there are still people in this country willing to put their liberty on the line to take direct action against Israel’s military supply chain and uphold international law. We are on the right side of history.
Featured image and additional images via Direct Action Images
Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) is launching a new campaign to kick Israel out of DSEI – one of the world’s largest arms fair – which is due to take place at London’s ExCeL centre between 9-12 September 2025.
CAAT is calling on the government, event organisers – Clarion Events – the ExCeL centre, and the London Mayor to take urgent action to ensure that those responsible and complicit for Israel’s genocide are not allowed to attend DSEI.
Israel at DSEI? Hardly surprising.
A petition is calling for the banning of Israel arms companies and the official government invited Israeli delegation, as well as banning Israeli speakers and the Israel country pavilion.
Israel always plays a prominent role at DSEI. with the UK government inviting an official Israeli government delegation. If this happens in 2025, it will be our government rolling out the red carpet to legitimise and enable war criminals coming to shop for even deadlier weapons to wage their genocide against Palestinian people
In 2023, in addition to Brigadier General Dr Danny Gold, head of directorate of defense research and development for the Israeli Ministry of Defence giving a keynote speech, Israel had its own country pavilion with 48 domestic Israeli arms companies exhibiting at the event.
These are companies that are directly responsible for, and directly profiting from, Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the war crimes it is committing in the West Bank and Lebanon. For example, Elbit Systems provides 80% of the drones that the Israeli military use in Palestine.
CAAT argues that there is a clear legal and moral case for banning Israel from DSEI given Israel’s horrific war crimes, the ICJ finding that it is plausible that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, the ICC issuing arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and this government imposing a partial arms suspension finding that Israel is not committed to complying with international law.
CAAT: protests to DSEI are crucial
However, CAAT is also clear that even if it achieves this aim, its “protests and opposition to DSEI” will continue. Even if Israeli delegations and companies are banned, there are plenty of domestic arms companies, such as BAE Systems – the main UK producer of the 15% of F-35 combat aircraft that is made in the UK, and that Israel is using to drop 2000lb bombs on Gaza – will still have a massive presence.
They will be joined by top arms companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon who supply many of the arms Israel is using in Gaza.
CAAT’s Media Coordinator Emily Apple said:
DSEI will be a huge opportunity for Israeli companies to market military equipment that is no longer just “battle-tested” but now genocide tested, on a global level. Every company and government body responsible for Israel’s inclusion at DSEI is complicit in aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide and the commission of war crimes
It is unconscionable that Israeli delegations and arms companies will be allowed to conduct business as usual at DSEI, and it is down to campaigners to do everything they can to kick Israel out of DSEI and stop this from happening.
However, while we believe that banning Israel from the event is a clear moral and legal objective, and one that we hope is achievable, we want to see this disgusting arms fair shut down entirely. DSEI is a massive marketplace in death and destruction. It is a one-stop-shop for human rights abusing regimes to stock up on military equipment to wage wars abroad and repress their populations at home. From Saudi Arabia, to Qatar, to Turkey, DSEI will roll out the red carpet for delegations from human rights abusing regimes across the world.
Another Columbia student, Mohsen Mahdawi has been detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Mahdawi is a green card holder who, alongside Mahmoud Khalil, organised protests against Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Now, senators in Vermont, where Mahdawi was apprehended have released a blistering statement:
Earlier today, Mohsen Mahdawi of White River Junction, Vermont, walked into an immigration office for what was supposed to be the final step in his citizenship process. Instead, he was arrested and removed in handcuffs by plainclothes, armed, individuals with their faces covered.
Whilst such a form of detention is not unheard of, it is extremely rare. The senators continued:
These individuals refused to provide any information as to where he was being taken or what would happen to him. This is immoral, inhumane, and illegal. Mr. Mahdawi, a legal resident of the United States, must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.
The Trump administration is evidently carrying out a terrifying campaign of detainment and deportation for Palestine supporters of colour. The manner of Mahdawi’s detention reads more like a state abduction than any form of due process.
Mohsen Mahdawi detention: ‘unconstitutional’
Footage of Mohsen Mahdawi’s arrest has been posted on social media:
U.S. immigration authorities summoned Columbia student leader Mohsen Mahdawi to a citizenship interview in Vermont – and then detained him without charge. He now faces deportation to the occupied West Bank. pic.twitter.com/PdM6LT2G7A
Mohsen can be seen being led away by plain clothes officers wearing hoods. He flashes a peace sign at the camera as he’s brought to a waiting car. Mohsen’s lawyers have, alarmingly, said that they don’t know where he’s been taken. His attorney Luna Droubi said:
We have not received confirmation as to his whereabouts despite numerous attempts to locate him.
Droubi also explained that:
We have filed a habeas petition in the District of Vermont and have sought a temporary restraining order restraining the government from removing him from the jurisdiction or from the country.
U.S. District Judge William Sessions granted the request. Other students in similar situations have been moved to detention facilities in Louisiana or Texas. As CNNreported:
Such transfers underscore ICE’s power in deciding where to house detained migrants – a power that some immigration attorneys say the Trump administration is now using to move disfavored migrants far from their attorneys, families and support systems.
Droubi also made it clear exactly why Mohsen was arrested:
the Trump administration detained Mohsen Mahdawi in direct retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and because of his identity as a Palestinian.
She also said:
his detention is an attempt to silence those who speak out against the atrocities in Gaza. It is also unconstitutional.
Organising
Mohsen Mahdawi’s lawyers have also explained that the Columbia student was:
an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and an activist and organizer in student protests on Columbia’s campus until March of 2024, after which he took a step back and has not been involved in organizing.
Just as with Mahmoud Khalil, Mahdawi is facing deportation under a rarely used invocation. As the Canary previously reported:
Mahmoud has US residency via a green card which are rarely revoked without a criminal conviction. Khalil has no such criminal conviction and is instead facing deportation regardless because the US government:
has reasonable ground to believe that your presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.
Mahdawi was born in the West Bank, and has been a legal resident in the US for 10 years. He’s due to graduate from Columbia next month, and begin a Masters programme at the same university in the autumn semester. Just as with Khalil, Mahdawi’s detention is a punishment for advocating for Palestine, and condemning Israeli genocide.
Campaign of intimidation
Bizarrely, Trump’s administration has claimed that Mohsen Mahdawi, a student, could “potentially undermine” the Middle East peace process. However, as reported by The Verge, Mohsen is well known in the local activist community for reaching out to both Palestinian and Israeli individuals. On the other hand, it is becoming increasingly clear that facts have nothing to do with the Trump administrations dogged pursual of a campaign of terror and intimidation against Palestine advocates.
Mohsen has built a life in the US after being born in a refugee camp. However, that life means nothing to the Trump administration and to border agents. It doesn’t matter to them that Mohsen built a life that featured family, loved ones, study, because Palestinians aren’t humans as far as the Trump administration is concerned. Mohsen has effectively been abducted during what was supposed to be an interview to secure his permanent residency.
The time is far past for pleas to care about Mohsen Mahdawi and Khalil in case it might happen to you. This is happening to Palestinians across the US, and either you believe in their rights, or you’re happy to have those rights trampled over by a fascistic government.
Fiji’s Minister for Defence and Veteran Affairs is facing a backlash after announcing that he was undertaking a multi-country, six-week “official travel overseas” to visit Fijian peacekeepers in the Middle East.
Pio Tikoduadua’s supporters say he should “disregard critics” for his commitment to Fijian peacekeepers, which “highlights a profound dedication to duty and leadership”.
However, those who oppose the 42-day trip say it is “a waste of time”, and that there are other pressing priorities, such as health and infrastructure upgrades, where taxpayers money should be directed.
Tikoduadua has had to defend his travel, saying that the travel cost was “tightly managed”.
He said that, while he accepts that public officials must always be answerable to the people they serve, “I will not remain silent when cheap shots are taken at the dignity of our troops, or when assumptions are passed off as fact.”
“Let me speak plainly: I am not travelling abroad for a vacation,” he said in a statement.
“I am going to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our men and women in uniform — Fijians who serve in some of the harshest, most dangerous corners of the world, far away from home and family, under the blue flag of the United Nations and the red, white and blue of our own.
‘I know what that means’
Tikoduadua, a former soldier and peacekeeper, said, “I know what that means [to wear the Fiji Military Forces uniform].”
“I marched under the same sun, carried the same weight, and endured the same silence of being away from home during moments that mattered most.
“This trip spans multiple countries because our troops are spread across multiple missions — UNDOF in the Golan Heights, UNTSO in Jerusalem and Tiberias, and the MFO in Sinai. I will not pick and choose which deployments are ‘worth the airfare’. They all are.”
He added the trip was not about photo opportunities, but about fulfilling his duty of care — to hear peacekeepers’ concerns directly.
“To suggest that a Zoom call can replace that responsibility is not just naïve — it is offensive.”
However, the opposition Labour Party has called it “unbelievably absurd”.
“Six weeks is a long, long time for a highly paid minister to be away from his duties at home,” the party said in a statement.
Standing ‘shoulder to shoulder’
“To make it worse, [Tikoduadua] adds that he is . . . ‘not going on a vacation but to stand shoulder to shoulder with our men and women in uniform’.
“Minister, it’s going to cost the taxpayer thousands to send you on this junket as we see it.”
Tikoduadua confirmed that he is set to receive standard overseas per diem as set by government policy, “just like any public servant representing the country abroad”.
“That allowance covers meals, local transport, and incidentals-not luxury. There is no ‘bonus’, no inflated figure, and certainly no special payout on top of my salary.
As a cabinet minister, the Defence Minister is entitled to business class travel and travel insurance for official meetings. He is also entitled to overseas travelling allowance — UNDP subsistence allowance plus 50 percent, according to the Parliamentary Remunerations Act 2014.
Tikoduadua said that he had heard those who had raised concerns in good faith.
“To those who prefer outrage over facts, and politics over patriotism — I suggest you speak to the families of the soldiers I will be visiting,” he said.
“Ask them if their sons and daughters are worth the minister’s time and presence. Then tell me whether staying behind would have been the right thing to do.”
Responding to criticism on his official Facebook page, Tikoduadua said: “I do not travel to take advantage of taxpayers. I travel because my job demands it.”
His travel ends on May 25.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Fiji’s Minister for Defence and Veteran Affairs is facing a backlash after announcing that he was undertaking a multi-country, six-week “official travel overseas” to visit Fijian peacekeepers in the Middle East.
Pio Tikoduadua’s supporters say he should “disregard critics” for his commitment to Fijian peacekeepers, which “highlights a profound dedication to duty and leadership”.
However, those who oppose the 42-day trip say it is “a waste of time”, and that there are other pressing priorities, such as health and infrastructure upgrades, where taxpayers money should be directed.
Tikoduadua has had to defend his travel, saying that the travel cost was “tightly managed”.
He said that, while he accepts that public officials must always be answerable to the people they serve, “I will not remain silent when cheap shots are taken at the dignity of our troops, or when assumptions are passed off as fact.”
“Let me speak plainly: I am not travelling abroad for a vacation,” he said in a statement.
“I am going to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our men and women in uniform — Fijians who serve in some of the harshest, most dangerous corners of the world, far away from home and family, under the blue flag of the United Nations and the red, white and blue of our own.
‘I know what that means’
Tikoduadua, a former soldier and peacekeeper, said, “I know what that means [to wear the Fiji Military Forces uniform].”
“I marched under the same sun, carried the same weight, and endured the same silence of being away from home during moments that mattered most.
“This trip spans multiple countries because our troops are spread across multiple missions — UNDOF in the Golan Heights, UNTSO in Jerusalem and Tiberias, and the MFO in Sinai. I will not pick and choose which deployments are ‘worth the airfare’. They all are.”
He added the trip was not about photo opportunities, but about fulfilling his duty of care — to hear peacekeepers’ concerns directly.
“To suggest that a Zoom call can replace that responsibility is not just naïve — it is offensive.”
However, the opposition Labour Party has called it “unbelievably absurd”.
“Six weeks is a long, long time for a highly paid minister to be away from his duties at home,” the party said in a statement.
Standing ‘shoulder to shoulder’
“To make it worse, [Tikoduadua] adds that he is . . . ‘not going on a vacation but to stand shoulder to shoulder with our men and women in uniform’.
“Minister, it’s going to cost the taxpayer thousands to send you on this junket as we see it.”
Tikoduadua confirmed that he is set to receive standard overseas per diem as set by government policy, “just like any public servant representing the country abroad”.
“That allowance covers meals, local transport, and incidentals-not luxury. There is no ‘bonus’, no inflated figure, and certainly no special payout on top of my salary.
As a cabinet minister, the Defence Minister is entitled to business class travel and travel insurance for official meetings. He is also entitled to overseas travelling allowance — UNDP subsistence allowance plus 50 percent, according to the Parliamentary Remunerations Act 2014.
Tikoduadua said that he had heard those who had raised concerns in good faith.
“To those who prefer outrage over facts, and politics over patriotism — I suggest you speak to the families of the soldiers I will be visiting,” he said.
“Ask them if their sons and daughters are worth the minister’s time and presence. Then tell me whether staying behind would have been the right thing to do.”
Responding to criticism on his official Facebook page, Tikoduadua said: “I do not travel to take advantage of taxpayers. I travel because my job demands it.”
His travel ends on May 25.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
An open letter has had to spell out to the UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) British citizens’ rights to free speech, as well as international laws enshrining oppressed peoples’ rights to resist their oppressors. This is because the CPS currently has preposterous terrorism charges levied against two Palestine advocates and SOAS University of London students. Specifically, in March, the Met Police arrested and charged the ‘SOAS 2’ under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act.
The force imposed this repressive overreach of terrorism powers for the crime of?
Speaking out for Palestine.
It’s but another instance of the Israel genocide-enabling British state targeting the people standing against the brutal Zionist war criminal and apartheid regime.
SOAS 2: an open letter calling the CPS to drop the outrageous charges
In early March, the UK criminal justice system ramped up its repressive crackdown on those speaking out against Israel. An atrocious abuse of Section 12 Terrorism Act powers has seen one vocal critic of Israel served charges and a second arrested days after.
On 4 March, the CPS issued the trumped-up charges against Sarah. This came more than 13 months after her initial arrest.
The Metropolitan Police had originally arrested Sarah in a dawn raid on 31 January 2024. Notably, this was at the behest of Zionist legal lobby group, UK Lawyers for Israel, who’d pushed for the force to make the arrest.
Sarah’s crime? A speech she gave at SOAS University in October 2023. In this, Sarah had articulated support for Palestinian’s rights to armed resistance under illegal occupation and an oppressive apartheid regime. Alarmingly, Zionists had brought the speech in question to the attention of the Met by tagging them in social media posts online.
In other words, Sarah was arrested, and now has been charged, due to a concerted campaign from Zionists to silence supporters of a free Palestine. Specifically, the charges centre round the allegation her speech was “inviting support for a proscribed organisation”, namely Hamas.
Then, on 7 March, the Met arrested the second student on suspicion of an offence under the same legislation.
The Act carries a possible sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
So now, an open letter with a significant list of left-wing activist groups, esteemed academics, journalists, musicians, and more, has called out the CPS’s outrageous charges.
An attempt to ‘intimidate and censor’ support for the Palestinian’s freedom struggle
The Revolutionary Communist Group Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI) launched the SOAS 2 letter towards the end of March. Since then, it has garnered more than eighty signatories. An accompanying public petition has also brought in a further over 2,000 signatures to date.
Significantly, the open letter is demanding that the CPS drop all charges against Sarah and discontinue its investigations against the other SOAS student. The letter states that the state “suppression of free speech” in these cases is a “calculated targeting” and:
is an attempt to intimidate and censor any expression of support for the Palestinian freedom struggle. It is an attack on the entire solidarity movement.
Crucially, it lambasted the use of counter-terror laws clamping down on expressions of support for Palestinian resistance. Notably, under international law, occupied people have the right to defend themselves against occupying forces. This includes by armed resistance if necessary. So, as the open letter lays out:
Resistance is not terrorism
Kotsai Sigauke from FRFI therefore told the Canary in a comment that:
It is not terrorism for an oppressed people to resist ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism and genocide through armed struggle. It was not terrorism when the people of Algeria fought French imperialism, it was not terrorism when the people of Ireland fought British imperialism, it was not terrorism when black South Africans fought apartheid and it is not terrorism for Palestinians to fight back against the genocidal Zionist state. United Nations General Assembly resolution 37/43 and the Geneva Conventions Protocol 1 explicitly gives Palestinians, and all oppressed people, the right to resist their oppressors by any available means, that includes armed struggle.
Signees have faced similar state repression
Of course, the SOAS 2 joins an unenviable list of Palestine advocates with all too similar experiences of state repression. There’s a palpable and growing trend of state crackdowns on free speech in relation to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Police forces around the country have continued to violently crack down on student Palestine protest encampments. A damning exposé from Liberty Investigates revealed in February that universities have subserviently collaborated with local police forces investigating their students. Acting as servile and complicit instruments of the state:
at least 36 universities had correspondence with the police concerning student protests and more than a dozen held meetings with officers. In many cases universities shared social media posts or images of event flyers with police, and discussed the political views of guest speakers.
Among those who have so far signed the open letter is Electronic Intifada journalist Asa Winstanley. In October, the Met’s counter-terrorism unit raided his home and seized all his electronic devices. While he wasn’t arrested, nor charged, the act of police intimidation of a journalist investigating and writing on Israel’s genocide in Gaza had all the same repressive ingredients as the Met and CPS’s treatment of the SOAS 2.
Winstanley also faced state accusations of encouraging “support for a proscribed organisation”. This is deliberate harassment of a journalist – by any other name – from a key arm of the state’s law enforcement.
Of course, Winstanley wasn’t the first journalist advocating for Palestine that the state attempted to silence using counter-terror laws last year either.
The Met raid on Winstanley’s home followed British border police detaining independent journalist Richard Medhurst at Heathrow airport. It also came after another raid by counter-terror cops on journalist and activist Sarah Wilkinson’s home, who also had personal items confiscated.
Systemic state repression
Another signee is the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol).
The same day FRFI published the open letter over the SOAS 2, Netpol put out a first-of-its kind damning new report. The State of Protest in 2024 laid out in no uncertain terms how aggressive police use of Tory anti-protest laws and portrayals of protesters as threats to democracy, amounted to nothing less than state repression. In one salient part of the report, Netpol detailed that:
Out of 80 arrests for terrorism offences directly related to the war in Gaza, about half relate to protests
The point here is that the state has liberally deployed these counter-terror powers against a significant number of Palestine supporters.
This has included Palestine Action activists like founder Richard Barnard. The Labour Party government’s attorney general, Richard Hermer, personally signed off on the terrorism charges the state is bringing against him. Once again, it’s all over speeches he made at protests. Naturally, Section 12 reared its head amidst the charges. Again, this alleged he’d expressed support for a proscribed organisation: Hamas.
Netpol’s report marked out the terrorism offences as one tool amid the broadscale arsenal of the state’s repressive reactionary tactics to silence advocates for a free Palestine.
Sigauke from FRFI drew similar parallels with the ongoing Met police use of dodgy pre-crime laws, and frequent arrests under Tory anti-protest powers:
Under this Labour government we’re seeing an escalation in repression against the working class and the Palestine solidarity movement in this country. The Metropolitan Police carried out an outrageous raid on Youth Demand’s meeting on 27 March and the Filton 18 are still held in prison on remand for taking action against genocide. There is also the SOAS 2.
Needless to say, Youth Demand is another signatory to the open letter.
He continued:
The SOAS 2, the Filton 18 and Youth Demand all need our unconditional solidarity. Everyone who supports Palestine, wants to defend democratic rights and cares about free speech must support them.
SOAS 2: time to stand together and fight back
The FRFI noted one vital thing that over a year and a half of Israel’s genocide and British state response to protests against should now make abundantly clear. The police is not – and never has been – on marginalised communities’ side. Because time and again, the racist enforcement arm of the establishment has shown its alignment to the oppressors.
So, Sigauke also called out the Labour Party government for increasing police funding. It laid into the government for further machinations to oppress working class, Black, brown, and other oppressed communities in the UK:
Under the Labour government, the state is also introducing measures to further criminalise the working class and anyone who dissents. One of the goals of its ‘safer streets mission’ is to put 13,000 more racist police on our streets. That means more black youths being harassed, more people being brutalised and more black children being strip searched (sexually assaulted). The Labour government is also bringing in the Crime and Policing Bill that has a whole laundry list of measures that will oppress and criminalise the working class, give the police more powers, and further restrict our right to protest.
Ultimately, he said that the state’s increasing repression signals something significant. This is that, people speaking out and standing up for Palestine has them rattled:
The Labour Party and the police want to crush the movement for Palestine, criminalise young people and oppress the working class because they are scared of them. Capitalism and imperialism are decaying, that is why the state is becoming more reactionary. We won’t sit down and accept criminalisation and repression, we’re going to stand up and fight back. That is why we are supporting the protests in April.
In short: the SOAS 2 are a testament to the state running scared. Everyone who stands on the side of and in solidarity with oppressed communities, here and in Palestine, should support them.
You can sign the petition against this latest appalling manifestation of state violence and repression here.
New research by Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) has revealed that UK universities hold investments worth £456 million in companies that are implicated in Israel’s military occupation, system of apartheid and genocide against Palestinians. This information adds impetus to the growing divestment campaigns led by students and academics that have won significant concessions from university authorities in the past 18 months.
UK universities: complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Following freedom of information requests to every university, with responses from 87, PSC has published an updated database of university complicity through financial investments. It reveals, for example:
University of Essex invests £29,396,693 in companies including HSBC, AXA, Alphabet, Barclays and Siemens through their account with Fasanara Capital.
Kingston University has £34,800,000 in direct holdings with Barclays and HSBC.
Queen Mary, University of London invests £40,494,514 in companies including Alphabet, Booking.com, Siemens and HSBC.
University of Warwick invests £8,839,580 in companies including Alphabet, Booking.com and HSBC through Cazenove Capital.
Aberystwyth University invests £455,349 in companies including BAE Systems, Safran, and Siemens.
In 2005 Palestinian civil society called for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights. The corporations listed in the database are all implicated in the commission of international crimes connected to Israel’s military occupation, regime of apartheid or genocide according to the BDS movement’s Corporate Complicity Criteria.
Overarching research
Direct complicity includes military, security, technological, financial, logistical, or infrastructure support. PSC’s research has found that British universities hold more than £32,000,000 worth of investments, shares and bonds in Barclays bank, which holds over £2 billion in shares, and provides £6.1 billion in loans and underwriting, to nine companies whose weapons, components and military technology are being used by Israel in its attacks on Palestinians.
This research has also found that UK universities have thousands of pounds worth of investments in companies including:
Caterpillar, which supplies the Israeli military with the bulldozers used to illegally demolish Palestinian homes, schools, villages and infrastructure, including sewage and water pipes.
BAE Systems, which plays a key role, alongside several other arms companies, in manufacturing F-35 bombers, described as the “most lethal…fighter aircraft ever built” and which are currently being deployed in the strikes on Gaza. It is currently under judicial review whether the British government should sell F-35 parts to Israel.
Palantir, a highly controversial US company which provides advanced AI tools to the Israeli military, enabling Israel’s attacks on Palestinians, and entered into a “strategic partnership” with Israel’s Ministry of Defence in 2024.
Alphabet Inc, Google’s parent company, which provides cloud computing services and other technologies to the Israeli military, allowing them to target Palestinians with deadly precision. Since 2021, Google Cloud Platform has co-developed the main cloud infrastructure platform for the Israeli state, dubbed ‘Project Nimbus’. This project has been widely condemned by Google workers.
UK universities must BDS immediately
In response to Israel’s wholesale destruction of education facilities in Gaza, and mass killing of teachers and students, support for divestment has been very strong across UK universities. Last year there was an unprecedented wave of student encampments on 35 campuses with activists holding protests to demand university authorities address their complicity.
There have already been some significant victories:
Stella Swain, PSC Youth and Student Officer, said:
It’s absolutely shameful that any university is investing in companies complicit in genocide. The fact that our universities invest £460 million in these corporations is an outrage. But students across the country are taking action to demand an end to this complicity, standing in a proud history of student resistance to occupation, colonisation and apartheid.
Universities can choose to end their complicity: many have started divestment negotiations as a result of student organising over the past two years. These wins show that we need to keep up the pressure until we achieve divestment at every university.
A Palestinian advocacy group has called on NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters to take a firm stand for international law and human rights by following the Maldives with a ban on visiting Israelis.
Maher Nazzal, chair of the Palestine Forum of New Zealand, said in an open letter sent to both NZ politicians that the “decisive decision” by the Maldives reflected a “growing international demand for accountability and justice”.
He said such a measure would serve as a “peaceful protest against the ongoing violence” with more than 51,000 people — mostly women and children — being killed and more than 116,000 wounded by Israel’s brutal 18-month war on Gaza.
Since Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18, at least 1630 people have been killed — including at least 500 children — and at least 4302 people have been wounded.
The open letter said:
Dear Prime Minister Luxon and Minister Peters,
I am writing to express deep concern over the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and to urge the New Zealand government to take a firm stand in support of international law and human rights.
Palestinian Forum of New Zealand chair Maher Nazzal at an Auckland pro-Palestinian rally . . . “New Zealand has a proud history of advocating for human rights and upholding international law.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
The Maldives has recently announced a ban on Israeli passport holders entering their country, citing solidarity with the Palestinian people and condemnation of the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
This decisive action reflects a growing international demand for accountability and justice.
New Zealand has a proud history of advocating for human rights and upholding international law. In line with this tradition, I respectfully request that the New Zealand government consider implementing a temporary suspension on the entry of Israeli passport holders. Such a measure would serve as a peaceful protest against the ongoing violence and a call for an immediate ceasefire and the protection of civilian lives.
I understand the complexities involved in international relations and the importance of maintaining diplomatic channels. However, taking a stand against actions that result in significant civilian casualties and potential violations of international law is imperative.
I appreciate your attention to this matter and urge you to consider this request seriously. New Zealand’s voice can contribute meaningfully to the global call for peace and justice.
Sincerely, Maher Nazzal
Chair
Palestine Forum of New Zealand
JUST IN: Maldives President officially signs the law banning Israelis from entering the country. pic.twitter.com/rKRnlEw6WK
President Mohamed Muizzu signed the legislation after it was passed on Monday by the People’s Majlis, the Maldivian parliament.
Muizzu’s cabinet initially decided to ban all Israeli passport holders from the idyllic island nation in June 2024 until Israel stopped its attacks on Palestine, but progress on the legislation stalled.
A bill was presented in May 2024 in the Maldivian parliament by Meekail Ahmed Naseem, a lawmaker from the main opposition, the Maldivian Democratic Party, which sought to amend the country’s Immigration Act.
The cabinet then decided to change the country’s laws to ban Israeli passport holders, including dual citizens. After several amendments, it passed this week, more than 300 days later.
“The ratification reflects the government’s firm stance in response to the continuing atrocities and ongoing acts of genocide committed by Israel against the Palestinian people,” Muizzu’s office said in a statement.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Sunday that at least 1,613 Palestinians had been killed since 18 March, when a ceasefire collapsed, taking the overall death toll since Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023 to 50,983.
The ban went into immediate effect.
“The Maldives reaffirms its resolute solidarity with the Palestinian cause,” the statement added.
Last year, in response to talk of a ban, Israel’s Foreign Ministry advised its citizens against travelling to the country.
The Maldives, a popular tourist destination, has a population of more than 525,000 and about 11,000 Israeli tourists visited there in 2023 before the Israeli war on Gaza began.
The Met Police have made more arrests, and complicit members of the public shown further aggression towards Youth Demand protesters continuing to boldly take action across London against Israel’s ongoing genocide.
However, Youth Demand shows no signs of slowing down. Ahead of an action to call out the BBCfor its blatant pro-Israel bias, activists were once again disrupting major roads around the capital.
Youth Demand out again despite state aggression and repression
On Tuesday 15 April, Youth Demand activists turned out in number to grind London to a halt once more.
At around 9.30am, around 50 Youth Demand supporters, in two teams, stepped onto the road at South Kensington, and Victoria Street near Westminster Cathedral:
At South Kensington, public hostility to the protesters was once again palpable. Notably, despite being on the road for only six minutes, members of the public made multiple assaults on the activists.
As the Canary has been documenting, this has become an increasing occurrence at public protests. Youth Demand protesters alone have been subjected to numerous assaults – many within the last week alone.
The team at Victoria left the road after 10 minutes.
The teams regrouped and then entered the road once more at Westminster Abbey and Warren Street at around 10.50am:
Once more, the team at Westminster Abbey left the road after 10 minutes. This was due to further significant aggression from the public. Similarly, the team at Warren Street left the road after 5 minutes. During this time, a passerby stole a phone from someone filming the action and proceeded to delete footage from it.
One of those taking action was Gannon Rice, a 20 year-old student, who said:
How much longer will we prioritise the right to individual accumulation over the lives of human beings? How long are we prepared, as a society, to sit and watch our leaders facilitate the mass murder of children? People say if you want change – vote. Well the UK has recently seen a change of government and things are worse than ever. In that scenario history shows us that the only leverage we have as ordinary people is through nonviolent disruptive action. We are told individuals can’t make a difference to enact change, but with many of us together we can make a difference. Join us at youthdemand.org.
Youth Demand gearing up to take it to the BBC’s front door
As the Canarypreviously reported, on Saturday, cops nicked eight Youth Demand protesters across multiple sites in London. It marked yet further state repression, police forces have deployed utilising the Tories draconian anti-protest laws. However, Youth Demand has only rightly seen this as a sign its tactics are working – because it’s clearly rattling the government powers-that-be and its violent enforcement apparatus. As one Youth Demand Instagram post poignantly put it:
the state is afraid of the power of the people who refuse to be complicit in this genocide.
So, Youth Demand have upped the ante, with further disruptions.
On Monday, the Met also arrested four Youth Demand supporters. Significantly, this was after they had left the road, obeying police instructions to move. They were arrested for breach of Section 7 of the Public Order Act, public nuisance and willful obstruction of the highway:
All have been bailed to leave London. That brings the total number of arrests since Saturday to 12.
Tonight at 6.30pm, Youth Demand will be hosting a rally with other Palestinian solidarity groups outside BBC Broadcasting house, Portland Place. Crucially, together, the groups will call out the broadcaster for its kowtowing to the political establishment status quo.
In particular, the BBChas been little more than a servile mouthpiece for Israeli propaganda. Throughout the genocide, it has propped up the war criminal and apartheid regime and its co-conspirators in the British government with unfettered and blatant bias.
So, Youth Demand and pro-Palestine groups are right to target it for its shameful complicity.
‘We will not permit our leaders to be complicit’
Today’s actions come as the death toll in Gaza rises to over 51,000 Palestinians confirmed dead. Meanwhile, Israel has wounded 116,274 throughout its abhorrent genocide. The government media office in Gaza has updated its death toll to more than 61,700, saying thousands of people missing under the rubble are presumed dead. All the while, Israeli authorities have blocked the entry of all humanitarian aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million people since early March.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said:
Out of the over 51,000 Palestinians dead, 17,400 were children, 1720 of them under 2 years old. Half of the remaining 2.3 million people in Gaza are children. Meanwhile, the UK government continues to actively support this genocide, allowing the British military to provide logistics and reconnaissance for Israel, whilst 15% of every F35 fighter jet dropping bombs on Gaza has been made by British industry. We will not permit our leaders to be complicit with war crimes and crimes against humanity. We need a total trade embargo with Israel right now.
Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG), a nongovernmental grassroots mass movement comprised of more than 2,000 taxpayers who have been protesting their congressional representatives’ votes to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza, filed an unprecedented report with the UN Human Rights Council on April 7. “We have gone through all the channels open to us in our effort to stop U.S. officials from using our…
This April 17, we, a collective of academic workers, students, union members, and activists within multiple higher education associations and unions, trade unions, and other organizing spaces, call for a coordinated national direct action in protest of the ongoing genocide abroad and the escalating repression at home. As academic workers and students united with other labor sectors, we aim to take back public places and uplift the right to dissent and the right to collective organizing for liberation. We stand against the neoliberal and colonial logic of higher ed that represses speech and academic freedom in the US and that enables genocide, carceral tactics, and the long-running destruction of education and historical memory in Gaza and throughout Palestine.
In a co-ordinated pair of actions striking at the operations in Britain of Israel’s largest weapons company, Palestine Action have shut down operations at Elbit Systems’ Leicester drone factory and are occupying Elbit’s Bristol insurers.Returning to the Leicester site once again after years of occupations, blockades, and disruption, two activists have today delivered a truckload of manure and scrap furniture to the factory gates and secured themselves inside the vehicle.
The pile of excrement and ongoing obstruction is serving to blockade the site, halting operations as all access is prevented.
The ‘UAV Tactical Systems’ (U-TacS) plant, which is a major exporter of military drones to Israel, has thus been forced shut.
We get an update on the case of Mahmoud Khalil from Diala Shamas, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and part of Khalil’s legal team. An immigration judge in Louisiana ruled Friday that the Trump administration has grounds to deport Khalil for taking part in Gaza student protests, despite being a legal permanent resident of the United States. The government’s evidence in…
In the face of ongoing Draconian state repression, Youth Demand has successfully disrupted London once again in two acts of mass civil disobedience.
The latest actions come amid a sweep of crackdowns in which cops have nicked protesters under the Tories’ dodgy pre-crime laws. However, clearly protesters remains undeterred – as they took two more actions across the capital.
Youth Demand supporters have shown once more that they won’t be silenced from calling out the UK government’s disgusting complicity in Israel’s continued genocide.
More state repression of Youth Demand activists
First, on Saturday 12 April, Youth Demand initiated a series of swarming roadblocks. Around 50 Youth Demand supporters blocked traffic across London. Unsurprisingly, cops clamped down and arrested eight of the activists:
The Met nicked activists across the multiple locations Youth Demand took action. On Vauxhall Bridge, an activist defiantly shouted for a free Palestine as police escorted him into the back of a van:
And at Elephant and Castle, a large group of cops turned up and arrested a protester despite the fact he’d already vacated the road:
Youth Demand supporter Becky, 43, a mother of two from East London said:
I have taken part in almost every National demo, local demo and rally since October 2023 and with the scenes we are seeing coming out of the Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, becoming more and more deranged, criminal and heart shattering, the need to escalate to make our leaders act has never been clearer.
We are tired of the lies, the gaslighting, watching a genocide on live-stream, while being told the real victims are the people committing the atrocities. Asking politely for those who are funding, supporting and complicit in these acts, in the way that they want us to ask them, is not working. We have to disrupt in the only way that makes them listen, to make problems for the system, that puts our bodies on the line, on the levers of power and profit.
I am a mother of two children and I am terrified of being arrested and put on remand away from them for months on end, but this fear is what the state wants. They want us to feel like it’s easier to be apathetic and just carry on with our lives. And this fear is a tiny, tiny taste of what mothers in Palestine have lived with for 76 years. Knowing your family could be torn apart at the drop of a hat.
I want my children to see what it looks like to do what’s right, before doing what’s comfortable. I don’t want them to live in a world where children around the world are burned in their babygrows day after day, for a year and a half, while we all look on and shrug our shoulders. If it were my children, I would want mothers, anyone, across the world to do everything in their power to try and make it stop.
Youth Demand: no more business-as-usual in the City
Youth Demand followed Saturday’s disruptions with more on Monday. At around 9.30am, up to 40 Youth Demand supporters in two teams stepped onto pedestrian crossings at Holborn and Southwark Bridge. There, they unfurled banners reading “Stop arming Israel” and “Make the rich pay”:
The group of activists disrupted the traffic for approximately 20 minutes at each location.
However, members of the public responded to the activists with violence. First, a driver tried to circumvent the protesters blocking the road. Footage shows the driver mounting the pavement and inching into a protester:
Eventually, the protester had to move as it was clear the driver was putting her risk and would continue to drive into her if she didn’t. The driver then proceeded to drive along the pavement, where pedestrians had to move out the way.
Then, in another instance, a member of the public violently assaulted Youth Demand activists. The clip shows a man shoving the activists onto the ground. Following this, he did the same to protesters in the way of an approaching Met police van:
This echoes other recent Youth Demand protests. On Friday 11 April for instance, a lorry driver also attempted to drive into protesters blockading the road.
Similarly, the assault of Youth Demand activists also isn’t the first time members of the public have done this – within the last week at that. In one previous case, a passer-by also violently shoved Youth Demand protester Zahra from behind – knocking her out and causing her to have a seizure. As a niqab-wearing Muslim woman, Zahra underscored how the assault was likely motivated by Islamophobia. Prior to that, on 8 April, another servile member of the public had assaulted activists and attempted to steal a journalist’s camera.
Violent public: doing the bidding of the Israel-supporting elite
So, it appears subservient citizens – backed up by a repressive state wielding far-reaching anti-protest powers – continue to feel emboldened to enact violence against Youth Demand protesters.
Of course, it’s a damning indictment of some of the public’s mood around Gaza, and the right to protest more broadly. Israel is committing literal genocide right before the world’s eyes, with the tacit support of the UK government, and some members of the British public think Youth Demand are the problem. As the Canary’s Steve Topple previously wrote:
They are peacefully deploying mid-level civil disobedience in the face of cataclysmic world events. Yet here in the West, agents of the state and the public still believe they can go about their daily business like nothing is happening – and that any disruption to this is disastrous.
In a nutshell, the public who’ve attacked Youth Demand is doing the bidding of the elite. Conscious or not, they’re maintaining the violent status quo that sees the protesters calling out genocide banged up, while the perpetrators of that genocide and its complicit British political establishment handmaidens walk scott-free.
19 year-old student Toby Ellwood from West Sussex was among those taking action:
I am taking action with Youth Demand today because we are watching our government actively participate in the slaughter of thousands of Palestinian people. I think that we all have a duty to stand on the right side of history and disrupt and show our genocidal government that we will not be silent.
Our government wants to keep doing business as usual and lining the pockets of their billionaire friends while our climate collapses and we watch children in Palestine be mutilated by genocidal colonisers. We have to take action because we cannot bear to watch the suffering created by the system of the bloodthirsty elites.
Take action to stop a literal ongoing genocide
Youth Demand’s continued actions come against a backdrop of Israel’s ongoing genocide and its forcible displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. The genocidal and apartheid state also continues to routinely dent access for aid and medical evacuations. Palm Sunday was sandwiched between its two latest actions. It was during this that Israel destroyed parts of the last remaining functioning hospital in Gaza with an airstrike. Israel has repeatedly hit hospitals in airstrikes despite the fact they are protected under international humanitarian law.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that Israel’s military had completely surrounded the southern Gaza city of Rafah and established a new security zone as it continues and expands an offensive in the Palestinian territory. According to the UN, Israel has designated two-thirds of Gaza “no-go” zones or placed under evacuation orders. This is since it violated the ceasefire on 18 March, resuming its genocide and campaign of ethnic cleansing. As a result, it has left 390,000 Palestinians — almost a fifth of the 2.1 million population — with no safe place to go.
World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned of more disease and deaths. Notably, he has implicated Israel’s blockade of aid entering Gaza as the cause for this. More than 10,000 people need medical evacuation abroad, and at least 60,000 children are malnourished. He said Israel denied or impeded 75% of UN missions in Gaza in last week.
Israel has persistently denied that its political leaders or military have committed war crimes during its assault on Gaza. It has killed more than 50,000 people. The UK continues to support genocide by supplying arms, whilst conducting more surveillance flights on behalf of Israel over Gaza than any other country.
Sign up, and turn out to support Youth Demand
Young people will not accept these crimes against humanity and we will not be led by war criminals and arsonists. We cannot allow those in power to get away with facilitating the systematic annihilation of an entire culture. It’s time to take to the streets day after day and to demand better. Only sustained mass resistance can put an end to this genocide.
Youth Demand is therefore calling on everyone to join them.
On Tuesday 15 April, supporters will be outside BBC Broadcasting house, Portland Place, to call out the public broadcaster’s complicity. Sign up to take action at youthdemand.org.
As the state and public’s violent attempts to silence Youth Demand ramp up, it’s more important than ever people turn out to show unequivocally that the UK cannot continue business-as-usual while Israel’s brutality continues with impunity.
Featured image and additional images/video via Youth Demand
In a co-ordinated pair of actions striking at the operations in Britain of Israel’s largest weapons company, Palestine Action have shut down operations at Elbit Systems’ Leicester drone factory and are occupying Elbit’s Bristol insurers.
Palestine Action: shitting on Elbit
Returning to the Leicester site once again after years of occupations, blockades, and disruption, two activists have today delivered a truckload of manure and scrap furniture to the factory gates and secured themselves inside the vehicle:
Credit Milo Chandler/Alamy Live News
Actionists secured themselves inside a truck blocking the front gate of Elbit's Leicester weapons factory!
They've also tipped a load of manure on the drive of the Israeli drone maker. pic.twitter.com/85HuLPDn0m
Without this insurance, Elbit’s factories – which export arms en-masse to Israel – could not operate.
The Palestine Action campaign so far has seen dozens of Allianz’ branches struck with disruptive direct action, which seeks to raise the costs of their complicity and make it unprofitable to deal with war criminals.
Elsewhere in Britain, Palestine Action claim responsibility for overnight damage to Aviva’s corporate offices at the Observatory building in Manchester, insurers of Elbit’s Staffordshire weapons factory, UAV Engines Ltd:
And, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands chapter of the Palestine Action movement damaged and defaced the headquarters of Allianz.
Killing Palestinians without recourse
Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, produces 85% of Israel’s killer drone fleet. Such drones are routinely marketed as “battle-tested” or “combat proven” as they are first tested on the Palestinian people. Despite previous denials, both export licenses and cargo shipments prove UAV Tactical Systems directly exports it’s weaponry to Israel during the current Gaza genocide.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action has stated:
Israel’s genocide in Gaza is continuing at full steam – and the acts of resistance in the West with demonstrated success are those which strike at the manufacture of Israel’s weapons.
By taking on Elbit, and by taking on those facilitating its criminal enterprise, we continue to stand with the Palestinians and to undo our complicity in their killing.
Featured image via Milo Chandler and additional images supplied
Israel is poised to carry out the largest campaign of ethnic cleansing since the end of World War II. Since March 2, it has blocked all food and humanitarian aid into Gaza and cut off electricity, so that the last water desalination plant no longer functions. The Israeli military has seized half of the territory — Gaza is 25 miles long and four to five miles wide — and placed two-thirds of Gaza under displacement orders, rendered “no-go zones,” including the border town of Rafah, which is encircled by Israeli troops.
On Friday Defence Minister Israel Katz announced that Israel will “intensify” the war against Hamas and use “all military and civilian pressure, including evacuation of the Gaza population south and implementing United States President [Donald] Trump’s voluntary migration plan for Gaza residents.”
On April 13, 1975, a busload of Palestinian civilians was ambushed in Ain al-Rummaneh, a predominantly Maronite Christian neighborhood in East Beirut, by Phalangist militiamen who committed a massacre. That moment, often cited as the spark of the Lebanese Civil War, did not emerge from a vacuum — it followed years of tension between the Lebanese state, sectarian militias, and the growing Palestinian armed presence in Lebanon, which started in 1971 when the PLO arrived after being forcibly expelled by the Jordanian state following the events of Black September.
Fifty years have passed, and the debate over the role of Palestinians — specifically Palestinian factions under the PLO — in the Lebanese Civil War remains mired in a murky combination of emotions, facts, myths, scapegoating, and to some extent, political erasure.
Anti-apartheid campaigner Andrew Feinstein delivered a rousing call for justice and freedom for Palestine to a packed room in Hertfordshire. Notably, he joined the local community to hold Hertfordshire County Council’s feet to the fire over its gargantuan investments in companies complicit in Israel’s brutal genocide.
Andrew Feinstein: calling out Israel in Hertfordshire talk
At Jubilee Centre in St Albans on Wednesday 9 April, Andrew Feinstein spoke at the invitation of local group St Albans Friends of Palestine.
He told some 120 attendees about a career that began as a teenage activist against apartheid in the 1980s. In the 1990s, Feinstein served as a member of the South African parliament under Nelson Mandela. Today, he continues his work speaking out against apartheid and injustice. Significantly, he detailed how this has led to his concerted campaigning on the arms trade. Notably, Feinstein has become a leading voice in the international movement for Palestinian rights.
The title of Andrew Feinstein’s talk was ‘South Africa and Israel: Apartheid Then and Now’. During this, he noted that it is a “legal fact” that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians amounts to apartheid as defined in international law. It’s a finding judges at the International Court of Justice recently confirmed. Consequently, he reflected on similarities and differences between the two cases.
On top of this, he also condemned crackdowns on the movement for Palestinian rights. He expressed his horror, as the Jewish son of a Holocaust survivor, at recently being threatened by Austrian police during a protest in Vienna. Harrowingly, he recounted how this was very close to where his own mother had spent years hiding in a coal cellar in the 1940s.
Hertfordshire County Councils complicity in Israel’s genocide
Andrew Feinstein praised the Herts Palestine Support Coalition, which gathered signatures from audience members for its petition calling for Hertfordshire County Council to end its £95m investments in companies linked to grave human rights violations against Palestinians.
In the coming days, HPSC will launch a page on its website where voters in the upcoming County Council election. There, constituents will be able to check which candidates in their area have pledged to advocate for divesting from these companies.
Member of the St Albans Friends of Palestine committee Peter Segal said:
It was truly inspiring to hear from such a seasoned campaigner. In the current situation, it’s all too easy to feel dispirited. But Andrew reminded us that there are always meaningful things that all of us can do to work towards a better future, in Israel and Palestine and in our own society.
The Labour Party goes apoplectic with rage when a couple of their MPs are refused entry in to Israel, but couldn’t care less when Israel is quite literally evaporating entire families in the blink of an eye.
Thankfully, the remaining MPs did still happily pose for a photo opportunity AFTER their colleagues were refused entry. I’m living the solidarity.
Labour and the corporate media: like flies around Israel’s shit
The corporate media are way more offended by two Youth Demand supporters leaving a few fake children’s body bags in David Lammy’s garden than they are by the sight of grief-stricken parents carrying the few body parts that remain of their precious child, in a plastic carrier bag.
A vast majority of British journalists and broadcasters — many on the payroll of tax-shy foreign billionaires and dodgy lobbyists — feed on the frenzy surrounding the fascistic flump Trump without a single mention of the systematic targeting of journalists working in Gaza.
Note to UK media: Israel has murdered more than 200 of your colleagues, since October 2023, and instead of growing a fucking set and speaking up for humanity, you just carry on trying to flog the antisemitism dead horse. Why?
Would I tiptoe into ludicrous Lammy’s front garden to decorate it with body bags? No. But in a situation as dire as Gaza, drastic non-violent means are entirely justified and I applaud anyone that is willing to put their own neck on the line for the greater good.
Meanwhile, if you’re a disabled person…
Like many of you, I have been keeping a close eye on the events surrounding Labour’s savage, callous and utter unnecessary attacks on the sick and disabled people of Britain.
It was Keir Starmer’s turn to sit in front of the Work and Pensions Liaison Committee, this past week, and he decided the best line of defence was to criticise the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for not agreeing with him.
This daft approach might have made just a little bit more sense had Starmer’s own government not put through the Budget Responsibility Act in October, last year, requiring the government to actually listen to the OBR.
Starmer spent much of his time in opposition lauding the OBR and their work in attempting to hold Conservative governments to account.
But here we are, witnessing Keir Starmer wriggle like a gutless red Tory worm on a hook, dismissing the OBR findings because they do not support his and Rachel from accounts claim of Britain’s sick and disabled people finding sudden and miraculous cures to lifelong illnesses and conditions, and returning to the workplace, bright-eyed and bushy tailed.
I’m no supporter of the OBR. It was set up by the coalition government in 2010, which should tell you pretty much everything that you need to know, and some may argue that it is an anti-democratic quango.
But, and to their credit, they are correct to predict that Labour’s assault on sick and disabled people is likely to push at least 250,000 people into desperate poverty. I think we all know each other well enough to agree, the appalling quarter-of-a-million figure is likely to be a massive underestimation.
Getting rid of the quangos. Well, the Tory ones, anyway…
Talking of quangos, former PwC consultant, Oli de Botton has been appointed as Keir Starmer’s “expert adviser on education and skills”. His ‘job’ will be to “advise ministers and drive forward the government’s vision for education and skills”.
What I did find quite remarkable about this appointment is the fact Oli’s wife, Amber de Botton, was director of communications at 10 Downing Street under the Tories in 2022 and 2023, when Rishi Sunak was screwing everything up.
Amber is now the Chief Communications Officer for the Guardian.
Surely the de Botton’s must be the first example of a married couple being appointed political advisers to governments of a different party, albeit with the same rancid, neoliberal ideology?
I wonder what would happen if the government appointed a few ordinary people, rather than wedge open the revolving door between the Labour and Conservative parties?
Perhaps a headmaster, a school teacher, or maybe even a fucking dinner lady could do a considerably better job advising the government on “education and skills”, instead of some private-schooled luvvy with a name that makes you think of de butt cheeks whenever you see it?
Cronyism for them, cuts for us
Keir Starmer was supposed to bring an end to cronyism. Indeed, the compulsive liar of a prime minister pledged to slash the number of regulators, cultural institutions and advisory bodies, which are funded by taxpayers but not directly controlled from Whitehall.
But this is Keir Starmer, and his Labour government has already set up more than TWENTY new quangos since taking office, less than a year ago.
So why does the government feel it is fair to cut disability money when the government of 2022/23 spent an eye-watering £353 BILLION on quangos?
This awful government thinks it’s easier to rinse disabled people for everything they have than it is to find a few savings across more than three hundred unelected regulators and advisory bodies with an annual budget that could build six hundred brand new hospitals, every damn year.
Doesn’t this tell you absolutely everything you need to know about this anti-poor, pro-cronyism shitheap of a fraudulent Labour administration?
Cuts for chronically ill people, jobs for the boys for them.
Anger when they can’t send a couple of Labour MPs to Israel for some brainwashing, but utterly acquiescent to the unimaginable suffering of a Palestinian child.
A long, cold winter for Britain’s pensioners, free Coldplay tickets for Keir Starmer.
A celebration of poverty wages for us, and £94,000 a year basic for them, which isn’t their fault, of course.
Labour: betraying us week in, week out
Didn’t we have enough of this flabbergasting hypocrisy under the Conservatives to last us an entire lifetime? How have we allowed ourselves to become so ridiculously resigned and obedient to their way of doing things?
Starmer’s Labour are set to take one hell of a beating at the forthcoming local elections, and they can’t even use the midterm excuse. Hollow soundbites won’t save him this time around.
The fear of seeing numerous hard-right, Farage Party councillors elected to council chambers across the country certainly won’t be allayed by the inevitable Labour bloodbath, as deserved as their rapid demise will be.
When a politician routinely betrays not only the fools that voted for them, but also the people that thought that they couldn’t possibly be any worse than the last lot, they open the door to fascism.
Once again, cops have been arrested Youth Demand supporters under dodgy pre-crime laws introduced by the Tories. On the flip side, it shows that the group has clearly got the British state worried – and good job it has.
Youth Demand: swarming and causing a ‘public nuisance’
Youth Demand supporters gathered at Russell Square on Saturday 12 April to take part in ‘open swarming’. The group are calling for the UK government to impose a total trade embargo on Israel, and make the super rich and fossil fuel elite pay damages to communities and countries most harmed by fossil fuel burning.
Around 50 Youth Demand supporters stepped into the road at Elephant and Castle with banners and smoke flares at approximately 12:45pm:
The group left the road at around 1:20pm.
One supporter was arrested for breach of Section 7 of the Public Order Act, after having already left the road. A further group of around 26 disrupted Hyde Park Corner at around 1:55pm for approximately 15 minutes, with supporters dispersing when requested by police.
The groups converged and disrupted Vauxhall Bridge north crossing at 2:30pm:
Shockingly, a further seven supporters were arrested at around 2:50pm as the group left the road. As Youth Demand put on its Insta, three of these were after the event. Cops arrested them for suspected ‘conspiracy to cause a public nuisance’. This is the same offence that police have used to arrest other Youth Demand supporters in recent weeks.
The real public nuisance is Starmer
One of those arrested was co-founder Sam. He said:
The real public nuisance is Starmer who is licensing arms sales to Israel to drop bombs on kids. They are also allowing fossil fuels meaning that billions of people will be starved to death in the coming decades.
The only way we can change this is by being in civil resistance. We need everyone to sign up at youthdemand.org. This is the only way to stop the mass genocide.
Saturday’s actions come against a backdrop of Israel’s ongoing killing and forcible displacement of Palestinians in Gaza, coupled with the routine denial of access for aid and of medical evacuations.
Israel’s defence minister has said it will expand its so-called “security zones” in Gaza to include the southern city of Rafah. According to the UN two-thirds of Gaza has been designated as “no-go” zones or placed under evacuation orders since Israel resumed its offensive against Hamas on 18 March following the collapse of a two-month ceasefire. This has left 390,000 Palestinians — almost a fifth of the 2.1 million population — with no safe place to go.
World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned of more disease and deaths due to Israel’s blockade of aid entering Gaza where more than 10,000 people need medical evacuation abroad and at least 60,000 children are malnourished. He said 75% of UN missions in Gaza last week were denied or impeded.
Youth Demand: Israel is a menace
Israel has persistently denied that its political leaders or military have committed war crimes during its assault on Gaza, in which it has killed more than 50,000 people, most of them civilians. The UK continues to support genocide by supplying arms, whilst conducting more surveillance flights on behalf of Israel over Gaza than any other country.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said:
We’ve tried the marches, petitions and rallies for over a year and a half now. It hasn’t worked. The government only cares about disruption. That’s why we are shutting London down day after day. There is no time to lose, two million Palestinians are starving. They are being pushed into smaller and smaller death zones in Gaza. Business-as-usual enables this genocide, so we have a duty to shut it down.
We must resist.
Unfortunately for the cops and the state – but fortunately for anyone with an ounce of moral fibre – Youth Demand will be continuing its actions next week.
Maldives President officially signs the law banning Israelis from entering the country. 
