In a bold statement released this week, college Democrats broke from President Joe Biden and the party establishment by condemning the administration for its support of Israel’s “destructive, genocidal, and unjust” assault on Gaza and throwing their support behind the wave of pro-Palestine protests sweeping the U.S. The College Democrats of America, the Democratic National Committee’s official…
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At the University of Florida encampment for Gaza, student protesters are forcing themselves to keep their eyes open night after night, fearing that if they doze off, they could be arrested. “We are not allowed to sleep,” University of Florida freshman Cameron Driggers told Truthout having spent multiple nights at the encampment. “We’ve literally had folks, at least a dozen each night…
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Workers around the world rallied Wednesday to mark May Day, with many calling on the labor movement to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. In New York, Democracy Now! spoke to demonstrators who demanded that U.S. unions apply political pressure for a ceasefire in Gaza and to stop their government’s arms trade with Israel. “Workers do have the power to shape the world…
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April 30, 2024, was the 56th anniversary of Columbia University calling in the police to arrest 700 students who had taken over Hamilton Hall in a protest against racism and the war on Vietnam. It was also the day when the Columbia administration invited the NYPD onto its campus for the second time in less than two weeks. Police in riot gear proceeded to arrest pro-Palestinian students…
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We look at how university administrators have responded to Palestine solidarity protests by students with Frederick Lawrence, former president of Brandeis University and now the CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and a lecturer at Georgetown Law School. Brandeis was founded in 1948 by the American Jewish community in the wake of the Holocaust and named after the first Jewish Supreme Court justice, the celebrated free speech advocate Louis Brandeis. Lawrence says the nationwide university crackdown on student protesters is a worrying violation of the principles of academic freedom. “Provoking people, challenging people, asking difficult questions, making people uncomfortable, that’s part of the price of living in a democracy,” he says. He also notes that what constitutes a threat to campus safety should be narrowly defined. “You are not entitled to be intellectually safe. You are entitled to be physically safe.”
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New York police in full riot gear stormed Columbia University and the City College of New York Tuesday night, arresting over 300 students to break up Gaza solidarity encampments on the two campuses. The police raid began at the request of Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who has also asked the police to remain a presence on campus until at least May 17 to ensure solidarity encampments are not…
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A pro-Israel mob violently attacked a Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles overnight Tuesday, hurling fireworks at the structure and beating demonstrators as campus security and city police stood by. Los Angeles Times higher education journalist Teresa Watanabe reported that members of the pro-Israel mob used explicitly genocidal language as they ripped down…
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Right now, the biggest student revolt of this century is rocking the country, denouncing the genocide of Palestinians and calling for divestment from Israel and an end to the war on Gaza. The repression has been bipartisan and savage. College administrators are calling in heavily armed police of Democrat-controlled cities to drag away hundreds of students and faculty, for the crime of sitting on a…
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Ngāti Kahungunu in Aotearoa New Zealand’s Hawkes Bay region has become the first indigenous Māori iwi (tribe) to sign a resolution calling for a “ceasefire in Palestine”, reports Te Ao Māori News.
Reporter Te Aniwaniwa Paterson talked to Te Otāne Huata, who has been organising peace rallies each Sunday at the Hastings Clock Tower.
“I have taken every opportunity at the iwi level to present the case that we should be standing in solidarity with the Palestinians,” Huata (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Porou, Te Arawa) said.
“This means we don’t support the ongoing bombing and slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and also the brutal apartheid and occupation that’s happening in the occupied West Bank.”
This initiative started among Huata’s whānau who presented the case to their hapū Ngāti Rāhunga-i-te-Rangi, wider marae and eventually the iwi of Ngāti Kahungunu.
Huata has brought Palestinians into the conversation at iwi events, at hui-ā-motu with Te Kiingitanga and Rātana Pā, and subsequently on the Treaty Grounds.
“Then came to the hui-ā-iwi, last Friday, really with the intention of asking ‘what does kotahitanga look like?’ And what what can we present to the hui-ā-motu because Kahungunu will be hosting Hui Taumata on May 31 at Omahu marae.”
Māori iwi leadership in solidarity
Huata believes Māori cultural and iwi leadership can be used in solidarity with other minority groups and said it was important because all injustices were interconnected.
As part of the kaupapa, Huata choreographed a haka, written by his cousin Māhinarangi Huata-Harawira, “with the intention to not be flashy, or that you had to be the best performer”.
“Really the haka was about how we can all throughout the world stand in solidarity through this vessel of haka.”
Haka mō Paratinia is used at rallies and protests around Aotearoa.
The kaupapa was also brought to the stage this year in kapa haka regionals where Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga Pakeke carried Palestinian flags and messages of in support of a ceasefire.
“Tino rangatiratanga to me is not only self determination of our people, it is also collective liberation, so the oppressions of other marginalised Indigenous groups, are an oppression on everyone else,“ Huata said.
Republished from Te Ao Māori News/Māori Television.
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Top UN human rights officials are expressing alarm over the recent wave of violent repression by university administrators against the student protests for Palestinian liberation that have swept the U.S., raising concerns that protesters’ rights to free speech and assembly are being violated. A statement on Tuesday said that UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, the UN’s top human…
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Columbia University’s pro-Palestine protesters took over a building on campus, known as Hamilton Hall, early on Tuesday morning, after university administrators threatened students in a solidarity encampment and said that the university “will not divest from Israel” in a statement on Monday. Students occupying the building have dubbed the building “Hind’s Hall” after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old…
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A photojournalist who was violently arrested while covering a pro-Palestine student protest at the University of Texas at Austin last week is reportedly being charged with felony assault on an officer, a charge that press freedom advocates condemned as an obvious attempt to intimidate reporters. Citing court documents, a local NBC affiliate reported Monday that FOX 7 journalist Carlos Sanchez…
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In fall 2022, they were on the streets of Tehran facing down Iranian riot police. Chanting “Woman, Life, Freedom,” their voices captured the world’s attention — until their friends were shot, loved ones arrested, and they were forced to run for their lives. Less than two years later, those same protesters now face a very different kind of danger. Having survived waves of domestic repression…
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Following the arrest of over 100 students at Columbia University on April 18, Palestine solidarity encampment protests have multiplied across the US. Police crackdowns have occurred at other schools as well, including Northeastern University in Boston, where about 102 protesters were arrested. Officials at Northeastern claimed that the protest had been “infiltrated” by organizers who had “no…
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A score of Palestine solidarity protesters draped themselves in white shrouds with mock blood in a sombre “die-in” demonstration at Te Komitanga Square — the heart of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city — today as speakers urged people to take a stronger boycott against Israeli products.
The rally by hundreds of protesters marked Israel’s killing of more than 34,000 Palestinians — mostly women and children — and wounding more than 77,000 in its genocidal war on Gaza.
The war has lasted 205 days so far with no let-up in the deadly assault on the besieged enclave and protesters staged 35 events around New Zealand this week as global demonstrations continue to grow.
Opposition MPs took part in the rally, including Labour’s Shanan Halbert and Green Party’s Steve Abel and Ricardo Menéndez March.
Activist and educator Maryam Perreira called on Palestine supporters to step up their boycott and divestments pressure — “it’s working, sanctions brought down apartheid South Africa and this will bring down the Israeli genocidal regime”.
“Food not bombs for Gaza”. Video: Café Pacific
She said the courage and commitment of the Palestinian resistance had become an inspiration to the world.
Send Israeli ambassador home
Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott called for sanctions action by the New Zealand government.
He urged Palestine supporters to call on the government to:
• Send the Israeli ambassador home, and
• End the working holiday visa for 200 Israelis who come to New Zealand to rest and relax “after committing genocide in Gaza”.
Scott called on New Zealanders to email Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Immigration Minister Erica Stanford to take action.
“Try just one email and see how it goes. Then another on another topic. Then another. That’s how I started a while ago,” Scott said.
“We need a tide of emails to get them to understand that Kiwis don’t want the Israeli ambassador here.
“Neither do we want the young Israelis committing genocide today and to walk among us tomorrow.”
More than 13,000 people have signed a petition calling for the closure of the Israeli embassy in Welington.
“They can’t demonise an entire nation.” Video: Café Pacific
Superfund divestment
Scott said divestment pressure also worked – it is one of the driving forces for student protests at some 70 universities across the US over the past week with police arresting hundreds.
He spoke about the NZ government’s Superfund which has investments all over the world.
“A few years ago, they invested in Israeli banks which were investing in the building of illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestine Territories. They were involved in investing and enabling crimes against humanity,” Scott said.
“Our efforts got the NZ Superfund to divest from those banks in 2021.”
“BDS – more action call.” Video: Café Pacific
He called on people with KiwiSaver fund accounts to check them out for investments in “Israeli companies who are in any way involved in the occupation”.
“We’re now calling for everyone to boycott Israeli products — or those companies which are complicit in Israeli crimes against humanity or the illegal occupation, land theft, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and now genocide.”
Scott cited the boycott target list of the global BDS movement — Ahava (“Dead Sea mineral skin care products”), BP and Caltex, Hewlett-Packard, McDonalds, Obela Hummus and SodaStream.
“The key is for all of us to take action today. Remember — boycott, divest, sanction.”
Meanwhile, 1News reports that three New Zealand doctors planning to sail with an independent flotilla carrying aid to Gaza have had their mission “scuppered at the last minute”. They blame Israel for the delay.
The doctors — Dr Ali Al-Kenani, Dr Wasfi Shahin and Dr Faiez Idais — left for Istanbul 10 days ago where they joined other international volunteers in the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, said 1News.
Organisers of the humanitarian aid mission said the boats were set to sail under the flag of the West African nation of Guineau Bisseau but said the country had withdrawn permission to use its flag under pressure from Israel.
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As the Palestinian death toll in Gaza and the West Bank mounts daily, campus protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continue to spread across the U.S., where students and faculty often face police crackdowns. Student activists from Pomona Divest from Apartheid in southern California, The Coalition for Mutual Liberation at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and Resist WashU in St.
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As a wave of student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza continues to spread from coast to coast, schools and law enforcement have responded with increasing brutality to campus encampments. One of the most violent police crackdowns took place at Emory University in Atlanta on Thursday, when local and state police swept onto the campus just hours after students had set up tents on the quad in…
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Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side gate entrance for media workers for about an hour.
The protest climaxed a week of critical responses from commentators and critics of TVNZ’s Q&A senior reporter/presenter Jack Tame’s 45-minute interview with Israel ambassador Ran Yaakoby last Sunday which Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) secretary Neil Scott described as “a platform for propaganda to excuse the genocide happening in Gaza over the last six months”.
Waving Palestine flags and placards declaring “Bias”, “silence is complicity — free Palestine,” and “Balanced journalism — my ass,” the protesters chanted “Jack Tame, you cannot hide – you’re complicit with genocide.”
Chalked on the pavement and on the walls were slogans such as “Jack ‘Shame’ helped kill MSM”, “TVNZ stop platforming genocide and Zionism”, “TVNZ genocide apologists” and “137 journalists killed” in reference to the mainly Palestinian journalists targeted by Israeli military forces.
Across the street, a wall slogan said: “TVNZ (Q&A) broadcast Israeli lies about Gaza”. Other slogans condemned the lack of Palestinian voices in TVNZ coverage – there are about 288 Palestinian people in New Zealand, according to the 2018 Census.
Ironically, TVNZ tonight screened a rare Palestinian story — a heart-rending report about the tragic death in Gaza of a baby girl, Sabreen Joudeh, “Patience” in Arabic, who had been saved from her dying mother’s womb after an Israeli air strike on their family home.
The TVNZ report interviewed the related Gouda family in Auckland hours before Abdallah Gouda, a doctor, flew out to Turkiye to join a humanitarian aid flotilla leaving for Gaza.
PSNA’s Neil Scott criticises TVNZ coverage of Gaza. Video: Café Pacific
Criticism of ‘complicity’?
“Jack Tame, you’re a professional,” yelled PSNA secretary Scott through a loud hailer addressing TVNZ. “You know what would be set up, you have to know.
“But you allowed it to happen!”
“I don’t get you Jack, stupid or complicit? Complicit or stupid? One of the two.”
Critics are understood to be filing complaints about the alleged “one-sidedness” of the programme citing many specific criticisms.
“We’re here today because of Jack Tame’s Q&A report for TVNZ,” said Scott. Among some of his complaints were Tame:
Platform for propaganda
“Essentially, Tame gave Israel a platform for propaganda to excuse the genocide happening in Gaza over the last six months,” said Scott.
Among the contextual questions that Scott claimed Tame should have questioned Ambassador Yaakoby on were the envoy’s unchallenged claim that “1400 people had been butchered” by Hamas fighters.
In fact, the documented figure is 1139 — 695 civilians, including 36 children, and 373 security force members, according to a France 24 report citing official sources.
“The ambassador didn’t mention that more than 350 Israeli soldiers were among those killed — at their military posts,” Scott said.
“Many of the others were aged between 18 and 40 and in the military reserves.”
Also, no mention was made of the controversial Hannibal Directive which reportedly led to the Israeli military killing many of its own countrymen and women captives as the resistance fighters retreated back to Gaza.
The controversial Q&A interview with Israeli Ambassador Ran Yaakoby. Video: TVNZ
Among other responses to TVNZ’s Q&A this week, Palestine solidarity advocate and PSNA chair John Minto declared in an open letter to TVNZ published by The Daily Blog that the programme “breached all the standards of decent journalism. In other words it was offensive, discriminatory, inaccurate and grossly unfair.”
‘Unchallenged lies’
“It wasn’t journalism – it was 45-minutes of uninterrupted and unchallenged Israeli lies, misinformation and previously-debunked propaganda. It was outrageous. It was despicable,” Minto wrote.
“The country which for six months has conducted genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza was given free rein to pour streams of the most vile fabrications and misinformation against Palestinians directly into the homes of New Zealanders. And without a murmur of protest from Jack Tame.
“Even the most egregious lies such as the ‘beheaded babies’ myth were allowed to be broadcast without challenge despite this Israeli propaganda having been discredited months ago.
“The interview showed utter contempt for Palestine and Palestinians as well as New Zealanders who were assailed with this stream of racist deceits and falsehoods with Q&A as the conduit.”
Among a stream of social media comments, one person remarked “On John Tame’s YouTube channel it gained a lot of comments fairly quickly . . .
“These comments were encouraging as at least 95 percent were denouncing the interview . . . with a lot of them debunking the endless stream of blatant lies and atrocity propaganda that poured out of the Israeli ambassador’s mouth.
“Most of the posters were obviously from our country and it was a great example of how Israel’s actions have shattered its reputation with their propaganda fooling hardly anyone anymore.
“It’s a bit like a little child with chocolate all over their face denying they ate the chocolate . . . except in Israel’s case it’s civilian blood all over their face . . .
“Anyway, when I revisited the thread the comments had been purged and deleted.”
On the Q&A YouTube channel, @ZaraLomas commented: “The fact that Q&A are deleting critical comments speaks volumes about their integrity (or lack thereof), and their faith in this shocking piece of ‘journalism’.
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