Throughout history, student activism has been a driving force behind monumental change. This is why, in addition to other forms of anti-genocide campaigning for Gaza, student efforts have garnered both formidable attention and fierce backlash.
The current encampments stand as a powerful testament to this principle, as students continue to bravely protest against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, refusing to stay silent in the face of oppression.
They envision a future free from exploitation and injustice, where the liberation of Palestine represents a crucial step towards global justice.
Another exam period in their academic year
Many students are being tested academically during this examination period, but they are also undergoing another test this very second: a test of justice and morality.
Whilst we pray for their academic success, we remind ourselves that these students have passed almost every significant moral test that foreign policy has presented to the public over the past 60 years.
This includes the Vietnam War, Iraq War, the issue of relations with apartheid South Africa, and the Black civil rights movement. Students have been at the heart of almost every cause of justice from the very beginning.
Key events in recent history
1960s
Historically, during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, colleges played a crucial role in organising students and mobilising communities to combat institutional racism.
These institutions served as epicentres of activism, igniting a powerful force of young leaders who led non-violent protests, sit-ins, and freedom rides, driving the momentum that dismantled segregation and transformed the nation’s conscience.
Late 60s to early 70s
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, opposition to the Vietnam War ignited a surge of student activism across American universities.
Historians regard the state violence at Kent State University in Ohio in May 1970 — where four students were killed and nine others injured — as a pivotal moment that dramatically shifted public opinion against the Vietnam War.
Mid-70s through 80s
From the mid-1970s through to the 1980s, universities in the United States played an important role in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
Student-led campaigns calling for boycotts of companies benefiting from apartheid and sanctions against South Africa began to bear fruit.
By 1988, 156 universities and colleges had divested from companies with ties to the apartheid regime, leading to the system’s collapse a few years later.
This has always been the legacy of students.
The present day
Fast-forwarding to the present, in response to the genocide in Gaza, and in response to the massacring of children who have no anaesthetic for their injuries and unsurvivable burns but the singing of doctors to ease the pain of their dying moments, it is students who have established encampments at over 36 universities across the UK and in nearly every state in America.
Processes and outcomes
Policy changes and social system transformations in the West often occur in two different ways, sometimes intersecting.
Top-down method
The first approach is top-down, where the ruling elite and wealthy class, through their institutions and political centres, pressure the political class to adopt their preferences and demands.
Once these demands become law, the courts and executive branch enforce them, and the media markets them to the public.
Bottom-up method
The second approach is bottom-up, where political and social changes start with people on the lawn, in the encampments, on the streets, who criticise the status quo and seek change that the ruling class and the deep state do not wish to accept.
Active students fall into this category, often facing fierce and sometimes brutal resistance from those with opposing interests. But let no-one be under the illusion that these initiatives are not bearing fruit.
Successful outcomes
In Spain, the University of Barcelona has voted to cut all ties with Israel.
In Belgium, the University of Ghent (UGent) is severing ties with three Israeli educational or research institutions, which it says no longer align with UGent’s human rights policy. [1]
In Ireland, Trinity College — the country’s most prestigious university — has reportedly decided to divest from all arms companies after a sit-in by students protesting against the war on Gaza. [2]
In the US, Evergreen State College has agreed so far to divest any holdings linked with Israel.
And at least five student encampments have been voluntarily disbanded after having reached agreements and having their demands met.
Zionism is crumbling
The above is not all that has happened!
When the billions poured into universities over decades to further the poisonous Zionist ideology evaporate overnight, is this not an outcome worthy of praise?
College endowments, typically a quiet aspect of university operations, are now at the forefront of campus protests spreading across the nation.
Endowments, funded by donors who often earmark their contributions for specific goals such as scholarships, are now under intense scrutiny.
Awareness campaign like no other
Has awareness not been raised like never before?
Awareness is the first step toward any meaningful change, and the current movement is laying the groundwork for a profound transformation.
Student activists waited months before setting up encampments. They tried repeatedly to have their voices heard and their concerns addressed. They petitioned their universities, calling for divestment from Israeli corporations that facilitate the genocide.
No-one bothered to respond, and so they escalated.
What began as a humble student movement at Columbia University has now sparked a global debate that has punctuated every conversation. The entire world order is shifting, with universities at the epicentre of this movement, and students at the heart of these institutions.
The media often lacks the integrity and maturity to grasp the significance of these student movements. And sadly, some of our own brethren, who have yet to fully support these initiatives, also fail to recognise their importance, justifying their absence with a host of excuses.
The first and last to arrive
In the causes of truth, justice, and morality, there are always those who arrive first and those who arrive last.
Don’t be disheartened that you are alone.
Be empowered by remembering that you are the first. History has shown that the ruling elites, policymakers, and wealthy donors typically arrive late to stances of justice and morality.
A Gallup poll taken shortly after the shootings at Kent State University — when students were protesting the Vietnam War — found that 58 per cent of Americans believed the anti-war activists had brought the deaths upon themselves.
Today, more than half a century later, society mourns them and expresses its regrets.
Similarly, the Suffragettes were battered and brutalised, yet society — again — looks back and regrets their mistreatment.
The protests against the Iraq War were mocked and ignored, and now society regrets not listening.
Society will regret being against you
Fast forward to our times, mark our words: society will regret the violent crackdown on our protests and encampments.
They will regret CNN’s comparison of campus protests to the persecution of Jews during the 1930s in Europe, or the assumption that being anti-genocide somehow equates to being anti-Jew.
They will regret deploying more force against students than they did against actual Nazis who marched on campus and killed a woman seven years ago.
They will regret staying silent when students found their faces on the sides of trucks circling the campus, denouncing them as anti-Semites.
They will regret staying silent about the outside funding raised by pro-Israel counter-protesters at UCLA, who beat up students with sticks, threw fireworks at them, where masked Zionists released rats into their encampments, and broadcasted the sound of crying children — something the Israeli army does to lure Palestinians in Gaza out of hiding to kill them — as campus and LAPD officers stood by.
Dear students, you have a clear conscience
Having said the above, we reiterate: just as it has always been the case that the ruling elites, policymakers, and wealthy donors arrive late to stances of justice and morality, you, as students, in many instances, arrive first.
Only later, after the tear gas clears and the laughter and mockery subside, will many sit puzzled in the filth of their entirely avoidable crimes and look regretfully backward. The only ones whose consciences will be clear are you.
So, remember that if policy makers, media, and universities are harsh towards you, history will be kind to you tomorrow. And if they call you students today, you shall be called teachers tomorrow. And as believers, though we may be victims today, we shall be witnesses tomorrow.
An urgency and uniqueness in this movement
What makes this encampment movement so significant and unique is that we are not here to remember and memorialise an event from the past, of previous generations, or even events from a few weeks ago.
Instead, we are protesting a crime of the highest order that is unfolding live as we speak.
While we are certain that your encampment will end, we cannot say the same for those in Gaza. While we are confident that you will graduate with flying colours, we cannot say the same for the 15,000 children who have now been killed.
So, we will emulate the spirit of the Palestinians who, like us, are encamped. Much like them, we shall remain stationed, steadfast, and immovable until we see this movement through to its full course.
Students have correctly identified Palestinian liberation as the cause of human liberation. Palestine is the most obvious example in the world today, other than the United States, of settler-colonialism, and they see the Palestinian struggle as the last dying gasp of imperialism.
They’re trying to hold onto it, because the liberation of Palestine would mean a radically different world, a world that moves past imperialism, exploitation, and injustice.
However, the genocide has awakened a sleeping giant, a giant that shall never fall asleep again.
Source: Islam21c
Notes
And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
10 And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
this is scripture from god tells you his intentions in the book of zachariah.if you want it explained i’ll open up the secret of this passage