Why do you think these encampments cause such an intense response from some of the most powerful people in the world?
Thank you all for being here today.
We have several members of Congress here.
Throughout history, Columbia students have contributed to the great storybook of America's life and thought.
The cherished traditions of this university are being overtaken right now by radical and extreme ideologies.
Anti-Israelic campaigns are popping up in universities all across this country.
We're here to discuss the Little Gazas that have risen up on campuses across America.
These Little Gazas are disgusting cesspools of anti-Semitic hate, full of pro-Hamas sympathizers, fanatics, and freaks.
There was a very concerted effort on behalf of members of the media to portray things a certain way and refuse to discuss Gaza.
They see something on TikTok and they're like, Israel bad and Hamas good.
Can you believe they are chanting about the infantada in New York City?
I really believe they are brainwashed.
I mean, this is literally like a demonstration in Tehran.
This is terrorism.
The war on terror has gotten to U.S.
campuses.
The universities are materially invested in the genocide in Gaza through their connections to companies that manufacture the weapons or that operate illegally throughout occupied Palestine.
We don't want our money to go towards Palestinian death.
Yeah.
There weren't a lot of human rights programs in the United States.
Columbia University had the best.
It had a good name.
And not only that, it was a home to a lot of scholarship that I looked up to, that I thought I would benefit from.
I started at Columbia University, and almost immediately afterwards, October 7 happened.
Then I didn't really have time to think about how I would be involved in the Palestinian movement.
I just had to be involved.
The other option was to be paralyzed and depressed.
before October 7th, the university was cracking down on Palestinian activism on campus.
They pushed a certain narrative, a narrative that's supporting Israel, that's vilifying the Palestinians, and October 7th just gave them more opportunity to crack down more and more on us.
♪ Colombia you will see ♪ ♪ Colombia, Colombia you will see ♪
Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, which are the main forces organizing amongst undergraduates for justice in Palestine, ended up being banned because of the university saying that they had violated certain campus policies around demonstration.
I am a Jewish student here to say, when Columbia speaks of Jewish safety, it seems that they only mean to protect Jewish students who support Israel or are silent in their dissent.
In this suspension, Columbia has made it very clear that they don't care about their students nor their speech.
The only thing they care about protecting right now is their pocketbook.
The endowment of Columbia is roughly $14 billion.
Columbia has an investment company which kind of manages where those investments go.
Around 90%, if not more, are indirect investments.
So they're stocks or they're held in companies like BlackRock.
And students have no access to what those are or are denied access based on their viewpoint, even though the university says that that isn't the case.
We do know that Columbia University has investments in General Electric, has ties to Lockheed Martin and other companies that either produce weapons or produce information technology for the occupation army.
The priority demand was divestment.
Underneath divestment was the boycott demand and disclosure.
Divestment is not difficult.
The university has divested from private prisons.
The university also divested from Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.
But of course, nobody paid attention because it's exactly in line with U.S.
geopolitical interests.
The bigger the endowment, the more you are beholden to your donors.
To break with Israel would make a lot of these donors very mad.
The board of trustees make the important decisions about the direction of the university.
They get the final say on whether a divestment happens.
People on the board of trustees are people like Jay Johnson, who is simultaneously on the board of trustees of Lockheed Martin.
If you're on the board of trustees of a weapons manufacturer, then you care that that weapons manufacturer makes profit.
You care that there is war enough, death enough, killing enough, that you can use your weapons.
The genocide didn't start on October 7th, neither did the pro-paucity movement generally on campus.
Students had already pushed divestment referendums in previous years.
We had voted on divestment referendums at various colleges within Columbia.
All of them passed.
Immediately, the president sent out an email saying, we don't have actual general consensus amongst the student body or amongst our community, in which they include in the community the Columbia alumni.
Free, free Palestine!
We had done everything we could think of.
We did peaceful protest that was ignored.
We did strategic interruptions that was ignored and punished.
Students had written up this whole divestment proposal saying that it is not only possible but would be easy and that was just dismissed out of hand.
They changed all the protest rules.
They wouldn't approve any of our events.
They would just criminalize anyone who would participate in a protest.
If they were just going to ignore us, then we had to do something that couldn't possibly be ignored by the administration.
The first hours of the encampment were just so peaceful.
It was almost anticlimactic.
It felt like they were just completely taken by surprise.
That day, April 17, was Colombia's president, Manu Shafik, her congressional hearing on antisemitism.
It was also less than a month away from graduation, so there were a lot of pressure points that the students had considered.
It really felt like a win insofar as it had sort of interrupted the normal functionings of the university and they were on their back foot in terms of what they could do to stop us.
What is this saying?
You can read it.
Here you go.
I thought you might provide some more information as you're walking up to the cap net.
Oh, the information's all here, and this is exactly what was said to you earlier.
So, um, so could you perhaps explain why you're being subject to interim suspension for a violation of demonstration policy for which the stated punishment is a written warning?
So everything is stated in the letter for you.
So I'm going to encourage you to read it.
You actually don't sign any of the rules by how they appear.
I'm just going to encourage you to read the letters, OK?
I'm looking at it.
Who do we speak with to get the answers to these questions?
So earlier, I was here, and I encouraged you all to come talk with me at any time.
So I'm happy to have that conversation now.
You can come with us if I don't have a conversation.
We can have a conversation to the side if you'd like to.
Excuse me.
Anything you'd like to say?
Why do you need to hide it from the students that you're threatening with suspension?
This is not a threat.
We're giving you a letter that's providing some information.
What does that say?
So, basically... Basically, it's telling us to disperse, that we have an unauthorized encampment and disruption on Columbia's campus.
So, basically, they're telling everybody that there's going to be an interim measure of suspending us.
Now, they're accusing us of violating a policy, um, for which the punishment is a written warning on your first offense.
All we are doing here is practicing our First Amendment right in what the university has designated the protest zone on campus.
Uh, so the idea that any of us could be in term suspended...
which requires a danger to the community, specifically in the code of conduct, a physical danger to the community, is absurd.
People are singing songs and grieving and protesting because it's our loved ones in Palestine that are dying.
We need free Palestine!
We're here for the Palestinians who are dying right now as we speak, because Gaza is burning.
And we hold the privilege in our hands.
So don't forget it for a second.
And don't let any of those people, don't let any of these administrators tell you otherwise.
Don't let public safety or NYPD fear monger you, or intimidate you, or silence you.
We will not move!
Israel has destroyed every single university in Gaza.
Oh!
The most important weapon for any nation is its educated, conscious youth, who will naturally build it.
Israel targets schools, universities, cultural centers, cultural institutions, theaters, offices, because the most important weapon for any nation is education.
Israel is one of 17.
Israel... Israel destroyed us.
The International Court of Justice accepted South Africa's claims that this was plausibly a genocide and ordered Israel to stop all genocidal acts, an order that it has destroyed.
No armed attack.
on a state territory, no matter how serious, even an attack involving atrocity crimes, can provide any justification for breaches to the Convention.
Israel's response to the 7th of October 2023 attack has crossed this line.
I think there are people in Israel for whom genocide is a plan.
They think that if they inflict enough suffering on Palestinians in Gaza, enough death, that the Palestinians will leave and depart, and the land will be finally clear of them, and Israel can take it over.
We came here with one clear purpose.
The purpose is to settle the entire Gaza Strip.
If you can enter the camp, please join us.
We need you to pull out your phone.
And call every motherfucker on this campus.
is right at the gates in riot gear trying to sweep the encampment.
The entire encampment voted unanimously that we will not leave until we win all of our demands.
They want to wear us out.
They want to depend on us going home.
They want to depend on us giving up.
But that will not happen!
The only weapon they have is fear.
And when we call their motherfucking bluff, they have nothing!
Hope is a discipline.
Hope is our most powerful weapon.
Keep Palestine in our hearts.
There is nothing that can stop us.
For Hussein, for Palestine, with love.
This once prestigious university's reputation is just going down the toilet because of all of the anti-Semitism that's flourishing on campus.
I think one of the excellent recommendations of our anti-Semitism task force is that they have said that if you are going to chant, it should only be in a certain place, so people who don't want to hear it are protected from having to hear it.
When mobs or people are shouting, from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free, or long live the infitada, are those anti-Semitic statements?
Yes or no?
It's not how you feel.
I hear them as such.
Some people don't.
We have sent a clear message.
So is that yes?
That is anti-Semitic behavior.
And you should be there should be some consequences to that anti-Semitic behavior.
We're in agreement.
Yes?
Yes.
Thank you.
I yield my time.
We are prepared to bring you back.
if we don't see more tangible progress.
The people united will never be defeated.
There was a lot of confusion in the moment.
I didn't really know what to do except make sure that we had evidence.
They just arrested our first group.
We have countless people prepared to take their place in the attachment.
No!
Free people's rights.
All of our main organizers had been arrested, and there really wasn't enough people to fill in the space.
When the second encampment did begin, it began with community members who we didn't know, and they didn't really know us very well.
The presence of the community was really what allowed for the longevity of the encampment.
I found myself in Palestine for some time, and that led to, I think, my further politicization.
I was all throughout the West Bank, so I was actually based in al-Khaliq, Hebron, but I had the opportunity to travel throughout Jerusalem, Jenin, Nablus.
The thing that hurt me most was how constrained life is under occupation.
The conditions of life create just perpetual squashing of people.
I had friends who were born and raised in parts of Hebron that are currently occupied by settlers who have witnessed their closest family members being murdered.
Whose parents fear for them knowing that they're in vicinity to settlers.
who haven't been able to visit Jerusalem, who haven't been able to see Al-Aqsa, which is so, so important to Palestinian people, despite the fact that tourists like myself can visit whenever we wish.
I left with a lot of messages from friends that I had made in Palestine who asked to not be forgotten.
You're not ashamed!
You're not ashamed, you bastards!
Bastards!
You're not ashamed!
We've tried to come to a middle ground with the administration to protect the safety of the students, to prevent the NYPD from coming onto campus, yet the university refused to do that.
We were in one police plaza, which is where they put all the people arrested for protest violations.
There was all these, like, reporters swarming around.
We were like, wow, well, hey, we did the thing.
We got, like, a great image.
Like, this was a really powerful protest.
And I remember my arresting officer came out.
He was like, you know, free my man, free my man.
It's like, you're a police officer.
You can't say free my man if you're the person who arrested me.
But he's like, hey, you did a good thing, young man.
Like, you're famous now.
I had no idea what this guy was talking about.
I was like, was this big news?
Did something big happen?
Pro-Palestinian protests are spreading at college campuses in the United States and around the globe.
I was seeing all these other encampments just popping off around the country.
I felt tremendously proud, but also quite anxious that we had been given this very historical task to try to advance the struggle in some small way, a significant way.
We were all in jail.
I don't think any of us really could have imagined the scope.
People really wanted to know how they could get things up and running, how they could start an encampment.
It resonated a lot with the students because I think it gave them a really concrete and direct way to place pressure in order to advance the Palestinian struggle.
The student movement really breathes life back into the larger movement for Palestine.
After six months of mass protests and organizing, it was this encampment at Columbia that changed the whole terrain.
I think that is for several reasons.
The media loves talking about campuses.
How could students at an Ivy League college be arrested on their own campus?
On the other side, their parents work in CNN or work at Fox News or work at the UN or the State Department.
This is the future generation, and the future generation is risking arrest, suspension, expulsion for Palestine.
They were terrified about what these encampments represented for the future of this country.
This is virtue signaling for white, woke kids that have no idea what they're talking about.
Young people are being influenced by those who are professional at radicalizing our children.
People that are aggressive, that are spewing hate.
It is raw hatred towards Jews.
Anti-Semitic mobs have taken over leading universities.
This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s.
We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent, but order must prevail.
Those individuals need to be deported immediately.
There is an appropriate time for the National Guard.
This may be Biden's Vietnam.
But the sad part about it is, if the numbers are changing, they're having an impact.
Bravery is very contagious.
We kind of watched Colombia in awe, and we knew we were next.
Viva, viva, Palestina!
No one expected it to be as big as it was, and it got big fast.
The sheer joy of community that I felt.
For the first time since October 7th, I felt so happy.
knowing that Columbia's in an encampment, and Georgia State's in an encampment, and San Diego State's in an encampment, and feeling that every university came together to say, this is wrong, and we're gonna sit here until it's fixed.
I remember feeling very happy to see that a lot of the students were not Palestinian.
And it was very inspiring.
It kind of gave me the kick that I needed to keep going.
To see how many people in there were saying, I just learned about this.
I'm sorry, but I'm here.
There is hope.
Yo, we got Yale holding it down right now on live.
Make some noise.
And as they continue with their encampment, we will continue as well.
So be loud.
Y'all can be louder.
Let's go.
I don't think that actually took.
Now it's rewinding.
Sorry, I really fucked it up.
How are you saying something and then you do something different?
That, that, that.
There you go.
Yeah, that's what I just did.
I did it too fast.
Ay, ay, ay, ay.
There was a proposal made that the negotiation be shared at assembly every day.
Raise your hand if you're in favor of that.
Beautiful.
So we will be doing that going forward.
Thank you.
Swede and I, every day, we spend hours with the administration negotiating on your behalf to get our demands.
I was approached the night of the encampment that I would be the person communicating with the administration.
The organizers trusted me, given my background, in terms of, like, working in diplomacy, they're at the British Embassy or here at the UN.
We discussed who's best to support me, and we felt that Sweden is the perfect person.
The university wanted to shut down the encampment in any way that it could.
When it first started, they were like, let's not let them bring in water, let's shut down all of the gates, let's not let them bring in tents, let's not let them bring in blankets, because it was cold, it was freezing.
They underestimated the will of the students.
They literally, like, feel that these are just kids.
Through my conversation, I just felt how much the university is detached from reality.
What university in the world want to invest in weapon manufacturers?
Why would you do that?
You're concerned with education.
Like, we're literally giving you back the university to be a moral university.
Every time in the negotiations when we told them that, they would say, like, oh, you're overestimating your power or your influence.
But then after the fourth day, they were just, like, so silent.
Because clearly it's a global movement.
I remember, like, telling him, like, at this point, there are 60 universities setting up encampments across the United States.
They're just, like, waiting to hear what would happen at Columbia.
They were like, this is our deal.
You have until 12 a.m.
If you don't take the deal, the National Guard or the police would come in.
We left the negotiations.
We were, like, just managing what we want to do.
I verified with a couple of Congress people, and they said, it's an empty threat.
We called the governor.
The governor said, there's no intention of sending any National Guard.
We called their bluff.
But not at any moment we are trusting the administration, even when they are conceding to our demands.
Free, free Palestine!
Free, free, free Palestine!
NYPD, we know you!
In the first few days of the Columbia encampment, I think I was outside there maybe 20 out of 24 hours a day, keeping up the chanting, keeping up the energy so that the students would always feel our presence and always feel strengthened by it.
is visible to the entire world.
So let's raise our voices, keep our
Demanding strong with us, chanting with us, demanding diversity with us, demanding energy with us, demanding freedom for Palestine with us.
There were all-day, all-night rallies outside the gates of Colombia, making sure the encampments exist for longer, that they could reach more of their political demands.
It helped get food into the encampment, it helped get supplies into the encampment, but most importantly, it amplified what was happening.
In many ways, it also sent a message to the students, you're not alone, the movement is not going to abandon you.
When the first arrests were made, me and my friends came to the second encampment that was set up after running a picket around the students who started to first collect.
And when it was time to go to sleep that night, I found myself feeling so anxious and unable to rest, knowing that there was work to be done, I guess.
And so I came to the supply chart and have basically been working there ever since.
alumni have donated so much, restaurants in the area have donated so much, to the point where we have an abundance of food and supplies that we're redirecting to organizations in Harlem and also to other encampments in New York.
♪ Leave the sun with a scowl of grace on you ♪ ♪ For I did murder that dear little girl ♪
Uh, roti roll.
These ones are chicken masala.
Do you eat chicken?
I do.
Maybe I'll come back.
Yeah, come back.
I'll see you.
Mic check.
If everyone could please gather around for today's updates coming out of Gazzeh.
The civil defense announces that the number of recovered bodies at Nasr Hospital as mass graves as a result of the barbaric Zionist siege on the hospital and indiscriminate killing of men and women and children
has risen to 342 martyrs just today.
A community member here who's already lost tens of family members in Gaza lost another one last night to the most recent airstrike.
So I just want to remind everyone that what's happening in Gaza is not far removed from us whatsoever.
I was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus in Syria.
My family's history in Palestine actually goes back to as long as my grandparent could trace it.
They lived in a very small village right next to Tiberias.
Mostly they were farmers.
My grandmother, she used to tell us that she had Jewish neighbors.
They would share a piece of land where they would farm it.
Tiberias was one of the first cities that the Zionists targeted in 1948 with ethnic cleansing.
In April 1948, a month before the Nakba, the Zionist militias, they burned one of their villages.
When they heard the news about it, they had to leave immediately.
Some of the men went to fight.
Big families, they had to go to Syria.
My grandmother, she was pregnant at that time.
She had to walk 40 miles.
She gave birth on the way.
When they arrived in the refugee camp, they thought it's just a matter of days until they would go back.
They did not want to be killed because they heard about the horror stories across Tiberias.
My dad was born in a tent.
His family lived in that tent until like mid-70s when they upgraded to small structures.
In the 90s, they finally kind of like had concrete buildings.
To us, it was always a temporary home until we go back to Palestine.
That's why very few families actually invested in their houses.
Not necessarily because they don't have the means, but because investing more in these houses means that they may forget Palestine.
My parents, they've never been to Palestine.
They live in Germany.
They are trying to learn the language just to get the citizenship so they can go visit Palestine.
And it's kind of like heartbreaking because my dad barely can read Arabic to study German.
The Zionists were coming to the encampment and saying, I'm gonna come in and rape the women in there.
I'm gonna rape you.
They would come and they would scream like you're all terrorists.
They would throw things into the encampment.
Where are you from?
Where are your ancestors from?
Why are you even here?
You're just another dummy, right?
Another stupid guy.
and nothing, not a peep from our administration about our safety and our protection.
Get out of here!
This is a terrorist!
Fuck you!
The Zionists came with weapons, and that's when it became extremely scary.
Anger flared at the line of barricades that has been set up at the pro-Palestinian encampment on the campus.
Our dean watched as the Zionists came and beat up students from the balcony of Royce Hall.
I had that same feeling I had when I was kicked off the bus in Palestine.
No one is coming to save you.
Not even the people who took an oath that they were going to come and save you.
What gives you insight into what the universities were doing during these protests and specifically with Columbia?
Well, I worked in the top office there representing the communications from one of their schools.
I was in this role when October 7th happened.
In the early months of the crisis, I drafted communications that attempted to contextualize the Israeli-Palestine situation.
I obviously wanted to acknowledge the tragedy of any Israelis who lost their lives on October 7th, but I also wanted to bring in the fact that, you know, a number of Palestinians had been killed at the hand of Israel in the months leading up to October 7th.
I was told to take anything about previous Palestine struggles out of the communications.
And for whatever reason, in the document, the word Palestine and Palestinian were struck out, but the word Hamas was kept.
I asked for clarification from that, and I was told that for the time being, we were going to stick to the word Hamas, we weren't going to use the word Palestine and Palestinian.
I was approached on campus by several students.
They were concerned that the deaths of Palestinians would be minimized, if not just completely ignored in the statements coming out from the school.
And I asked them what they wanted me to do.
And they said, could you just please start putting some numbers into these statements?
You know, absolutely acknowledge the Israelis who have lost their lives, but also could you please put in the number of Palestinians who lost their lives, just so people can see?
I brought that back to my boss, and what they said to me was this, who are these students?
And I said, well, I didn't get their names.
And they said, no, no, no.
Who were they?
And I said, well, it was a couple of women.
There was a man.
They said, do I have to spell it out for you?
What did they look like?
What color was their skin?
Were they wearing scarves?
And I didn't feel comfortable answering that question.
Then I was admonished and told to not fall into a, quote, quote, skewed perspective that I would be getting from students throughout this crisis.
Just to make sure, community guidelines.
This is an anti-violence community building zone.
No smoking, no drinking, no speaking to cops, no engaging with counter-protesters.
Hi, we're returning.
Okay, yeah, come on in.
Israel was a very big part of our family.
In my childhood, I had this idea that in order for Jews to be safe, they had to have a state.
As I was in college, one thing that everybody would say was, free Palestine, the Israeli settler state.
And I'd be like, I don't really understand, like, why everybody is just erasing Jewish history and, like, needlessly attacking Jews.
The more you learn about it, the more you learn that that's not actually the argument.
The issue is not the existence of Jewish people in historic Palestine.
It's the process of settler colonialism and the displacement of the Palestinian people and the genocide of the Palestinian people.
I started to really question.
I was learning things which were not going to be very acceptable to large portions of my family.
It almost feels like you are having to sort of reject a part of yourself.
The more that I became sort of disillusioned with the project of Zionism, that happened at the moment where I sort of started to get into Jewish studies.
Like, you know, I was teaching myself how to read Hebrew.
I was doing, like, Torah study.
It became really important to me that I actually do have, like, a positive connection to Judaism.
Joining us now, a lead negotiator for the student coalition at Columbia University, Mahmoud Khaliola.
Mahmoud, thank you so much for taking a few moments with us.
Mahmoud, as you know, threats and fear of violence have driven many Jewish students from the campus at Columbia.
What do you say to people who say the campus is now an unsafe place for Jewish students?
Um, once again, I would say that the liberation of Palestine and the Palestinians and the Jewish people are intertwined.
They go hand in hand.
Anti-Semitism and any other form of racism has no place on this campus and in this movement.
It's completely farcical to imply that in any way, like, Jewish people were, you know, being persecuted or being driven off the encampment.
We don't tolerate that.
We're internationalists.
We believe that this is a struggle that unites all people.
So when I watch these media reports of rampant anti-Semitism, and I hear school officials give speeches or present statements on it, they're avoiding giving any example, because I really feel like there's a dearth of these examples.
I mean, they're there on the scene, they have cameras set up, they have reporters there 24-7.
So where are the soundbites of the people saying the anti-Semitic things?
Today, Jewish students at Columbia University spoke out saying that they feel unsafe.
I've seen them parrot foul anti-Semitic tropes.
There's a certain minority of students who feel threatened by the very presence of people who are advocating for stopping a genocide.
And those people are listened to much, much more than the majority of the people who are advocating for cutting ties with the genocidal regime.
I have never felt more proud to be Jewish
and more in line with the values of my faith than when I was being taken out of Colombia's lawns with my hands dip-tied behind my back in order to push our university to divest from genocide, apartheid, and occupation in Palestine.
I was actually assigned to investigate what were the anti-Semitic comments that were happening, what was anti-Semitism, how could we combat it, what's going to be our messaging.
What I found is that these claims of anti-Semitism were really being driven by the pro-Israel student groups that were on campus, or pro-Israel faculty.
Show your fucking face!
You are not New Yorkers!
New York hates you!
Go to God!
You are not Americans!
No, I can't.
What they were classifying as anti-Semitism was any criticism of Israel whatsoever, and would go even further than that.
I've read reports of people claiming anti-Semitism because they heard the word Palestine or the word Palestinian, or that there was a Palestinian student enrolled in her class.
They saw these things as hate crimes and hate speech, and they were cataloged as such by the schools.
We are here, and if anyone here disagrees with me, you can tell me, but I think we are here because we are Jews, not just because we happen to be, because that is part of who we are, to fight for liberation of every human being, to know that every human being is a divine image.
That is what we're doing right now.
And we are separating ourselves from people who are somehow incapable of seeing that.
We are fighting for the divine spark for the Tzelem Elohim in every person.
You're all so amazing.
And it's an honor to be here with you.
If you're familiar with the Havdalah service, please sing loudly and proudly.
If you're not, please sing loudly and proudly.
It's very Jewish to not know the words and not know everything, but you'll catch on.
Baruch atah Adonai Hamavdil ben kodesh lechol!
Amen!
I'm so proud of you.
I'm so excited.
Dude, your photos have been insane.
I do it all for you.
I've been watching you.
I do it all for you.
Those of us who have been suspended don't want to, like, jeopardize ourselves more, but we also really want to be in community, so we've been talking to... I would get expelled.
There's a possibility of, like, a two-saters situation.
Look, it's been two days.
We've taken five buildings, Hamilton, Lowe,
Avery, Fairweather, and Matt.
If you've got the administration figured right, they're up to calling the cops.
And when they do, we want to be here.
We are no longer asking but demanding an end to all affiliation and ties with the Institute for Defense and Analysis that has resulted in the slaughter and maiming of thousands of Vietnamese and Americans.
In 68, the students at Columbia took over the campus, mainly in protest of the war in Vietnam, specifically for Columbia to divest.
We can tell how much this university is hooked into servicing the corporations and hooked into servicing the war machine.
The occupation of Hamilton Hall was really led by black students.
The black students of Columbia University
joined by a few members of the black community have been in Hamilton Hall for 56 hours.
Morale is high.
Learning from the lessons of history, from the civil rights movement, from the women's suffrage movement, from the labor movement, from the abolitionist movement, that you have to be willing to be beaten, to be arrested, to be killed, is what made those student protesters understand that they were standing on the shoulders of history.
I found a student who was dazed, bleeding profusely from the forehead.
The police refused to let me pass.
I said, this man is wounded, he needs help.
They said, get out.
The students were successful in changing a lot of the culture at Columbia University.
Columbia did re-examine its position on what was happening in the war in Vietnam.
And this also led to the New York City Police Department ban on Columbia campus.
Columbia talks about how great that was, how we were a place of critical thinking and free thought, how many leaders and scholars came out of those encampments and those protests, that they are themselves college professors and doctors and lawyers.
They've revised it to say it was okay then, but not okay now.
students and other international students take in speaking out and being vocal on this?
Of course, a lot of the Palestinian students here, they feel very uncomfortable, very, very uncomfortable participating and protesting the genocide of their people.
That's why we are very grateful for everyone on campus for protesting on our behalf.
And what would happen to you if you were deported?
I will live.
We will continue to live.
The Palestinian people have been
under occupation, ethnic cleansing, and all sorts of crimes since 1948.
And we prevailed.
We will prevail no matter what will happen.
The eyes of the nation and the eyes of the globe are on Colombia.
We will not be giving in.
We will not give them what they want.
We shouldn't stop here, because the people in Gaza are under bombs, and here we are under disciplinary charges.
We were attempting to bargain with the university in good faith, but they were stonewalling us.
They were surveilling the negotiations, though they begged us to keep things in confidence.
The administration, for example, they sent in a man who's dressed as a janitor, but he would just put bugs in the room.
I think part of that was to intimidate us into thinking that you have to sign now, you have to agree now, or else you get nothing.
They called in members of the faculty to come talk to us, and there was a woman who began by saying, you know, I'm Syrian, I understand, I come from war.
You really have to ask yourself, at which point are you doing this for yourself and not for the people in Gaza?
They did read a best and final offer, which was much worse than anything that they had previously offered.
They wanted to offer financial transparency on direct investments, which are a minority of total investments of Columbia.
Academic freedom would be nothing more than a statement.
They offered to divest from any company that was found guilty of committing human rights violations, which sounds good, but it would be a recommendation to a body which is non-binding.
And that non-binding recommendation would then be deliberated upon, at which point that body would then deliver a second non-binding recommendation.
So we're now two non-binding recommendations deep.
They often told us that, you know, you take a deal here, other universities are watching.
And that's why it was particularly important for us that we not take a deal, a shitty deal, an empty deal, that was nothing more than a statement that we knew would never really yield a result.
The only portion of their proposal that was giving us anything were the resilience funds or the scholarships, which are a slap in the face.
It's really an insult to everyone's intelligence to suggest that a scholarship would be the remedy for participating in a genocide.
If you were to ask a person in Gaza who's surviving a genocide, would you rather the bombs stop, or would you rather I continue bombing you, but you can also come to my school?
The mediators were trying to convince us that we should take this deal.
But where it would place us is we know that in a few months, it's not going to go through the Board of Trustees, and then students are going to want to protest again.
But you made everybody sign the attestation form as they were getting off the encampment.
So actually, they can't protest without risking further disciplinary sanctions in a way that they hadn't before.
So you've closed off all routes to protest, and you've also effectively ensured that we're actually not getting any of our demands met.
It's signing on nothing.
They threatened with disciplinary if we don't agree to this.
At that point, Sueda did most of the talking.
She was like raging against them.
I just opened the door and called Sueda.
Let's go.
Earlier today, President Shafik sent out an email announcing the end of negotiations and declared explicitly that the university will not divest from Israel.
The university has conducted itself with obstinacy and arrogance, and the students refuse to trade in the blood of Palestinians.
were now six hours past the administration's deadline for student protesters to leave the encampment or face consequences.
But most students that we spoke to said they're not going anywhere.
When the police give the trespass warning, turn your phone on airplane mode and power it off.
Turn your phone on airplane mode and power it off.
We needed to place pressure again on the administration to reopen negotiations.
We knew that we needed to escalate further.
The idea of an occupation of Hamilton Hall along the lines of the 1968 protests was something that people were always sort of considering.
When we felt that there was no further progress to be made in negotiations and any engagement with administration, then it seemed like the perfect time.
Bruce Hall, when it first happened, I think was one of the most joyful moments of my life.
The picket was so strong, the chants were so beautiful.
It was just like an electric, electric moment.
Hinz Hall is named after Hind Rajab, who was a six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza who was assassinated by the Israeli terrorist forces.
She was in a car fleeing Gaza City with an aunt, an uncle, and some cousins when they were shot at.
She was alive while the rest of the family was killed, and she called the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
They dispatched an ambulance to save her.
The ambulance and the medics inside were also intentionally killed by the occupation.
My dear.
My dear?
Yes.
And they're still in the car?
Yes.
Stay in the car.
I'm going to open the door for you.
I'm going to talk to you.
I don't want to turn off the phone, okay?
Okay.
The door won't open.
Is it moving or standing?
Should we get someone out of it?
It's moving.
Is it very close?
Very close.
We don't want to be scared.
I want you with me.
I'm with you, my love.
I'm with you.
I won't leave you.
Even if you come to a place like this, I won't leave you.
Leave the door open.
I won't leave you.
I'm with you.
Mom, are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me?
No, my love, I swear I'm with you.
I'm not leaving you.
I'm talking to you.
I don't want to leave you.
I'm with you.
355 bullets were used on the car.
That hint that I jumped was in.
She was six.
She was a baby.
And so many other babies in Gaza have been killed.
So the Palestinian students in Kuwait wanted to honor Hint and named the hall after her.
Which isn't sufficient, really, but it was, I think, a good way to
bring her to life on US campuses.
You think that's her story?
Because we will honor all the martyrs.
All the parents, mothers, fathers.
We will honor all the martyrs.
All the children, sons, and daughters.
We will honor all the martyrs.
All the parents, mothers, fathers.
We will honor all the martyrs.
All the children, sons, and daughters.
The first few hours of the day, it was quiet around us.
We felt like, OK, Colombia didn't raid us last night.
They're going to wait it out a little bit.
And we just thought the more time that we had, the more it was likely that we could get the negotiations up and running and reestablish that bargaining chip, which was the whole point of taking Hintz Hall.
The next 20 hours afterwards were kind of a whirlwind.
We are here today to update New Yorkers about the ongoing situation at Columbia University and our plans to protect students, our staff, and the public.
They're not here to promote peace or unity or allow a peaceful displaying of one's voice, but they're here to create discord and divisiveness.
This must end now.
The admin wanted to talk again.
They were just pleading with us to take the deal.
You have one final offer to take the deal.
Just take this deal or else.
There was no reason to take such a bad deal.
They said that the NYPD would be coming.
Standing up for justice, we shall not be moved.
That's like a tree that's standing by the law.
Journalists were moved by the police into other university buildings.
I don't want us to witness how they treat resenters to genocide!
It really was like a scene from a movie.
And, like, I couldn't watch the video footage that came out of that night.
Just really keeps occurring to me, like, why do they do this to us?
These students aren't doing anything bad.
In fact, they're doing something everybody should be doing.
When Hind Hall was raided, it gave a green light to university administrations to do the same.
We just had an explosion here.
They just tear gassed people.
They're coming.
You don't need a gun.
They got the rust leafles out, ready to go off on some college kids.
These police officers out here today, that's thousands of students scholarships.
Police say 120 protesters were taken away in zip ties.
After hundreds of police used flashbang grenades, rubber bullets, and tear gas in a face-off with protesters who chanted, we are not leaving, you don't scare us.
Our dean came on the loudspeaker and said, this is your warning.
If you do not leave now, they're going to break into the encampment and arrest all of you, and we will not stop them.
They started shooting rubber bullets and throwing mace bombs, and they infiltrated the encampment.
One of our students had a chest contusion from being shot in the chest by a rubber bullet without even making contact with an officer.
At their request, we went in and conducted an operation to allow Columbia University to remove those who have turned the peaceful protest into a place where anti-Semitism and anti-Israel attitudes were pervasive.
Our job is to keep people in our city safe, and the NYPD is ready to do their job anywhere and anytime we're called upon.
or try to lock us out.
But the NYPD and the people of the city of New York will never be locked out, and we'll always work together to keep our city safe.
These past two weeks have been among the most difficult in Colombia's history.
The issues that are challenging us, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, anti-Semitism, and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias, have existed for a long time.
And Columbia, despite being a remarkable institution, cannot solve them single-handedly.
What we can do is be an exemplar of a better world, where people who disagree do so civilly, recognize each other's humanity, and show empathy and compassion for one another.
We have a lot to do, but I am committed to working at it every day and with each of you to rebuild community on our campus.
We're just getting started.
We are creative, we have a cause that we believe in, and we're gonna fight till the end.
Struggling for Palestine is just like breathing, because the moment that we stop advocating and fighting for Palestine, it's the moment we die.
We will resist it until Palestine is free.
We're not trying to slow anybody down.
The individual that I spoke to was intentionally blocking people from entering.
OK.
I can talk to them.
Please do.
All right.
Thank you.
As we prepare to begin a new semester.
While the students have no universities left.
These are now fundamental challenges to the legitimacy of the whole system.
And you have to think about the role that universities play in the United States, particularly the elite universities.
These are the factories that produce the people that end up running the media, running the political system, running the corporations.
If you lose control of them, then ultimately you lose control of elite opinion.
Israel cannot exist without U.S.
weapons, without U.S.
money, without U.S.
political cover, without U.S.
intelligence, and if the masses of people in the United States are rapidly dropping their support of the Israeli cause, this is a significant defeat.
Thank you, the students of Columbia University.
Thank you.
We love you.
But when I saw him in the middle of May, he gave me goosebumps.
He made me so happy.
I never missed a single video of students talking about Palestine, educating and teaching about Palestine and the Palestinian cause.
The political, the knowledgeable, the historical, the real.
One of the most important things that opened my eyes to the world.
I'm sorry.
There is no price worthy of this death and this slavery, except for the price of freedom.
The price of the collapse of the world, the collapse of the students, the collapse of the families, the collapse of the consumers, the collapse of the people, the collapse of the children, the collapse of the teenagers, was an expensive price.
There were 50,000 martyrs and the destruction of a country that took decades to build.
We were evicted from our lands more than a year ago.
I haven't seen my house for more than a year.
But this price made me feel that I was not alone.
This is the beginning of the end to the occupation.
The face may be very long, but it's definitely the start of the decline.
The world has waken up.
When the occupation ends, the first thing I would do, definitely going back to Palestine,
I have this dream of mine of jumping off the wall of Akka into the sea.
Then continue building a state for everyone.
A state that embraces all its citizens.
A state that values human lives.
One day, Inshallah.
Come on.
you