“We struggle together in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We commit our bodies to their liberation”.
A group of students at Princeton University began a hunger strike on Friday in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza and to pressure administrators to meet their demands.
“Princeton University students launched a hunger strike on Friday announcing they wanted to call attention to the suffering of people in Gaza and to demand the university divest from companies tied to Israel’s military campaigns,” the Palestine Solidarity Camp at Princeton said in a statement.
“Millions of Gazans continue to suffer due to ongoing siege by Israel. Two million residents now face a man-made famine. Join us as we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” the statement added.
According to the organizers, the decision to launch a hunger strike is “a response to the administration’s refusal to engage with our demands for dissociation and divestment from Israel,”.
The organizers added that the students “refuse to be silenced by the university administration’s intimidation and repression tactics.”
A group of students at Princeton University began a hunger strike in solidarity with the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip as the Israeli aggression against the Strip entered its 211th day.
“We struggle together in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We commit our bodies… pic.twitter.com/uWzpyowXas
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) May 4, 2024
“We struggle together in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We commit our bodies to their liberation,” the organizers emphasized.
The students said they would carry out the protest “until the (…) demands are met.”
The demands include meeting with students to discuss “disclosure, divestment and a full academic and cultural boycott of Israel,” a complete amnesty for protesters, and the reversal of “all campus bans and evictions of students.”
According to the Anadolu News Agency, the latest stage in the protest comes after 13 students, including 12 from Princeton University and one from the Princeton Theological Seminary, were arrested on April 30 and charged with trespassing while staging a sit-in on campus in an administrative building.
Student protests over the Gaza war have spread across the United States over the past a few weeks, with police demolishing a number of sit-in camps.
Such action by the police, at times, followed confrontations between protesters and organized groups from outside campuses, or following direct assaults by US police.
US Campus Protests Escalate: Columbia Students Take over Columbia University Building
Gaza Genocide
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 34,654 Palestinians have been killed, and 77,908 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 7,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
