Intifadauprising, was written on one of the banners that depicted the occupiers, who were covered in Kefije cloths Hamilton Hall hanging out of a window. On Tuesday night they stormed the historic building on the grounds of Columbia University in Manhattan. They christened it with a second protest banner Hind’s Hall to Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl who died in the war in Gaza.
Late in the evening, hundreds of New York police, wearing full protective gear, began evacuating the building. This ended the attempt by a self-proclaimed peace movement to escalate a protest that was beginning to show signs of fatigue.
In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, demonstrators lowered the US flag Star Spangled Banner replaced it with the Palestinian flag – a provocation that led to skirmishes with the police. In Richmond, law enforcement officers responded with tear gas as water and objects were thrown at them. On the opposite side of the country, in Portland, activists barricaded themselves in a library at Oregon State University.
Examination time and harsh sanctions
Further south, however, the occupation of a California university building ended this morning with the arrest of 25 people. The ranks of demonstrators also thinned at Columbia University, and the protest camps in Yale and Pittsburgh completely disbanded. At most universities, teaching time has ended and exam season has begun. Harsh sanctions from university administrations appear to be helping to gradually bring the protests to a halt. Only at Brown University did the protesters force the administration to agree to consider their demands.
The occupiers of the Hamilton Hall The university management threatened with expulsion on Tuesday. They are said to belong to a subgroup of the protest movement Columbia University Apartheid Divest calls. Both with her name and with her choice of Hamilton Hall and the date of occupation, she tries to remember the protest history of the elitist school Ivy League to connect.
:Demonstrators barricade themselves in university buildings
Universities in the USA are taking tougher measures against the pro-Palestinian protests, police have taken away hundreds, and the first students at Columbia University are being suspended. But the situation is not calming down. On the contrary.
The Hamilton Hall had become the focus of resistance to the Vietnam War in 1968. Exactly 56 years ago, on April 30, police stormed the building through underground tunnels. In the 1980s, Columbia students led the call to boycott South Africa’s racist apartheid regime. They recently achieved that University sold its shares in US prison operators and abandoned investments in oil and gas companies.
Now the demonstrators are demanding that universities also cut their academic and economic ties with Israel. This applies to cooperation programs such as joint study programs, in the case of Columbia with the University of Tel Aviv.
Demand for orientation on the BDS list
The demands are not the same everywhere; in Columbia, reference is made to a vote in the student body last year: the university should withdraw its assets from all companies that profited from Israeli occupation and the war.
The university should orientate itself on the lists of BDSshort for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. The controversial Palestinian organization advocates sanctions against Israel and the boycott of companies that are said to be involved in violations of international law. BDS recommends investors to sell the shares of a whole range of companies, from weapons manufacturers such as General Dynamics to automobile companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and Ford to the construction equipment company Caterpillar, which sell military equipment, trucks, off-road vehicles and bulldozers to the Israeli army.
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:Israel should be prepared to make extensive concessions
Israel’s government is giving Hamas a “last chance” for a ceasefire before the announced ground offensive in Rafah. Reports now provide details of the negotiations. Netanyahu makes it clear that he is under attack – “with a deal or without.”
Their lists also include companies such as Google parent company Alphabet, which supplies cloud services and artificial intelligence technology to Israel, or banks with connections to Israel, from BNP Paribas to Deutsche Bank to Allianz.
Model of BDS and the demonstrators at US universities is the wave of international sanctions against the former apartheid government of South Africa. However, economists pretty much agree that divestment campaigns are not particularly successful at putting companies or even countries under economic pressure. Their greatest impact is to create publicity.
There are exceptions: The prison operators in the The USA, for example, had to struggle with rising capital costs, but only when large banks also said goodbye as shareholders. On the other hand, for the two trillion dollar Alphabet Group, for example, it would not even be noticeable if all US universities were to sell shares.
However, a boycott of Israel would have the potential to have a negative impact on universities. They manage considerable fortunes; the ten richest currently value them at $260 billion, accumulated through donations and student fees – to finance research, salaries, building maintenance and, last but not least, scholarships. Columbia University has $13.6 billion in assets invested in various funds and companies, where exactly is not known. Exiting banned stocks would result in higher administrative costs and potentially lower returns.
Israel’s right to exist is being called into question
The US universities, which are geared towards international competition, are also dependent on further contributions; they could ill afford to alienate pro-Israel donors. The Unilever Group, as its subsidiary, experienced a counter-boycott Ben & Jerry’s no longer wanted to sell their ice cream in occupied territories. Should Columbia University Apartheid Divest enforce, something similar could happen to your school.
The protest group presents itself as peaceful, denies being anti-Semitic and asserts that it is committed to combating Islamophobia, homophobia and a whole range of other evils. With the Intifadabanner at Hamilton Hall, at least part of the group appears to be calling for violence against Israel and against Jews. Jewish students had previously reported hostility and threats.
An article in the university magazine in which the movement introduced itself last November, signed by 94 other organizations, reads anything but peaceful. The group implicitly questions Israel’s right to exist and holds the country responsible for the current situation. Neither Hamas nor their terrorist attack from Israel with 1,200 deaths is worth a line for them. The article begins with a quote from Ghassan Kanafani, one of the most famous Palestinian writers. And spokesman for the terrorist group PFLP, which, among other things, carried out a massacre at Tel Aviv airport in 1972 with 26 dead and 80 injured.
The Republicans are trying to exploit the incidents at the universities politically. On Tuesday, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona had to testify before a Senate committee. Anti-Semitism at universities is abhorrent, he said. There were 130 investigations into complaints of harassment. The protests are now catching up with President Joe Biden, who stayed away from the anti-Vietnam protests at Hamilton Hall in 1968. The new York Times recalled Biden’s description that he was studying law at the time and was wearing a jacket.
Having now reached the highest office, Biden is now trying to find a middle ground and show understanding for both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators: He pursues Israel-friendly policies, which earns him criticism from the young and left-wing voters whose votes he relied on in the presidential election will be required in November.
It was wrong to occupy a building, he said on Tuesday via spokesman John Kirby: “This is not an example of peaceful protest.” Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell immediately accused him of “giving greater weight to his supporters’ feelings than to moral clarity.”