National Students for Justice in Palestine

Read our statement below to learn more about the repression students face at UMich, Swat, Stanford, and Pittsburgh, as well as how you can support.

The more you try to silence us, the louder we will be.

Yesterday, on April 5th, we commemorated the 31st Palestinian Children’s Day.

We remember the children who sleep alone because the genocidal entity has orphaned them, stripping them from their parents' warm embrace, the children detained in zionist dungeons, children psychologically devastated by lives shaped through relentless hardships, and children forced to grow wise beyond their years. We remember children enduring forced starvation—babies drinking water instead of milk, wrapped in rags instead of diapers; children consuming grass to quiet the ache of hunger; and children dying from maternal malnutrition and within incubators before getting the chance to reach maturation. Children without shelter, displaced again and again, made to wander through ruin. Children denied education. Children forced to become the breadwinners of their families. We remember children killed while seeking aid at aid drops and distribution sites. We remember children maimed, bodies torn, hanging from buildings, or incinerated beyond recognition; children whose bodies are reduced to bargaining chips by the occupation; and children beheaded in tent massacres. Children shot 355 times by zionist tanks, and children violently stabbed 26 times by a white supremacist hate crime in the United States. Children forced to grow wise beyond their years. We remember the children whose names and stories we carry and those who remain unnamed, their absence no less real. Every child is an entire world; every martyr, a universe.

And yet, Palestinian children, the inheritors of the struggle, endure. They dream of a day where they are able to hear the birds instead of bombs. Where they know that a tomorrow is granted for them, instead of a childhood cut short, collecting water for their families, playing among rubble instead of open fields, or reenacting funeral processions with dolls.

The occupation has imposed artificial borders meant to sever them from the world, and yet they remain unsuccessful. Palestinian children hold a sacred place in our collective hearts. Palestinian children have taught the world life.

Zionist terrorism is escalating in Lebanon. Approximately 34,00 Lebanese have been displaced since the zionist entity increased it’s bombardment campaing across the South, the Beqaa Valley, and Beirut. For over 15 hours, traffic from the South has been backed up with displaced residents fleeing zionist aggression on their homes, schools, hospitals, and livelihoods. The Dahye Doctrine is in full effect as the U.S.-Zionist alliance continues to commit unspeakable war crimes under the lackluster guise of “strategy,” exponentially adding to the catastrophic damage Lebanon has yet to recover from since the previous round of zionist escalation against the country. For the past 15 months, the zionist entity has violated the ceasefire with Lebanon approximlately 15,000 times and has refused to withdraw from the illegal occupation that is ongoing in the South.

The U.S.-Zionist alliance is unleashing hell on the Middle East, bringing displacement, death, and destruction to the region that has never been able to rest and rebuild. The imperialist death cult must be dismantled. Our hearts are with the people from Beirut to Ain el-Hilweh to Nabatiyeh to Beqaa to Marjaayoun to Khiam to Bint Jbeil to Naqoura to Tyre to Tehran to Gaza. May the struggle for liberation lead you all to the untouched lives you’ve always dreamt of.

.الله يحمي لبنان. الله يحمي شعب الجنوب

23 years later, the state has expanded its capacity for surveillance, detention, and violence through increased funding for ICE. We must remember that the struggle against oppression is connected from Palestine to Minneapolis to Havana to Darfur. ICE in its current form is merely an extension of the American imperialist agenda, only there is simply less effort to skew public perception with facades of “accountability and transparency.” Just as it was birthed during an era of enslavement, the constitution remains enshrined as a document that upholds white supremacy. It is through this lens— through the recognition that systems of imperialist and colonialist domination operate exactly as intended— that we must understand domestic and foreign policy.

Abolition is not the ceiling— it is the bare minimum. Abolish ICE now.

Earlier this morning, US and zionist forces conducted terrorist strikes on half a dozen cities in Iran unprovoked. A few hours later, zionist forces struck a children’s school in Iran, killing over 50 children. The same comprador regimes which allowed US zionist forces to use their airspace to bomb Iran are now intercepting missiles over their countries, leaving the debris to fall on their own citizens in the interest of protecting US zionist bases in the region. As we move closer to our Ramadan week of action, we understand that this is a time where our responsibility as the leading anti-imperialist force on campus is being tested. We have a duty to halt the war machine and defend the sovereignty of a country which US zionist forces seek to dismantle in the interest of subduing our cause. We call on chapters to mobilize against the war on campus, defend Iran’s sovereignty, and break the zionist war machine.