The Ukraine Solidarity Network stands with the campus encampments protesting Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine and demanding that their institutions divest their funds from the horrific war. We support the broader Palestinian solidarity movement’s demands for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, immediate massive humanitarian aid, and a cut-off of U.S. arms to Israel.
We call for an immediate end to police repression of encampments and demonstrations, for release and amnesty for all of those arrested, and for a lifting of all university sanctions against individual students, staff, faculty, and organizations involved in the solidarity movement.
Like Russia’s war against Ukraine, Israel and the USA’s genocidal war against Palestine is aimed at conquest, ethnic cleansing, and occupation. The people of Ukraine and Palestine both have the right to survive and to national freedom and self-determination. Indeed, in our view they are inseparable. Moreover, increasingly like Russia, the United States is moving to criminalize dissent, protest, and freedom of speech not only on campuses but nationwide. The defense of the democratic right to national self-determination of Ukraine and Palestine is inextricably tied to the defense of democratic rights everywhere.
According to the latest CNN poll, 81% of people in the USA under 35 disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and according to Pew Research 33% of all Jewish adults in the USA say that Netanyahu’s war is unacceptable. On and off university campuses, Jewish Voice for Peace and Not in Our Name are playing major roles in the protest movement. Demonstrations and encampments have been peaceful with many Jews participating in them, including USN members, and instances of antisemitism have been far rarer than in politicians’ speeches.
Despite this, the mainstream press in the United States continues to smear the movement in Solidarity with Palestine by equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The press has worked in lockstep with the Biden administration and local Democratic and Republican officials from Eric Adams, Mayor of New York City, to governors Greg Abbott and Gavin Newsome of Texas and California respectively, to first smear the demonstrators as antisemites, and then send in paramilitary police units to violently arrest demonstrators and destroy encampments.
President Biden’s speech on May 2, gave the local police and state governments the green light for repression by following the same script.
Over 2,000 demonstrators have been arrested nationwide, while Zionist provocations and attacks have been ignored by police as in the case of the violent attack against the encampment at UCLA.
So far the repression has backfired and resulted in the deepening and spread of the movement. Senator Bernie Sanders has gone so far as to say that this may be Biden’s Vietnam War, the war that brought down President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1968.
The Ukraine Solidarity Network is wholeheartedly in favor of expanding the movement, building mass demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine, and linking the movements in solidarity against the invasions of Ukraine and Palestine.