The Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario continues to affirm our solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle for self-determination. The Palestinian people have been experiencing settler-colonialism, apartheid, occupation, and genocide for over 75 years. Over 200 days have passed since the Zionist occupation unleashed a brutal genocidal campaign against the people of Palestine.
The scale of colonial violence launched by the Israeli settler-colonial state has resulted in the murder of over 35,000 Palestinians, with many still trapped beneath the rubble. The steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their resistance continues to inspire the global solidarity movement for Palestine. Recently, the struggle in the U.S. has escalated through the successful mass student struggle launched on campuses across North America, which continues to grow by the day. From the war on Vietnam to apartheid South Africa, the fighting spirit displayed by students, faculty, and community follows the radical tradition of student solidarity against war and occupation carried out in their name. As students oppose the complicity of their administrations in this genocide, they have reaffirmed campuses as critical frontiers of resistance – dramatically shifting the political trajectory of struggle within the U.S and Canada.
In response to this historic moment of student organizing, the state and institutions have deployed violent attacks on students who principally support the rights of Palestinian people and their rights to return to their homeland. Institutions continue to endanger students by using shameful intimidation tactics such as doxxing and increased police presence— yet, the students remain unmoved. The wave of repression led by academic institutions and state forces only exposes the true extent to which these institutions are complicit in this genocide, and processes of settler colonialism. As institutions desperately attempt to regain control over students by violent means, the fervor for the national liberation of the Palestinian people has only intensified.
The Federation salutes all students and community members who continue to take back physical and cultural control of spaces on and off campuses. The People’s University and Gaza Solidarity Encampments, led by students across the U.S., are an example of how the student movement can force power to concede to its demands. In this moment, the role of the students becomes increasingly apparent—the student movement will always be imperative to dismantling oppression, on campuses, and across the world. It is this student power that Canadian academic institutions are fearful of, as they release warnings that students who establish encampments or occupy buildings will be considered trespassers on their own campuses. The Federation condemns this feeble repression; the Palestinian cause has always been just, and no academic institution can silence the will of the students to uplift this cause.
The Federation upholds and amplifies the following calls and demands of students across the province and so-called Canada:
- Disclose any and all investments that are linked to the Zionist entity and increased transparency on how colleges and universities endowments are spent.
- Divest from all corporations and partnerships that contribute to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
- Defend the student autonomy and rights to organize as students partake in Palestinian solidarity activism.
- Denounce the ongoing genocide and occupation of Palestine and condemn the use of state violence to intimidate and repress pro-Palestinian students, faculty, staff and community members.
The Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario is the oldest and largest student organization in Ontario, representing over 350,000 college and university students in every region of the province.