November 8, 2023

Penn State Admin you can't hide! You are funding genocide!

Penn State students turn the tide! It's our money, we decide!

Free, free Palestine! Free, free Palestine!

For the past month, Palestinians in Gaza have been experiencing an ongoing genocide. As of November 8, 2023, the Israeli occupation murdered 10,569 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 26,475 more. Of those martyred, 4,324 are children, 2,823 are women, 2,773 are men, and 649 are elderly. The Ministry of Health in Gaza reports an additional 2,550 Palestinians are still missing under the rubble. No sector of society and no area in Gaza is spared from Israel's relentless bombardment. 46% of Palestinians murdered are from the southern areas of Gaza— areas Zionist forces declared to be a "safe zone". The Israeli occupation deliberately targets medical crews and hospitals, and has massacred 193 medical staff and pulverized 45 ambulances. The Israeli occupation has martyred 2,510 students while rendering 45 schools completely out of service. Zionist violence have even extended to mosques and churches, completely or partially demolishing 165 places of worship.

In the past month of relentless siege, the Zionist occupation has ruthlessly displaced 1,500,000 citizens from their homes. Those people are currently sheltering in schools, hospitals, mosques, churches and some are in the streets without anywhere to seek shelter. The amount of explosives dropped on the Palestinians of Gaza equate to over 30,000 tons, twice the explosive force of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The United Nations Human Rights Office announced the scale of death and destruction wreaked by Zionist forces on the Jabaliya refugee camp on October 25, 2023 could amount to war crimes.

This attack is part of a long history of Israeli violence against Gaza -- the world's largest open air prison. For 17 years, Israel has confined the 2.3 million people of Gaza to a strip of land the size of Detroit1. This genocide is an extension of the Israeli government's calorie counting under the blockade, restrictions on movement through land, air, and sea, limited electricity, and ongoing bombing campaigns since the siege began in 2007. 75% of Palestinians living in Gaza are refugees from the surrounding lands, displaced in the 1948 Nakba. During the Nakba— or "catastrophe"— Zionist militias forcibly expelled over 700,000 Palestinians from their lands, massacring over 15,000 Palestinians and razing 531 towns, to create the settler-colony known as "Israel."

In the West Bank, settlers have begun arming themselves with the provisions of Israeli Minister of Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. Since October 7, Zionist occupation forces have escalated their war of genocide, murdered 163 Palestinians in the West Bank. In the last month, Israeli forces have detained over 3,200 Palestinian workers from Gaza, subjecting them to torture and starvation. Freed prisoners across the West Bank also continue to be detained, such as renowned Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi from her home in Nabi Saleh. The Zionist settler-colony has further descended on the Palestinians of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, arresting 1,740 in overnight raids since October 7.

We cannot remain silent as Israel's war of genocide against Palestinians spills into the surrounding countries of Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. Anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic violence is on the rise in the United States, both on college campuses and in communities.2 Palestine Legal, a non-profit legal organization defending advocates for Palestinian rights across the U.S., reports, "[S]ince October 7 alone, we have received about 400 requests for support regarding incidents of repression targeting Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and their allies—many at K-12 and higher education institutions." Nationwide, Zionists and right-wing reactionaries are targeting students and faculty via doxxing campaigns, disciplinary consequences, and physical assault for appearing to support, or express support, for Palestinian human rights. This widespread atmosphere of warmongering and retaliation has resulted in violence against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims. In Chicago, a 6-year-old Palestinian boy, Wadie Al-Fayoume, was mercilessly stabbed to death 26 times by the family's landlord as he screamed "you Palestinians don't deserve to live". This atmosphere resulted in students on Penn State's campus and community members of State College being harassed, assaulted, called "terrorists", and provoked while exercising their First Amendment rights to demand an end to the siege on Gaza.

Since the most recent Israeli attacks on Gaza have begun, Penn State University administration has remained shamefully silent on the ongoing genocide and war crimes that Israel continues to unleash on Palestine. This is to say nothing of the Israeli occupation's aggression and terror in Lebanon and Syria. On October 9, President Neeli Bendapudi wrote, "We call on all members of the Penn State community to offer comfort and support to our classmates and colleagues. These profound events can cause sadness, fear and distress and we recognize the great need within our own community to support those who are hurting." Just 3 days later in a new statement on October 12, these words proved to be empty promises. Not only does President Neeli Bendapudi express almost no concern for the Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese students, faculty, and staff who are scared, grieving, and worried about their loved ones overseas, but she also refuses to condemn or even acknowledge the decades-long violence and terrorism of Israeli settler-colonialism and genocide. Erasing the true root of the violence and even the name of the subjugated people— Palestinians— for a rebuke of the "terrorism and violence perpetrated by Hamas on innocent civilians in Israel and citizens from countries around the world", Bendapudi has repeatedly proved that she does not care for her Palestinian, Muslim, and broader Arab students, faculty and staff. These two statements are woefully inadequate and continue to feed the anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobic attacks that are currently on the rise in campuses across the United States.

Every year, U.S. war profiteers fuel violence at home and abroad, manufacturing billions of dollars worth of weapons to arm violent regimes from Israel to police departments across the U.S. Penn State’s involvement in the U.S. military and militarism is long-standing and significant. Currently, Penn State performs research with several of these companies, including, but not limited to, Boeing and Raytheon. Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory conducts the Gear Research Institute, sponsored by Boeing, Rolls Royce, and other companies invested in militarism. By funding research on weapons used by Israel, Penn State is directly complicit in the genocide against the Palestinian people.

We are extremely disappointed in President Neeli Bendapudi and Penn State Admin's silence in the face of genocide. They have yet to issue any statement or provide any form of support for Palestinian students, staff, and faculty on campus. Instead, they willfully stay silent, enabling anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic rhetoric that is spreading across campuses and the country. Furthermore, the university continues to conduct research, develop partnerships, and invest in war profiteers who are funding the genocide against Palestinians. We reaffirm that the administration should be working for the students, staff, and faculty of Penn State's campuses: not the other way around. To that end, we (Palestinian students, faculty, and staff as well as allies in the community) raise four demands to President Neeli Bendapudi and Penn State Admin.

Our demands:

1.) We demand President Neeli Bendapudi condemn Israel's ongoing war of genocide on Palestine, specifically in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and apologize to Penn State's Palestinian and Arab students for not providing support sooner.

2.) We demand Penn State Admin release a statement guaranteeing the protection of the free speech of students, faculty, and staff on campus who show support for Palestine in the classroom, on social media, and in extracurriculars.

3.) We demand Penn State Admin provide resources specifically for their Palestinian and Arab students, faculty, and staff as they face the constant pain, fear, and grief of genocide.

4.) We demand Penn State totally divest from weapons manufacturers and cut all other forms of financial support that continue to arm the ongoing Zionist settler-colonial war of genocide on Palestine.

1Detroit is considered overcrowded with a population of 500,000 residents.

2See reports from CAIR-LA , CAIR-Texas, CAIR-Maryland, CAIR-Florida, and CAIR-Michigan