Mjriam Abu Samra is a Palestinian-Italian researcher who has worked extensively on the Palestinian transnational student movements and how they have contributed to the broader liberation movement throughout history. Abu Samra has been taking active part in the campus mobilization in California where she is currently a resident as part of a Marie Sklodowska- Curie Postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Davis. We spoke to her recently about the student mobilization in the US and California in particular and what these growing movements mean for the current and future struggles for liberation. Below are her answers.
Can you tell us what’s happening in US campuses and particularly in California where you are?
In the past two months over 150 universities in the whole United States have seen the establishment of encampments as a more sustained and engaged form of protests against the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza and the settler colonial project in Palestine. It is hard to provide numbers on student participation in the movement: this is a very large mass mobilization, and it sees the contribution of students from different communities and socio-economic backgrounds. It is a movement that is reaching other sectors of society and enjoys the support and solidarity of these communities.
The escalation in student dissent builds on the harsh repressions that they have faced in the past seven months in their attempt to express support for the Palestinian people and in denouncing US complicity with Israeli genocidal practices of settler colonialism and the decades-long project of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The encampments are a concrete way to reclaim educational spaces and criticize the cooperation of educational institutions with the Israeli military, economic and cultural system. This complicity manifests itself through economic partnership, shares in military industries and academic cooperation that contribute to the development and expansion of the Israeli military machine, the technological tools of surveillance as well as the exploitation of other resources (agriculture, water, etc) within a colonial framework.
In California, just like everywhere else in the US, the encampments are meant not just as visible, radical expressions of dissent but also as efforts and initiatives of decolonial pedagogy: a liberated space of knowledge that breaks with the neoliberal approach to education that dominates the knowledge production and organization of universities not just in the US, but globally.
These encampments are actually called Popular Universities. They challenge mainstream pedagogy and centralize a transformative, liberatory understanding of knowledge, of the teaching-learning process, a pedagogy that is shaped around, and is an expression of the critical thinking of students and masses. Popular universities centralize the relevance of a decolonial knowledge and decolonized institutions that are not asserved to the neoliberal interests of political and economic actors. Students challenge the current system that looks at them, approaches them, and wants to form them, as consumers of a capitalist system rather than as agents of social changes and critical thinkers.
“Disclose, Divest” are the two key words that summarize student demands at the national level: students want to know how their universities are partnering with Israeli economic, military and cultural institutions and ask to divest from them. To these overall demands, each campus also adds specific requests typical of their own context.They are asking for a full academic boycott of Israeli institutions that contribute to the development of the Israeli war machine. A third fundamental demand is “amnesty” for protesters: they reclaim the freedom of expression and the freedom to protest that should be guaranteed to students and all other sectors of society. They denounce the brutal repression that has been imposed on them by institutions as well as anti-Palestinian racism, intimidation and harassment that they have experienced in the past 7 months.
How does this students’ solidarity movement intersect with US history of anti-war protests and other kinds of protests like Black Lives Matter? Are parallels with Vietnam, or Black Lives Matter, misplaced, or is there a link?
Parallels and comparisons with the anti war movement of the 1970s and the movement that opposed the war in Vietnam have been made since day one. The first to make these comparisons and trace the parallelism were the same professors who were students back in the 1970s. They understand this moment as another moment of rupture with the system, as it happened back then. We can surely see the continuity in the contentious practices of social movements and we can trace the common roots that they share: history is making clear that the imperial and capitalist system is not sustainable.
The cyclical reemergence of movements that oppose the structural oppression of the economic, social and political order, globally, attests to the crisis of empire and its capitalist drive. Anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist analyses that used to inspire the anti-war movement in the 1970s are now inspiring this new generation: Gaza and Palestine, have unveiled in a powerful way the historical contradictions of the world order.
The Black Lives Matter movement is another fundamental moment in the waves of protests that keep emerging at the heart of the empire and it has contributed to a better awareness of the limits and crises of this system. It confirmed that equality and all the values that are considered foundational to the neoliberal order are instead an illusion, a privilege guaranteed to few, while systematic discrimination remains the reality for many sectors of society. The current movement is capitalizing on all these previous experiences and taking the struggle further.
What is the Popular University for Gaza? What are you teaching? How do you frame this wave of student protests in the history of the Palestinian youth movement in the diaspora?
As I mentioned earlier, the Popular Universities are a radical expression of rupture with the current education system and the articulation of an alternative pedagogy. Courses that are taught in these popular universities reflect the interests of the students in an in-depth critical knowledge and analysis of the society based on people’s history and experiences. It is a liberatory pedagogical experiment that centralizes anti-colonial literature: people like Franz Fanon or Ghassan Kanafani are taken as starting points for contemporary history analyses. While bell hooks or Angela Davis provide the reference for articulation of critical classes on decolonial feminism and liberatory ideologies.
Classes on Third World movements, internationalism and joining struggles populate the program of the popular university. A lot of attention is paid to class and social struggles within the anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist critique that characterize the movement. Of course, the main focus remains Palestine, Gaza, and courses on Palestinian literature, history, art, culture, economics etc are provided everyday. The aim of these classes is to reinforce awareness on the significance of the current moment and develop a strong critical understanding of the ongoing settler colonial project, drawing parallels with the struggle of other indigenous populations in the past, the struggle of other colonized peoples in the South of the world, as well as the centrality of Zionist colonialism in contemporary imperialist policies.
The encampments also strongly denounce the dramatic impact of the Israeli current massacre and long-term violence on the Palestinian and particularly on Gaza’s educational system -with all universities bombed, schools destroyed or heavily damaged- and Palestinians’ access to education: a violent “scholasticide” that will affect current and future generations. Many popular universities have at least a library named after the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer who was killed by Israel during the current war and professors often give their lectures at the encampment rather than in classrooms in support of student mobilization for Gaza and against an educational system that privileges profits and wealth extraction rather than justice.
I try to contribute to these efforts of alternative pedagogies by engaging in conversations that allow for a critical understanding of current international political, economic and socio-cultural dynamics building on an historical analysis that emphasizes people narratives and the voice of the subalterns. I am often asked to provide the historical framework within which current developments can be understood and analyzed, to stimulate a discussion on the different phases that have characterized the political history of the Palestinian liberation movement and that could allow newer generations to comprehend and critically assess previous transformation to articulate strategies for the future.
We discuss the anti-colonial vision and the revolutionary strategies of the Palestinian liberation movements since its emergence and throughout the 1970s with particular attention to internationalism and joint struggles as main practices of liberation. We look at the political crisis of the late 1980s and 1990s crystallized by the Oslo accords and analyze the so called “peace process” and state-building framework that emerged from it, within a critical assessment of neoliberal and imperialist discourse that allowed for an even more brutal form of colonialism and oppression over Palestinians, paralyzing all sectors of Palestinian society especially in diaspora. We look at how this crisis is being overcome by newer generations, how new expressions of resistance are emerging on the Palestinian ground, and how youth in diaspora are mobilizing transnationally around a revitalized understanding of the global dimension of the Palestinian struggle and its anti-colonial, internationalist nature.
What about the interaction and shared struggle with anti-Zionists Jews?
Anti-Zionist Jews are an integral part of this movement. They participate at the encampments with all the other students and often find themselves in the position of having to deconstruct all accusations of antisemitism. In this sense, several anti-Zionist Jews pointed out how anti-semitic it is in itself to assume that Jews are a monolithic community that inherently support Zionism and its implementation in Israeli genocidal colonial practices.
It is often anti-Zionist jewish students who reaffirm that labeling the expression of support of Palestinian liberation as antisemitism is an attempt to shift the understanding of the Palestinian cause from its political dimension, anti-colonial, liberation and justice-based character to an a-historical religious-inspired narrative. Anti-Zionist Jewish groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace or Jews Against White Supremacy have been at the forefront of the protests against Israel and in solidarity with Palestinians for the past 7 months and are contributing to the growth of student mobilization.
Wafa Abdelrahman, a journalist from Falastiniyyat, said: “No hope from governments, no hope from international justice, no hope for a ceasefire, the only hope comes from students.” Why is hope coming from students all around the world? And do they really have a chance alone or do they need others to intervene to support them?
Of course, as Wafa Abdelrahman notes, justice will not come from governments. Justice is not going to come from any kind of international institution because these institutions are actually the product of colonial dynamics, they are the expression of a colonial system that keeps reproducing itself, but manifests in different forms. A colonial system that was never overcome, a colonial system that still shapes power relations in the world. So these institutions, their international laws, their courts and humanitarian agencies cannot, by their nature, dismantle the oppressive system, because they are the system. And this is a system that needs, and at the same time feeds, structural oppression and exploitation, such as the Zionist colonization of Palestine, to preserve itself.
The emphasis on a global order aiming at peace and equality guaranteed through international bodies is just a rhetorical effort that gives the illusion that justice could be achieved, that equality and rights are at the basis of state interests and actions. But this is not the reality we experience daily. International laws and institutions remain controlled by the most powerful and are even used to legitimize the injustice they commit. The harsh repression on peaceful student protests and encampments in the US attest to this reality, of a political establishment that does not take the will and interests of its constituency as its guiding principle, rather, it is guided by the interests of multinational corporations and their political elite in the capitalist order whether they are financial, military, pharmaceutical or others.
It might sound demagogic, yet the change can only come from the people, and students have a fundamental role in planting the seeds of the revolution. Students can play the role of what I define as the “organic vanguard” that inspires other sectors of society to organize. It is this political action that can lead to the end of the genocide; that can lead to the liberation of Palestine; that can allow us to imagine a different system and a different future.
I believe that the global movement will be central in amplifying the voices and efforts of Palestinian liberation, in building on the historical example of revolutionary struggle that Palestinians are still providing, in order to articulate new coordinated strategies of popular mobilization globally. In this sense, this movement is freeing Palestine, but it is also Palestine that is freeing the movement, showing that a different understanding of the world is possible, and worth mobilizing for.
