“All of humanity should break out in a fever”: Seven days of Western University’s encampments
Published in the NB Media Co-op
(*artwork: ‘Students have the power to change the world’ by Incé Husain. The title of this artwork is a quote by Western University hung on a banner in a campus building. )
Two weeks ago, the streets of Rafah erupted in celebration.
People crammed together in life and relief. Cheers, chants, ecstatic children; cars honking, phones filming; women collapsing to the ground in prayer.
“I can’t describe to you my joy,” says one woman. “I can’t describe it to you.”
Since October 2023, Israeli forces displaced, destroyed, terrorized, and killed Palestinians at a rate so unprecedented it birthed the UN report “Anatomy of a Genocide”.
“After five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza,” the March 2024 report begins.
It lists that over 30,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 13,000 children; that 12,000 are presumed dead and 71,000 injured; that seventy percent of residential areas have been destroyed; that eighty percent of the population has been forcibly displaced; that the bloodlines of thousands of families have been wiped.
“Many could not bury and mourn their relatives, forced instead to leave their bodies decomposing in homes, in the street or under the rubble,” the report reads. “Thousands have been detained and systematically subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. The incalculable collective trauma will be experienced for generations to come.”
The celebrations in Rafah came when Hamas accepted a temporary ceasefire agreement proposed by Egypt and Qatar. The agreement called for a ceasefire, the reconstruction of Gaza, a “prisoner swap”, and the return of displaced Palestinians. It also called for long-term liberation: a permanent end to military operations and to the blockade of Gaza.
Israel rejected the agreement. It ordered 250,000 people to evacuate Rafah. Airstrikes rained. Bombs rained. Violations of international law reigned. Israeli forces invaded the Rafah crossing, the last border for humanitarian aid and escape. No food can enter; no one can leave. The number of martyrs climbed over 35,000.
The United States, which has sent Israel over 100 weapon shipments since October 7th including the equivalent of two nuclear bombs dropped on Gaza within less than a month, had decreed Rafah the “red line” that violence would not touch. The United States has gone largely mute.
“By analysing the patterns of violence and Israel's policies in its onslaught on Gaza,” the UN report reads, “this report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel's commission of genocide is met.”
At Western University, a banner at the student encampments screams “EYES ON RAFAH”. The lettering is bordered by Palestinian flags; beneath them, a pair of red-rimmed eyes bleeds.
***
On May 1st, Western University students organized an encampment demanding that their institution divest from companies funding genocide. Western University currently invests 33.6 million dollars in companies complicit in Israel’s violent occupation of Palestine.
A whiteboard placed at the encampment entrance lists the students’ demands in red marker.
It demands disclosure: a list of all investments tied to Israel, weapon manufacturers, and companies profiting from illegal occupation. It demands divestment from companies with economic ties to Israel. It demands students’ rights to protest oppression. It demands that Western University condemn Israel’s illegal occupation and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The whiteboard gives way to picnic tables on a stone courtyard and a tent-sprinkled lawn bordered by Palestinian flags, art, and signs.
No justice, no peace. Ignorance is not bliss. We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.
A cardboard sign reads “You are now entering little Gaza”. An adjacent sign commemorates Gaza’s Al-Azhar University; all universities in Gaza have been destroyed by Israel.
Tents, blankets, and chairs lie across a sun-kissed lawn, human rights slogans stud the grass between. Students wrapped in keffiyehs are interspersed. They talk, chant, work on laptops, read books, embroider, play football, eat at picnic tables filled with food donated by the community. Birdsong is vibrant. A cardinal flies into the pink blossoms of a crab apple. At prayer times, a student leads the call to prayer; many cluster in the courtyard, bowing and rising in synchrony.
The first day unfolds in a rhythm of marches, speeches, music, and a continuation of daily routines, like studying or socializing. The space is village-like, echoing the warm, communal consciousness of encampments across the United States. Community members join; young children frolic around tents.
Tarek Loubani, a doctor and Western University professor, gives a speech. He holds his young daughter in his arms.
“We are here because we honour the babies being killed by Israel through famine,” says Loubani. “We are here because their dry tears, their sorrow, their screams, their quiet deaths, are felt by us, reverberate in us and resonate onto these grounds through us. We are here because we care about humanity and we care about life. Palestinians have always been about life, have always pursued life, have always sought it.”
Loubani tells the story of a baby in Gaza, alive within the womb of her dead mother.
The baby was cut away from the womb. The baby was resuscitated actively, aggressively. The baby was the last of her bloodline. Five days later, she died. She had been placed in a shared incubator and contracted an infection from another baby.
Her bloodline is dry.
Loubani recounts the images of babies rotting, dead, in their incubators in Al-Nasr hospital. Israeli tanks had surrounded the hospital, ordering away the neonatal care staff. One nurse felt that she was leaving behind her own children.
“Israel is a murderous country,” says Loubani. “Sometimes I believe the lie that I am powerless. But that, my friends, is a lie. You are a bunch of nobodies sitting in a lawn nowhere and yet if you stay here, the police will come. That is not because you are powerless, that is because you are powerful. That is because the freedom of Palestine rests first with the Palestinians and second in your hands.”
Loubani leaves the stage; sociology professor Jess Notwell enters. Her soft, firm voice rings through the encampment. She speaks of the uprooting of Palestine’s olive trees and the return of their branches. She speaks of the silencing of youth and the return of their voices.
“Liberation will happen within our lifetime,” says Notwell. “When we stand together in these (encampment) spaces and we share food with each other, and we enact mutual aid, and we take care of each other - that is counter to the genocide all by itself, because what we are saying is that, when we achieve liberation, we will already have the relationships that allow us to live in a world based on love and care so that occupation and settler colonialism and genocide will never happen again.”
Visceral applause ensues.
Linguistics professor David Heap clasps Notwell’s hand as she leaves the stage. He tells the story of a young Palestinian woman from many years ago in a Western University exam hall. She had come to a keffiyeh-clad Heap and thanked him: “As a Palestinian, I don’t see many non-Arabs wearing this, and it makes me feel less alone.”
In the audience, a diversity of keffiyeh-clad students cheer.
“Have Palestine in your heart, in your mind,” says Heap. “Not with the ones who know about it - (but) the ones who don’t know about it. Strangers on your bus, your neighbours, workmates. Raise the issue. You won’t always get a warm reception; that's the reality. We need to talk about it.”
The encampment adjourns at midnight.
***
“I have my entire extended family in Gaza,” says nephrology professor Nabil Sultan. “And when I spoke with my cousin a couple months ago, he said “the people around me have completely changed since October 7. People who were weak are now strong; people that had fear now don’t have fear and have courage. People who used to be afraid of death are no longer afraid of death. People live with more purpose and more meaning in their lives.” As we are setting up our tents, they are in their tents. Know that you stand with the weight of the Palestinian people behind you.”
It is the afternoon of the second encampment on May 8th. The sun blesses the tents with warmth. It is an afternoon filled with original poems of resistance by students and faculty. Melodically, they charge the air.
“Your silence is ignorance, your silence is deadly, your silence is equivalent to the dead, morphed bodies.”
“We are fighters who persist in the fight for freedom and life and we will not back down so long as an F16 remains in the hand of an occupier pointed at a child.”
“Israel has the right to defend itself from dead Palestinians by bulldozing cemeteries. Israel has the right to defend itself from educated Palestinians by demolishing universities.”
“I would feel the warmth in my great grandmother’s lemons as I squeezed, as if I was squeezing her hand, as if it was me by her side when she was giving birth on her way to displacement. And I would say “don’t worry, it's not a one way road, we will return to our homes”. And she would say “I know. Who do you think planted the seeds of hope?””
Michael Lynk, former UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, thanks the students of the encampment for their courage. He shares that current Special Rapporteurs condemn the police brutality and administrative crackdown used against encampments in the United States (see Academic freedom and unequal treatment of students and faculty voicing political opinions).
“The statement by the rapporteurs was in support of the student right to freedom of expression, of their right to be able to resist, of their right to be able to protest against the unfolding genocide in Gaza, and the illegal occupation of Palestine that has been going on for 57 years, and further in terms of 76 years with respect to the Nakba,” says Lynk. “As a lawyer, I can tell you that there is no situation in the world today where international law and UN resolutions have spoken so clearly, so persistently, and so dramatically with respect to Israel’s many violations of international law.”
Beneath a fierce sun, a Western University alumnus declares that “humanity is one body”.
“When one part of humanity aches, all of humanity should break out in a fever,” they say. “And you are that fever. When you remove the signs of agendas, when you remove economy and politics and money, and you're really looking at the truth, the truth is that what's happening is wrong regardless of how you try to explain it. What’s happening is wrong, period.”
The second encampment is scheduled to end at midnight. It ebbs beyond, stretching deeper into the night and morning.
***
On day three, Western University’s administration posts a message online.
“Yesterday’s peaceful protest did not end at midnight as planned,” reads the May 9th message addressed to the Western community. “It’s disappointing to see this shift, as our communication with student organizers has been positive and collegial.”
Some students respond to the administration’s message on social media, imitating the letter’s wording.
“It’s disappointing that this institution invests millions into directly killing my family and people,” says one post. “It’s disappointing that 44,000+ people have been murdered. It’s disappointing that 2 million people have been displaced from their homes. It’s disappointing that we’re still talking about the occupation of a patch of grass rather than the 75+ year long occupation of Palestine.”
Western University’s insignia blared at the top of the site header, the same royal purple of a banner in the University Community Center just outside the encampment. “Students have the power to change the world,” it says.
***
On day four, the encampment holds an open mic.
A student and a member of Independent Jewish Voices London speak of solidarity between Muslims and Jews.
“There is a bridge to build between… Muslims, Jews,” says a student. “It's there to be built and it's there to be crossed. We are brothers and sisters. ”
A member from Independent Jewish Voices London emphasizes that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-semitism.
“If anyone wants to tell you that anti-Zionism is antisemitic, just send them our way,” they say. “We’ll have a great time talking with them.”
The night is woven with chai, pizza, salads, and desserts. Heaters spot the courtyard, a glow in the darkening sky. Students cluster beneath them. On the fringes of the feast, a documentary on the history of Palestine plays. Its soundtrack is contemplative; its imagery is filled with Nakba.
The courtyard steps hold books about Palestine. Behind the Intifida. Palestine’s Children. Justice for Some.
Behind a tent, two girls cry. A dog, panicked by their grief, licks their faces clean of tears.
Beneath the flare of green-magenta northern lights, a community member says: “Palestine is like a phoenix; she always rises.”
An hour before midnight, the people of the encampment march. Streetlights flank them, turn the white of the Palestinian flag ghostly. The chants escalate; the flags flicker; cars honk over and over and over.
***
“Joy is resistance, period,” says an encampment attendee on day five. Tatreez rustles in a tent. Stories are shared; laughter is easy. The rain is gentle.
The peripheries of the encampments occasionally flicker with strangers wielding cameras. Encampment attendees begin the ritual of pulling face masks, donning sunglasses, turning their faces away, all of the above. It is immediate; it is second nature. The entrance to the tatreez tent is zipped shut.
Twice, campus police enters the encampment.
“Good afternoon,” they say, distributing printed letters.
The letters state that the encampments are violating campus policies. It offers a general list of rules, not stating which were violated by tents on the lawn (see May 11th).
Encampment attendees immediately grab markers and congregate at picnic tables. The rain pours; the ink runs.
“I’m not reading all that,” one student writes over a letter.
“People are dying,” another writes.
In the University Community Centre, a sticker on a bathroom stall: “There is only one solution, Intifada revolution”.
***
“The purpose of pepper spray is to make you panic,” says Tarek Loubani on day six. “Do not resist arrest. Be ready for bruises and scrapes.”
A lesson in self-defense and de-arrest tactics unfolds. A key point of analysis is footage of the student encampments at the University of Alberta: students had sat down in non-violent protest as soon as police arrived. The police brandished batons and beat them.
“Do we know if the culture of London police is similar to the culture of police in Alberta?” asks a student.
Loubani nods. Potentially.
In the evening, as the majority of the encampment marches across the streets, three campus police officers try to enter the encampment.
“This is Western’s property,” says a police officer. “We have every right to be here and we will come and go as we please.”
Loubani shakes his head, smiles calmly.
“This area is a liberated zone. You are not welcome here,” says Loubani. “We control this space.”
Students record quietly. An officer puts a hand on Loubani’s chest; the other two officers rear behind. They walk, conjoined, until the officers leave the encampment.
“I thought they were going to take Tarek out,” says a student. “I was scared.”
A building outside the encampment once said “Weldon Library”. Now, it is taped over with a poster renaming it Ras Abbu Amar, a 1948 Palestinian village wiped from the map by Israeli forces. Similar signs rename buildings elsewhere on campus.
“Everyone pull out your phones and record this,” says a student before a march, preparing to recite the encampment’s demands. “So the administration can’t say we didn’t try to talk to them.”
The student lists the divestment demands. The passing of a BDS motion; the elimination of all partnerships with Israeli organizations, such as Western University’s business school’s trip to Ben Gurion University in Israel, which denies entry to Palestinian students holding Palestinian ID cards; the removal of a course called “Israel: People and Culture” in Western University’s history program that “propagates anti-Palestinian and pro-colonialism rhetoric” , labels “75 years of genocide in Palestine a “conflict””, and “normalizes the dispossession and the erasure of Palestinians”.
***
It is day seven. It is a cloudy, hot day.
Students are perched on stone doing tatreez. Large, friendly dogs greet the people of the encampment. CBC reporters fill the peripheries.
NDP MPs Lyndsay Mathyssen and Matthew Green boldly state their solidarity.
“It is an ethical demand,” says Green of the encampment’s divestment demands. “It is a legal imperative when you look at the International Criminal Court of Justice: all countries, nations, organizations and institutions that may be knowingly engaged in what they are calling a plausible genocide - but we know with our naked eyes and bear witness to is absolutely a genocide in Gaza - have a legal, moral, and ethical obligation to divest.
You don’t have to have a PhD in international law to know that there is no moral cover for what is happening. The contradictions of the West and the way in which they have dealt with this both internationally, but also through the media, show a contradiction in our positions. That needs to end. This is not a religious war; this is a genocide.” ♦
Written using videos and files received from encampment attendees. The names of all student encampment attendees have been excluded for their safety. Some encampment organizers and attendees were consulted about this article prior to its publication to ensure the safety of the encampment.
A modified version of this article appeared in The NB Media Co-op on May 24th, 2024: