The Anti-Zionist Generation: Gen Z Demands an End to the Israeli Occupation Despite Widespread Repression
On Thursday, November 16, I attended a “huelga estudantil” (student strike) held in Madrid, Spain, in support of Palestine. I was amazed to look out at the crowd and see such a diversity of young faces ranging from middle school students to university-age young adults. It was a truly diverse coalition of young people who were all there for the same reason: to condemn the current Israeli assault on Gaza and call for an end to the Israeli occupation.
Students gather in Madrid for the November 16 student strike. (Photo: Derek Sherrange)
The fact that such a large group of students left their classrooms vacant to take to the streets in support of Palestine gave a strong sense that Gen Z is fiercely challenging the normalization of Israeli oppression.
Mario, a member of the Sindicato de Estudiantes, a leftist student organization that organized the strike, explained to me the importance of the right to have a student strike in Spain. “The strike has always been one of the key tools that our class has had to fight and defend itself from the attacks we suffer,” they said. “In the case of the student strike, it serves to demonstrate the discontent of students and to mobilize us so that we learn to fight from the school, which is very important to advance the political consciousness and education of students.”
Unlike many other countries, Spain has codified into law the right for students to leave their classrooms to go on strike, a right that thousands of Spanish students have used to advocate for the rights of Palestinians.
A Global Coalition of Anti-Zionist Youth
Mario holding a sign that reads “End the Zionist Genocide of Gaza”. (Photo: Derek Sherrange)
Spanish youth are not the only young people calling out Israel for its violent domination of Palestine. From Spain to the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, India and Egypt, the student movement for Palestine is truly global. Much like the protest in Spain, students around the world have left their classrooms to demand that their governments and academic institutions end their support for and economic linkages with the Israeli regime. Many have pointed out the hypocrisy of governments that claim to support human rights while failing to condemn Israel’s murder of Palestinians.
Early into the latest Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, I joined a group of US scholars living all over the world who are the beneficiaries of various scholarships and fellowships such as the Fulbright, Rhodes, and Truman scholarships in signing an October 20 statement demanding that the Biden administration call for a ceasefire. One Fulbright Scholar who signed the statement, Elias, emphasized that it is critical for US scholars to call on their government to stop supporting the murder of Palestinians in Gaza.
As an anti-Zionist Jewish person, the wider Israel-Palestine conflict is painfully intimate to me. This latest siege of Gaza feels like the darkest chapter of my lifetime, with perhaps the most existential consequences for Gazans and Palestinians. I agree with the many academics, NGOs, and supranational organizations that have classified Israel’s campaign as one of collective punishment and attempted genocide. Our status as grantees of US government scholarships should not mean that we shut our mouths. I think it is actually our duty – if we are to engage in the kind of cultural and academic exchange that our programs ask of us – to be aware of and outspoken about the atrocities that our government has enabled and committed.
Student Activists Face Censorship and Repression
All of this inspiring activism from Gen Z in support of Palestine has not come without a cost. Young people globally have been victims of systematic efforts to silence their voices. While academia is intended to be a medium for critical debate, it has seen students face allegations of anti-semitism, dismissal from their jobs, and doxxing, all of which put their futures in jeopardy for calling on a government to end its genocide and occupation of the Palestinian people.
(Elias’s signature on the October 20 US Scholars Statement)
Academic institutions have sadly been a hotspot for such censorship. For example, a group of 19 Jewish students at Brown University who held a sit-in at the university calling on the president to divest the school’s endowment from “companies that enable war crimes in Gaza” were all recently arrested for trespassing. While such repression is not new - the infamous Canary Mission website, for example, began targeting students and scholars for their critical work on Israel in 2014 - it seems to be becoming the norm for students who advocate for the rights and human dignity of Palestinians.
Mario conveyed similar concerns of repression, saying that the Israeli embassy had asked the Spanish government to prevent students from organizing the November 16 strike and that colleagues have faced reprisals from their schools and places of work for their activism. Indeed, Mario and their colleagues have reason to fear, as the recent repression of student activists organizing for Palestine at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid has shown. The Israeli government has taken an active role in pressuring other governments to respond harshly to protests supporting Palestine and has even gone so far as to ask one school to remove a course discussing Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Students also face risks to their employment for pro-Palestinian advocacy. This was evident when I asked Elias if he had any fears about signing the October 20 US Scholars statement. “I am fairly certain that if I ever tried to apply for a US government job, I wouldn’t make it past the first interview. I’m not bothered though, as that isn’t a life goal of mine,” he acknowledged. “But I am concerned about my peers who hold similar beliefs about Palestine and other areas of US foreign policy and who plan to engage in government work. Why? Because people of those mindsets should have a seat at the table.” More than 400 students of the over 1700 who signed that US Scholars statement chose to sign anonymously due to fear of potential repercussions.
Don’t Ignore the Power of Youth
The latest escalation in Israeli violence and oppression has mobilized a global collective of youth who understand (as does anyone who isn’t actively engaged in denial) that the Israeli occupation is fundamentally unjust. There has been a shift in the collective consciousness of an entire generation that no longer normalizes the existence of an apartheid state in Palestine.
Here it is important to remember that the role of students globally in bringing down apartheid states is nothing to be ignored. Students played a pivotal role in pressuring the international community to end its support for apartheid South Africa, a movement that ultimately brought an end to the apartheid regime in the country. Students today are using similar tactics to support Palestine, and they continue to do it despite the risks to their educations, their careers, and their lives.
All of this represents a turning point in the global perspective on the Israeli occupation. Gen Z has shown that it will not accept the status quo that has allowed Israel to murder Palestinians and occupy their land with impunity.
All translations are by the author.
