Students Fight to End UK University Complicity in Gaza Genocide
Warwick Students Union Disability Officer Mads Wainmain, recently addressed an online briefing held to mark the UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on November 29th. You can read her contribution or watch the event in full below:
It is a privilege to mark this year’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people alongside you all.
To introduce myself, I am the Labour Students Disability Officer and a Momentum NCG member, but I’m here in my capacity as Warwick Students Union Disability Officer and I will therefore focus on student activism and the demilitarisation of education.
I first of all want to acknowledge all of the lives lost, not just since October 7th 2023, but since 1948. It is a heartbreaking thing to acknowledge that the Nakba has not ended, but it is so important to remember that. The scale of loss and destruction is unfathomable, and every day that this genocide continues is unforgivable. Those responsible should be held to account, and I want to bring attention to Jess Barnard’s stance against Starmer’s continued involvement in these war crimes. Solidarity.
In the face of no Universities remaining in Gaza, I want to talk about how we can utilise our own Universities today to bring about divestment. Palestine Solidarity Campaign has found that UK universities have invested £430 million pounds in companies complicit in the illegal actions of the Israeli government. Students have responded nationally, with encampments and campaigns to pressure universities to divest. At Cambridge, Trinity College announced an end to investments in arms companies, KCL halted investment in Israel’s arms suppliers and Goldsmiths announced a review into its policies.
Within my own University, students have organised for change. Warwick Stands With Palestine held a 60 day encampment, culminating in an 11-day occupation of a Warwick Manufacturing Group building. This was the first occupation of WMG, a department with ties to the arms trade, through companies like BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce.
The Warwick Student Staff Solidarity Network had published ‘An Investment in Injustice’ in October of this year. Through a joint student and staff research collective, we have created a 44-page document detailing the Universities complicity in genocide, which I have a copy of here. It is available as a PDF for free on the Warwick UCU website if you wish to read it in full.
However, to give a brief overview, this report begins with a history of the occupation, from the origins of Zionism, to the Nakba of 1948, to today. It then develops into a full and meticulous study into the University of Warwick’s direct complicity with the arms trade and Israeli crimes. It was found that Warwick has accepted over £100 million in research funding from arms companies, and fails to acknowledge the dual use of these contracts. This makes negotiations difficult, as Warwick claims its investments with companies are purely for scientific advancement, failing to recognise that these advancements will develop technology used in war crimes.
For instance, the Computer Science Department has received £9 million of funding for a project developing technologies that could be adapted for autonomous weapons systems, alongside other contracts with dual-use potential. WMG has a partnership with Airbus on Project ZEST, a £19.5 million project, which is likely to have dual-use applications in military transport, given that the company is one of the world’s largest suppliers of advanced military aircraft. The Engineering Department is deeply complicit, as you can imagine, but the largest issue for me personally is a project completed alongside BAE Systems, Airbus, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, and Thales. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is an Israeli company that promotes its products as “combat proven” – namely, they are tested on Palestinians.
According to the SSSN report, which most of this has been taken almost word for word from anyway, but the outcomes of this project could significantly enhance military capabilities across various platforms, such as enhancing the design and operation of military aircraft, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and missile systems.
Many of these contracts are covert, and the extensive level of research required students to work with staff to gain access to this information. The framework of utilising students and staff is essential, and hopefully the full PDF can demonstrate a methodology which is applicable to many other Universities and institutions. These reports and actions have not yet been acted upon by the University. WSWP is entering negotiations with the University management and the Vice Chancellor, Stuart Croft, and this report is able to provide transparency and accountability, greatly aiding these negotiations which is why I implore every University to conduct similar research.
However, there is still a sense of inaction and reluctance from the University. Every day that this genocide continues is unacceptable, and to be reluctant to act in the face of mass suffering is inhumane. Whether it’s University Chancellors, or Prime Ministers, we must stand together and make our voices heard. We all know that solidarity is not transactional, it is essential and there is real power in that.
As Akwaeke Emezi has said in their novel ‘Bitter’, hope is ‘something serious and deliberate instead of something wishful and desperate.’ The ability to practice hope is a privilege, but it is one we are afforded, so we must continue to hold hope that our efforts will not be in vain.
Still, it is important to remember during the course of our work that this is human loss on an unprecedented scale, which is being felt by people quite often far away from us. Whilst I have focused on student activism, hope and what we can materially do as activists in the UK, I feel it is important to remember the devastation that is occurring right now in this Labour Government’s name. I therefore want to read out two pieces of writing that I find particularly powerful.
It’s very Gen Z of me that the first piece I have is a Tumblr Post, but I think you’ll all agree it is moving and important, and I’m sure some of you will have seen it. So:
“I wake up thirsty and I think of Palestine. I go to the doctor’s office and I think of Palestine. A sign in the corner of the waiting room says ‘this is a place of healing, disruptive behaviour will not be tolerated’ and I think of Palestine. They probably weren’t thinking of bombs and snipers and mass graves in parking lots. I call my parents and I think of Palestine. I drive to the grocery store and I think of Palestine. I look at the clear blue sky and I think of Palestine. I put the dishes away and I think of Palestine. I feed my cat and I think of Palestine. I listen to music and I think of Palestine. I read poetry and I think of Palestine. I text my friends and I think of Palestine. I think of Palestine and I think of Palestine and I think of Palestine”
And now I will read Born on Nakba Day, a poem by Mohammed El-Kurd.
Your unkindness rewrote my autobiography
into punch lines in guts,
blades for tongues,
a mouth pregnant with
thunder.
Your unkindness told me to push
through,
look,
listen.
I was born on the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba
to a mother who reaped olives
and figs
and other Quranic verses,
watteeni wazzaytoon.
My name: a bomb in a white room, a walking suspicion
in an airport,
choiceless politics.
I was born on the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba.
Outside the hospital room:
protests, burnt rubber,
Kuffiyah’ed faces, and bare bodies,
stones thrown onto tanks,
tanks imprinted with US flags,
lands
smelling of tear gas, skies tiled with
rubber-coated bullets,
a few bodies shot, dead—died
numbers in a headline.
I
and my sister
were born.
Birth lasts longer than death.
In Palestine death is sudden,
instant,
constant,
happens in between breaths.
I was born among poetry
on the fiftieth anniversary.
The liberation chants outside the hospital room
told my mother
to push.
- The UN International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People online briefing was hosted by Labour & Palestine and Arise Festival on 29 November. You can watch it in full here and listen as a podcast here.
- You can follow Labour & Palestine on Facebook and Twitter/X.
- Mads Wainman is a history student at the University of Warwick and the Disabled Students’ Officer on the National Labour Students Committee. You can follow her on Twitter/X.
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