New Haven, April 16 (RHC)-- More than a dozen students at Yale University have threatened to go on hunger strike over the seat of learning’s connection to American arms manufacturers that contribute to the Israeli regime’s ongoing genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
The group announced its decision in a letter to university President Peter Salovey, American news website, Mondoweiss, reported on Monday. “We here at Yale University have witnessed this ongoing genocide from the comforts of not only the heart of the empire that is funding the military conquest and colonization of Palestine, but from the distance and security provided by the investments of this University which profit from this mass ethnic cleansing,” the letter read.
Close to 34,000 Palestinians, mostly women, children, and adolescents, have died since October 7, when the Israeli regime launched the war in response to Operation al-Aqsa Storm by Gaza’s resistance movements.
The United States, Israel’s biggest ally, has been lending unstinting political, military, and intelligence support to the regime since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.
“Our existence in this University and this country are ones defined by necropolitics. Our lives here exist as they do because of the investment in the deaths of Palestinians by Yale and the US government,” the students added. They demanded that the university divest from all weapons manufacturing companies contributing to the Israeli assault.
Last year, hundreds of Yale students held a campus-wide walkout in protest at Washington’s all-out support for the genocide. Pro-Palestinian student activism has grown significantly across the U.S. since the launch of the Washington-backed Israeli war of aggression.
Ever since, students at Brown University and the University of South Florida have launched similar hunger strikes.
Last month, a college student body at the Columbia University voted in favor of boycotting all companies that support the Israeli regime's apartheid and genocidal practices.
In mid-November, more than 40 student groups at the university formed a coalition to push for the seat of learning's divestment from the "Israeli apartheid," and "challenge the settler-colonial violence" that Tel Aviv has been perpetrating with the support of the United States and its allies.
