Yale students consider hunger strike over unmet anti-Israel demands

Anti-Israel students at Yale University are threatening to go on a hunger strike if the school does not commit to divest from weapons manufacturers “contributing to Israel’s assault on Palestine” by Friday morning, they warned in a letter to the university’s president.

“If these demands are not met by the morning of 4/12/2024, we will go on a hunger strike,” the students wrote to President Peter Salovey. “We will risk our bodily health and wellbeing in ways that mirror only a fraction of the absolute devastation that Palestinians are suffering right now, until you do. Yale’s complicity in genocide must end.”

In the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas for brutally massacring more than 1,000 people on October 7, the letter calls the United States the “empire that is funding the military conquest and colonization of Palestine” and accused the university’s investments of profiting “from this mass ethnic cleansing.”

“Our existence in this University and this country are ones defined by necropolitics,” the students continued. “Our lives here exist as they do because of the investment in the deaths of Palestinians by Yale and the US government.”

The students claimed they “exhausted every mode possible” of making their voices heard without the university making the changes they requested. The students cite various conferences, talks, meetings, and protests that they say failed to elicit a response from the administrators.

“You flaunt free speech as a protected right on this campus but treat our free speech as if it holds no real weight,” the letter reads. “Our free speech demands a response from you.”

In a now-deleted post on the Instagram account created for the strike, the students solicited donations for “life-giving aid” and medical support to help strike participants.

The letter also accuses Yale of going against its commitment to make investment decisions that “incorporate the full costs of climate change.”

“The first 60 days of Israeli bombardment has released more GHG emissions than the annual carbon emissions of twenty individual countries and the carbon cost of rebuilding Palestine will exceed the annual emissions of over 130 individual countries combined,” the letter reads.

Citing Yale adopting a policy in 2018 of not investing in assault weapons, the students called on Yale to divest from all weapons manufacturing and military suppliers.

“Just like domestic shootings, the Israeli military causes ‘the Israeli military causes ‘incontrovertible societal harm’ and ‘grave social injury’ as they decimate the educational infrastructure of Palestine.”

The students go on to demand that the president discuss plans for divesting in an upcoming Yale Corporation board meeting.

The letter was signed by a group of 12 graduate and undergraduate students, according to Yale Daily News.

The Instagram post was in collaboration with Yale Law Students for Justice in Palestine, Yalies for Palestine, and Yale Graduate Students for Palestine.

The university is reviewing its investment policies, according to Yale Daily News which cited a February 2024 statement from the university confirming there is a review to extend the 2018 assault weapons policy to “cover manufacturers who effectively retail to the general public.”

Yale University did not respond to a request for comment.

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