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Scholar Strike Canada Strongly Condemns Canadian University Administrators and the Western media for their ongoing Threats against Scholars and Students in Solidarity with Palestinian People in Gaza

 

Scholar Strike Canada (SSC) unequivocally supports academics and students across the country in expressing its support for the Palestinian people in Gaza and we strongly condemn the attacks on academics and student unions by the Canadian media and university administrations. Scholar Strike Canada is shocked and dismayed at the attempts by our administrations and administrators to intimidate and muzzle our freedom as faculty, students, and staff to express our solidarity with the people in Palestine living under Israeli occupation. The ongoing narrative that opposes the value of Palestinian lives and conflates support for Palestinians to the killing of Jews is irresponsible and deplorable.  

 

For two decades, Israel has held Palestinians in Gaza under siege, in an open-air prison, subjecting them to brutal massacres and weapons testing; depriving them of basic goods, food, clean water, medicine, and medical supplies. Through it all, Western nations have condoned the Israeli government’s unrelenting punishment of women, men, children and gender diverse peoples.

 

It is chilling to hear the Israeli Defence Minister refer to Palestinians as “human animals” and the silence in the white mainstream media and from campus administrators to this hateful rhetoric. It is hard not to see the parallels to these narratives and violent practices with the Canadian nation state in its historical and ongoing relationship with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit nations, including Canada’s most recent refusal to search a landfill for murdered Indigenous women.

 

Scholar Strike Canada as a virtual platform was created for and by those of us whose intellectual, academic and activist work promotes decolonization, freedom and liberation. We will continue to support our colleagues and students who speak up and out for liberation from injustice and tyranny.

 

We demand that University administrators across the country immediately cease their intimidation tactics against our colleagues and student unions on campuses!

 

We demand that university administrators across the country acknowledge and denounce the threats of violence that are being made against many of us for supporting the Palestinian people in Gaza and that they work to ensure our safety on university campuses!

 

Your responsibility as postsecondary institutions is first and foremost to ensure the safety and freedom of academics and students and not to the Israeli government. 

 

We will not be silenced! 

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