On 6 February, Glasgow university student Hannah Taylor sprayed paint over a building because the institution had “blatantly ignored the will of the majority of its students and staff, and insisted on continuing to invest in Israeli linked arms research” amid the Gaza genocide. She and Strathclyde student Catriona Roberts took this action in solidarity with Youth Demand.
Taylor told the Canary that they were “arrested and held for four hours, charged with vandalism”. The police banned her from Glasgow University buildings and some surrounding areas, but later lifted the ban. The university, however, has prevented her from accessing “lectures, tutorials, or lecture recordings”. She said university bosses “intend to enforce this ban until the end of the criminal proceedings which I expect to last several months/over a year”.
She has a plea hearing on 1 May, but insisted:
It is clear that they are using my campus ban as a threat to other students to deter further protest. They know they do not have student or staff consent to continue investing in arms so rather than listen to our voices they have chosen to enforce their policies through fear. It is a tactic that goes directly against the values which Glasgow University purports to stand for and highlights the hypocrisy at the heart of their institution. Students must continue to fight for the right to an education free from complicity in genocide.
Glasgow University: complicit in genocide
As the Canary previously reported:
In November, the University of Glasgow refused to prohibit its endowment fund managers from investing in companies that earn more than 10% of their income from arms manufacturing.
The University of Glasgow has £6.8 million worth of shareholdings in arms companies such as BAE systems and QinetiQ. They have also received around £600,000 in research funding from BAE systems and Rolls Royce since 2017. QinetiQ, a supplier of military robotics, has been criticised for their active export of arms to Israel and involvement in the British Army Watchkeeper Programme which allegedly tested the drones on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
This is despite overwhelming opposition from both student groups and staff. A survey of 2,400 staff and students at the university found that 81% of staff and 84% of students were in favour of divestment.
And that strong sentiment, Taylor told the Canary, came in spite of the survey being “worded in a very leading and offensive way implying the loss of funds due to divestment would inevitably lead to a loss of bursaries for some students”. Glasgow University’s disinterest in listening, however, was apparent when it “proceeded to ignore these results and continue to invest”. This, Taylor stressed, was “deeply disappointing”. And it led her to take direct action.
Student resistance plays an essential role in challenging Israel’s genocidal occupation
Israeli occupation forces have killed “at least 61,709 people, including 17,492 children“, in Gaza since October 2023. They have also destroyed most of the strip’s educational facilities, homes, businesses, healthcare facilities, and cropland. This collective punishment, which numerous genocide experts have called out as a genocidal campaign, came in response to Hamas breaking out of the ‘open-air prison‘ of occupied Gaza on 7 October 2023 to attack the Israeli military and take hostages. The fighting on that day led to the deaths of up to 780 Israeli civilians.
7 October happened in a context of longstanding Israeli efforts to starve Gaza’s highly concentrated population into submission via a brutal blockade. It also came amid the increasingly clear failure of a US-led peace process that empowered Israel and those complicit in its occupation while maintaining the subjugation of the Palestinian people.
And revelations about Israeli crimes continue to roll in. Just yesterday, on 13 March, the UN Human Rights Council received an independent report detailing how “Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention”.
The brave resistance of people like Taylor and Roberts is essential for holding Israel and its supporters to account for their complicity in occupation, apartheid, and genocide.
Featured image supplied
