Community members participate in walkout in solidarity with Palestine

On October 8, UBC community members held a walkout outside the Nest in support of Palestine.

The walkout, organized by student groups including UBC Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and UBC Student Strike for Palestine, was posted on Instagram in what the groups called “Week of Rage.” The post is meant to mark “one year of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people and Gaza.”

October 7 marked one year since Hamas’s attack on Israel and the beginning of what protesters call a genocide in Gaza. According to a United Nations-appointed independent expert, there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Since the October 7 attack, UBC community members have repeatedly protested in support of Palestine and demanded UBC divest from companies they say are complicit in human rights violations against Palestinians.

Chants of “the people united will never be defeated,” and “UBC pick a side: Justice or genocide,” reverberated through the crowd of over 100 protesters as they marched along Main Mall. Some protesters carried posters with the photos and names of impacted people.

Protesters also called for Israel's removal from Lebanon and Yemen, in addition to Palestine. According to Al Jazeera coverage, Israel's military has recently expanded its attacks to Lebanon and Yemen.

At the end of the march, protesters flooded into the lower level of the AMS Nest. The AMS did not respond to The Ubyssey’s request for comment by press time.

Protesters sat down, continued their chants and listened to speeches in support of Palestine.

“All universities in Gaza are completely destroyed, mosques [are] destroyed, homes [are] destroyed,” one speaker said. They also called on protesters to shame UBC for what they said was the university’s complicity in human rights violations against Palestinians.

According to a UN report, the last university in Gaza was “demolished by the Israeli military” on January 17, and UN experts are “deeply concerned” regarding the scholasticide in Gaza.

Among the community protesters who spoke, three were members of UBC faculty and staff. They carried a banner between them which read “UBC Faculty for Palestine.”

“For the past year, Israel’s genocidal military campaign in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of high school and primary school and university students, and tens of thousands more have been injured,” a faculty member said.

“We commend the students, [and] we stand with you,” said another faculty member.

RCMP and Campus Security were also present during the protest.

In a statement to The Ubyssey, Executive Director of UBC Media Relations Kurt Heinrich wrote, “We recognize that many in our community wish to express their concerns about the ongoing and now deepening violence and crisis in the Middle East.”

Heinrich echoed UBC President Benoit-Antoine Bacon's May 7 statement where he said the university’s endowment fund doesn’t directly own any stocks that are the target of divestment demands.

Instead, capital, which is managed by external investment managers, is held in pooled funds which amount to about 0.28 percent of the endowment fund — approximately $7.8 million of the university’s $2.8 billion endowment.

Matt, an organizer behind UBC walkout for Palestine, concluded the protest with a call to action for supporters to shut down UBC’s campus.

“We talked about shutting this campus down … it’s time to put those words into action,” he said. “In my opinion, [UBC] have picked a side, they picked the side of genociders.”

“It’s time for us to pick our side, we need to shut this campus down, and the way that we do that is building the strongest coalition of students … of faculty, of staff, everyone under the united banner.”