- 'I'm thrilled to see young people protesting, willing to risk losing their positions at the university,' says Jewish German activist
WASHINGTON
Marione Ingram, an 88-year-old Jewish German activist and Holocaust survivor, expressed her support for a protest in solidarity with Palestine at George Washington University.
In an interview at the university's yard, where a group of students were present from Washington, D.C.-based Georgetown and American universities, Ingram said she condemns the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza and demands an end to US funding of Israel's actions.
"The more students are doing this, the better. The more students are protesting, governments will have to take note of that, because they are also the voters who will elect the people in Congress, in the Senate, and of course, the president," she told Anadolu.
"I'm here because I'm thrilled to see young people protesting and young people willing to risk losing their positions at the university. Because it's important that we speak out, that we have as many people as possible speaking out against this," said Ingram.
She called for Israel to stop "killing its neighbors" and the US to stop funding Israel, suggesting the funding should go to the rebuilding of Gaza.
Ingram also demanded that UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, be "refunded doubly," calling it "the only organization that has cared for refugees of Israel and America's war on Palestinians rights."
"My wish is for both groups to live together, for Palestinians to have the same rights and obligations that Israelis have. I want them to live without walls, without border guards, without having to show a piece of paper that would allow them to move from point A to B," she added.
Ingram has been staging a protest near the White House for months in response to Israel's war on Gaza.
Rafi El-Habashi, a student at George Washington University, told Anadolu that people are being buried in mass graves in Gaza, being beaten, maimed and brutalized in "the most egregious and inhumane ways."
"It is unacceptable. This is being broadcast live on social media, and we, as Americans, are complicit through our tax dollars and our tuition dollars. It is our moral imperative to stand up, to resist, to demand divestment, to demand an end to US military aid to the Zionist regime. And we will not rest until those demands are met. We refuse to let our money be used to kill our people on the ground in Palestine," he said.
El-Habashi said the students who gathered at the university's yard are being joined by students from Georgetown University and George Mason University and the American University as well as the University of Maryland.
"We all want financial disclosure in our universities and dominance in their investments. We want full divestment from all corporations complicit in funding and arming the Zionist entity. We want a boycott of all Israeli institutions, all Zionist institutions, which are deeply fundamental to upholding the systems of occupation and apartheid and genocide," he added.
Nada Elgouney, another student at George Washington University, said the driving force of the demonstrations is the liberation of Palestine and protesting students' refusal to "participate in a machine that murders over 35,000 people."
Elgouney said the killings in Gaza are a "genocide" and it is "not happening in a vacuum and we have the ability to materially change something, as university students, as we understand that our institutions contribute millions of dollars to the war machine.”
"They contribute to the bodies that press the buttons that kill our families and our friends and our comrades and philosophy, and we have an obligation to disrupt that and to stop it and to reject it completely," she said.
Elgouney demanded an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
Protests against Israel's war on Gaza have spread to universities across the US after more than 100 people were arrested at Columbia University in New York last week when police tried to clear an encampment.
Israel has waged a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, which Tel Aviv said killed around 1,200 people.
More than 34,300 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and nearly 77,300 injured amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.
More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.
Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.