(Dedicated to the Columbia University students and to the students all over the US and the world who courageously stand against the politics of oppression, terrorization and annihilation of the Palestinian people pursued by the Israeli government. I have walked many times through the Columbia campus in NYC, in nocturnal, wandering promenade, with no thought of Gaza. This has forever changed.)
The student bodies in encampment
are fighting for decency and elucidation
holding high the conscience of our time.
The student bodies in encampment
rebel against enmity and exclusion,
they are not about celebration of pogroms.
The student bodies in encampment
decry all anti-Jewish malevolence, the kind
of discourse of hate we saw in Charlottesville.
The student bodies in encampment demand
honesty from governments and institutions,
they demand equal rights for colonized peoples.
Instead of shallow narratives that vilify
and demonize such compassionate souls,
we shall all be proud of their intrepidity.
The student bodies in encampment
shall not be made political scapegoats
for exposing genocidal intent and act
They are about human solidarity in motion
beauty at its peak; they represent our inner best
despite divisionary attempts to shame them.
They are about the destroyed villages, the siege,
the destruction of schools, hospitals, mosques,
soup kitchen, sudden and slow death of Gaza’s children.1
The students are of many creeds and ethnic provenance,
a university of Muslims, Jews, Christians, Vodouists,
and Buddhists joining hands to elevate our humanity.
Repression, militarized police response, fear mongering,
efforts to harm the students’ studies and future
only make the moral imperatives more urgent.
The student bodies in encampment
are about the affinities which bring us together,
human empathy in the face of horror and pain.2
Glory to the student bodies in encampment!
They are the hope still left in a cynical world;
they are our tomorrow, our shining light in the darkness.
—Tontongi May 8th 2024
Anti-Gaza war protesters at the Columbia University campus. —photo credit The New York Times (This NYT page includes “Scenes of Protest at College Campuses).
Encamping Harvard students protesting the Israeli war on Gaza and demanding divestment from Israel. —photo Tanbou, 2024.
MIT students in encampment to protest the Israeli war on Gaza and demand divestment from Israel. —photo Tanbou, 2024.
Footnotes
| 1. | The mention of “soup kitchen” is in allusion to the killing by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) on April 1st, 2024, of seven volunteers of the World Central Kitchen (WCK) founded by José Andrés. |
| 2. | We denounce all acts of oppression and massacre of human beings, be they perpetuated in occupied Palestine, in Ukraine or in Haiti. It is in the spirit of that principle that I write this poem, now third in a series. As of May 3rd, 2024, and counting, more than 34,568 Palestinians have been killed, including 13,800 children and 77,765 injured, not to mention the desert of ruins and suffering that Gaza has become. Here in the US, language itself has been deployed to demonize the student protesters who empathize with Palestinian suffering: thus what my friend Cathy Hoffman calls “community support” for the protesters is distorted in news reports as “outside agitators” coming to “radicalize” the naive students. Despite all of that, I rejoice to see such a great manifestation of self-sacrifice and compassion for the benefit and liberation of others. |