The student intifada has reached the UK. At the School of Oriental and African Studies, students set up an encampment in solidarity with Gaza, taking particular aim at the university’s investments in companies that produce white phosphorus. The Real News reports from London, speaking directly with student organizers calling out their school’s complicity in genocide. Producers: Ross Domoney and Nadia PéridotPresenter: Nadia PéridotVideography and Editing:Ross Domoney Transcript Nadia – presenter:  Inspired by the direct action on US campuses, students across the UK are taking a stand against their university’s links to Israel. Nadia – presenter: We’re talking to students here at SOAS in the liberated zone about what they’re hoping to achieve. Protestor: It’s been ten days of learning. It’s been ten days of solidarity.It’s been 10 days of community showing up for us.  Protestor:  We’ve taken the situation on this campus from one where students were suspended from expressing solidarity for the Palestinain cause to one where they’re students camping out here day and night, shouting at the top of our lungs that Palestine will be free. Protestor: I think that students have historically always been on the right side of history. I think the especially institutions like SOAS we are taught all the theory of things like the Nakba, we are taught all the theories of things like apartheid. And I think that it is insulting to teach us these things and not expect us to apply them. Protestors:  SOAS, SOAS, Shame, Shame!  Protestor: Attention, everybody in five minutes, we will be having a teach out from Unies against Borders control. Protestor: This is a liberated zone. That means that it’s a zone for political education. It’s a zone for community building. It’s a zone for breaking bread together. Protestor: To be in these spaces means to dream of a better world and to look around us and find ways, small and large, that we can bring about that better world. Presentor: Can you tell us about what your demands are and what you hope to achieve with this? Protestor: The first is to disclose and, create more transparency around its financial investments. The second is to divest from any companies that are, complicit in the ongoing genocide. Protestor:  before this started, I didn’t realize quite how complicit this entire institution was in the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people. Protestor: But the more we find out and the more we look and the more questions we ask like the was it just gets. Presentor: We learn that SOAS a university renowned for producing radical thinkers and which centers its studies on the Middle East, has direct involvement with companies that produce white phosphorus, the deadly incendiary weapon that Human Rights Watch has found Israel to have used against civilians in Gaza in recent months. Protestor: This university has been complicit in the settler colonial project in Palestine for decades. And, that means that it has a moral responsibility to, swiftly begin redirecting those resources towards rebuilding, efforts. You know, there’s there’s not a single university left intact in Gaza, at this point. Protestor: And for us to be sitting here at this institution in London, and our tuition money going towards destroying those universities, it’s it’s not right. Presenter:  in Gaza, all places of learning, including U.N. schools, sheltering civilians, have been systematically destroyed by Israel. Presenter: Thousands of students and teachers have been killed, injured or arrested as part of what the United Nations has warned is ‘Schoolasticide’ in the enclave.  Protestor: We live here in the Imperial core. Protestor:  We live just blocks away from arms manufacturers and the offices of the companies that bankroll the ongoing genocide. And also atrocities all over the world. We need to understand the imperial system as a, as a, as a broad structure that is interlinking. And here in London and in the UK in general, we find ourselves at a unique position. Protestor: So, across society. We need to look around us, see what effective targets we might be able to to identify, and then come over whatever, petty differences we might have with the people at our sides to organize effectively, to attack those targets. Presenter: At least 25 Palestine solidarity encampments have taken hold at universities across the UK from London to Edinburgh. In national protest. Protestor: As we’ve seen with, you know, protests during the Iraq war, during the Vietnam War, it was a student protest. It was a student revolution that actually ended up making the biggest difference. Protestor: And we are just borrowing and learning, Protestor: carrying on their legacy and history. Protestor: And I think when you root your politics and when you root your individual actions and activism in this idea of collective liberation and this idea of intersectionality, there isn’t another choice. Protestor: Like there was never any question, of course, I was going to be here, of course I was going to resist in any way I can. I think the increasing numbers of young people, especially coming through spaces like SOAS, that although the institution itself is deeply complicit, I think the culture here wants to resist. Protestor: I think I come from a background of people that resist genocide. I come from a background of people that resists colonialism. Like, this is who I am, Presentor: With continued national protests and localized direct action at institutions like this, the people are putting pressure on the UK government to end its support for Israel. Public opinion has shifted and this next generation of voters are part of the movement against another parliament propping up the Zionist agenda. Presentor: I think the slogan no ceasefire, no vote reflects the current environment in the UK and the current attitude of the people in the UK. The government is absolutely not representative of our movement here. They have refused to implement an arms embargo on the Zionist entity, and they’ve refused to call for an unconditional and permanent ceasefire, which is absolutely deplorable considering it’s a genocide. Protestor: We’ve seen how an arms embargo affected how in in South Africa with the apartheid regime. Presentor: These student protests represent a wave of significant change. With knowledge at their fingertips and immersed in a collective hope. Presentor: They intend to stay until they see the change they want to be in the world. Protestor: To students in Gaza and to their families and their communities. Just from the bottom of my heart and I know I speak for all of my comrades here at this camp. A deep, deep, deep message of solidarity and love. And a deep and warm embrace to all of you. We can only begin to imagine the pain and the difficulty that you’re living through right now. Protestor: But we we are all collectively and we know that you are, too, we find we find our strength in seeing what you all do. Protestor: God willing, sometime soon, Protestor: We we will be able to to see you, to hold you in person. To build direct community with you together. And, and someday all borders will fall.