Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) are to hold a protest today calling for Trinity to cut ties with Israel on the Dining Hall steps at 1pm.
The protest is taking place as part of Anti-Apartheid week in College. TCDSU are hosting events throughout the week.
Anti-Apartheid week runs from October 4 to October 8 with TCDSU and Trinity Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (Trinity BDS). The week aims to “highlight the Palestinian struggle against apartheid, and bring together students and staff who want to end apartheid in historic Palestine”.
Their goal is to “not only to highlight the plight of the Palestinian people but to celebrate Palestinian resistance and culture, and to foster discussions about how we can most effectively take action against apartheid today”.
They note that Trinity “has a strong anti-apartheid legacy which originated in the 70s as students and staff here took a stand against the South African apartheid regime”.
“However, this legacy has been tarnished over the years as TCD began to invest money into arms companies and to build academic and research ties with univerisities in Apartheid Israel,” they continue.
“Aside from destroying a hard-fought-for anti-apartheid legacy, these actions of support for Israeli apartheid have real-life, devastating consequences for Palestinian people today.”
They also say that “Palestinian people have been persecuted and ethnically cleansed by the Israeli settler-colonial regime for generations, with millions forced to flee their homes and land and many more trapped living under the rule of a racist, apartheid state”.
“Yet the people of Palestine continue to resist colonisation and ethnic cleansing, an
d their cause has garnered the support of millions of people and grassroots campaigns across the globe.”
TCDSU have also launched a petition “calling on College to take a principled stance against apartheid, colonialism, and military occupation in historic Palestine by endorsing the principles of the BDS movement”.
Speaking to Trinity News TCDSU President Leah Keogh said: “we’ll be protesting tomorrow at 1pm on the steps of the dining hall for the same reasons.”
“We’re asking Provost Linda Doyle to take the lead on divesting the the arms industries that facilitate ethnic cleansing and implement apartheid against the Palestinian people”: she continued.
They are also asking College to “cease all collaboration with Israeli universities in accordance with the guidelines laid down by PACBI, the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, that call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, rather than individual academics, as these institutions have played a key role in the ongoing colonisation of Palestine”.
Keogh also highlighted plans to meet “the Ambassador of the State of Palestine to Ireland, Dr Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid, to discuss [their] plans for the future of the campaign” along with Trinity BDS chair Clara McCormack.
The protest is set to kick off at 1pm on the Dining Hall steps.
Photos of the protest can be viewed here:
