Americans Want Arms Embargo on Israel, Says Student Leader

‘Our government should properly adhere to their constituents’ demands…Americans are calling for a total arms embargo of weapons to Israel. And that is still not happening.’

Editor’s note: The People’s Tribune recently interviewed Abla Abdelkader, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Illinois Chicago. The following is excerpted from that interview.

Chris Mahin: Abla, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and about your organization and how it came to be?

Abla Abdelkader: I am a senior at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and I joined SJP as soon as I started college. I felt like I really had this obligation to advocate and uplift the Palestinian voices on my college campus. And then that introduced me to SJP Chicago, which is the Chicago Coalition of all the SJP chapters from different schools. It even extends into the suburbs, and even beyond, like, we have University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as part of our coalition as well. And it basically serves to uplift those individual chapters and also network them and connect them, build a strong base within Chicago so that we can continue mobilizing and advocating for Palestinian rights as well as for all other groups that we share intersectional struggles with.

CM: And I understand SJP is a national organization with about 200 chapters. Could you talk about that and what it’s been doing over the last year?

AA: National SJP kind of oversees all of the individual chapters, of course, and their work is again, to just continue uplifting the student movement, which is what they’ve been doing the past year. They’ve been planning National Days of Action, providing toolkits and resources that we can use to educate and uplift the masses. They also host political education, like summer curriculums, and throughout the school year as well, where they essentially teach us about the history of Palestine, the history of Palestinian resistance, and also contextualizing everything that is happening within the history, and enlightening all of these students who might not have had access to that information in their schooling. And so I would say that over the past year that’s been something that they’ve been focusing on, just continuing to educate students and uplift them in any ways that they need in order to continue sustaining the movement and our steadfastness within the movement.

CM: What has been the response of the campus administration at UIC in response to the activities that your chapter has engaged in there?

AA: It’s been pretty repressive. Last year we had multiple protests on campus, and by the end of the year, admin was coming after us trying to ban our organization from campus. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, but essentially they are not pleased with our dissent. It’s a threat to them. Despite the fact that we’re dissenting because a genocide is happening and our university is complicit in that, we are the ones that have been criminalized and targeted by the administration. At the same time, they like to play this middle ground, almost like they care and they want to appeal to us and listen to our needs, but it’s very like surface level, not acknowledging what is actually happening. Instead they throw these concessions in our faces, hoping that we’ll capitulate. And the reality is that ultimately we want our university to cut ties with Israel and entities that support Israel.

So that would be weapons manufacturers, that would be other corporations like Caterpillar which is a construction and mining equipment manufacturer. One of our campaigns this year that we’re going to focus on is to get our university to cut ties with that corporation because it gives Israel the bulldozers and excavators that demolish and just completely desecrate Palestinian agriculture, infrastructure and land, and has even been linked to deaths within Palestine, both to Palestinians and allies, such as Rachel Corrie. She was an American citizen that was literally crushed to death by an Israeli force driving a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer. When you look into it and you realize the contracts that our university has and how closely knit our university is to these corporations in terms of financial exchange, you can’t help but be outraged because we don’t have a say, we don’t necessarily have any influence or agency over what our tuition dollars are being funded in.

All that we know is that our tuition dollars are circulating within their financial pool, and they could be going to all of these corporations that are essentially funding the death of our people, and also around the world, not just in Palestine, but everywhere else within the global south that has been completely violated by colonial and imperial structures using these arms from these weapons manufacturers to continue their onslaught. And again, to circle back to the question, rather than meeting with students, rather than agreeing to at least plead with our calls for humanity, we’re being villainized and criminalized. And so one big thing that happened over the summer was our university drafted policies for this upcoming year. And they’re either about to be issued or they’ve already been issued.

I have to look into it. But essentially these policies are targeting not just Palestinian organizers on campus, but any organizations that stand in solidarity with our cause. And so these policies include things like when and where we can protest. It specifically says you can only protest during daytime, and as soon as it gets dark outside, you’re no longer allowed to protest on campus. And explicitly it states no encampments. I think it’s an intentional act to scare us. It is a tactic to repress us and intimidate us from standing up for humanity, which is essentially what we’re doing. And they’re not pleased with that, so they have enacted those policies to repress us.

CM: There has been a wave of attacks on the civil liberties of Palestinian students and other students who want to support the Palestinian cause. For instance, Gov. DeSantis in Florida told state administration there to ban your organization Students for Justice in Palestine. What do you think can be done to stop it, and what do you expect to see coming up in this fall term where it’s not just your university, but others that have introduced these new student codes of conduct and so forth?

AA: To answer your first question, it’s more like we can’t stop it, but it won’t stop us, if that makes sense. As much as they can ban an organization from campus, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to exist because it’s not just like this tangible thing. It’s not just protests. It’s not just tents on your campus. It is more of a collective conscience that we share, this ideology of liberation, of striving for liberation, for true equality for all. And so, to ban an organization is pointless. The movement is going to continue to exist, and the more that we are repressed, the bigger our flames will get, and the more pushback we will give, because when we are faced with an injustice, our immediate reaction is to fight back against it.

The students are motivated. They’re coming to realize the complicity that their institutions are having, and all of these war crimes happening, not just in Palestine, but these human rights violations throughout the entire world. And so everybody is charged, and I can see that on my campus. Everybody is charged and ready to call out these horrific normalizations and see change within our institutions.

In terms of something like that happening in Chicago, there have been instances where for example, our SJP was threatened to be banned last year. I know of SJPs within Chicago that have no longer received funding from their school and are no longer allowed to post events on their campus, so essentially banning the organization from their campuses, and that hasn’t stopped them. They continue to mobilize, just off of their campuses. They’re within the community, which builds a stronger base.

CM: So you mentioned that there’s this great vibrancy on campus right now. What effect do you think that’s going to have in the next several months as the situation in Gaza continues, and we have the US presidential election? What are the plans of your organization and where do you see the student movement going in the next period of time?

AA: I think we will continue to call out the Biden and Harris administration along with our own institutions. And I think that that will send them down in history as the butchers of Gaza or the funders of genocide. We are going to make sure that they can’t just brush this away and ignore it as much as they want to. We’re going to continue putting the issue of Palestine on the forefront of international issues, of national issues, of local issues, people within our communities just continuing to evoke this inspiration or motivation for the cause within the next year, as so long as the genocide is ongoing and we don’t see an arms embargo, not even just a ceasefire anymore, because clearly a ceasefire means nothing.

If Kamala Harris says that she’s calling for a ceasefire, but continuing to send arms to Israel, those two things don’t coincide. That doesn’t make sense. So our next thing is on campuses to start calling for our universities to, number one, cut the ties, continue that divestment and cutting the ties with Israeli institutions, Israeli educational institutions as well, and also weapons manufacturers or any corporations that bolster the Israeli regime. And on top of that, we will continue to mobilize for our government to properly represent us and properly adhere to their constituents’ demands, which hasn’t been the case over the past 10 months when the majority of Americans wanted a ceasefire. And we still don’t have one. And now Americans are calling for a total arms embargo of weapons to Israel. And that is still not happening. And it’s still this topic of debate and topic of nuance when in reality it’s simple that people are being slaughtered with our American tax dollars and we no longer want that happening.

CM: Are there specific things that people can do to help your organization, or specific demands that they can make of elected officials that you would want to emphasize in particular?

AA: I think just consistent mobilization showing up to protests, showing up to rallies or any actions or calls to mobilizations, because that is our bare minimum, the right to dissent. If you have the right to protest and to that civil unrest in the streets, I think it’s a hugely underrated privilege that many people don’t realize they have. So, to continue doing that, to continue uplifting student orgs by holding the admin accountable when they’re not showing the support for the students that they need to be. One thing that we’ve seen in the past, for example, at the University of Chicago, five students had their degrees withheld and before the end of the summer, all of them had their degrees back because we saw the community continue to press U. of C. admin to give these students their degrees and to stop targeting these students for protesting a genocide.

…The community showed up and protested to let them know that you’re not just dealing with the students here, you’re dealing with a whole collective of people from all walks of life. Not just Palestinians, not just Arabs, not just Muslims, but you’re dealing with people who want Black liberation. You’re dealing with the people who are fighting for immigrant rights, for workers’ rights, for liberation, because all of these things are tied, essentially. And so showing that to them makes it seem like they’re not just dealing with maybe like a couple dozen kids on campus. No, they’re dealing with a community of people. They’re dealing with a front at this point. And that pressure little by little will lead to the change that we want to see. And it’s not going to happen overnight, but that’s not necessarily what we’re aiming for. It’s for a more long-term goal that we know is going to happen. But it just takes a lot of consistency and effort and a lot of community support.

CM: What was your assessment of the demonstrations at the Democratic convention, and also the response of the Democratic party? And I wondered if you wanted to talk about Kamala Harris’ campaign, her comments during the debate, and if you had any thoughts on just where electoral politics is going?

AA: I think the Democratic National Convention really revealed that it’s not just Palestinians that are upset with the Democrats or Republicans. Like I said, it’s a whole collective of people who have been marginalized and oppressed by these imperial and colonial structures for decades, centuries even. That sends a message again to these institutions that the majority is displeased and the majority wants change. In terms of Kamala Harris’ statements and her campaign in general, I think, we’ve seen a shift and a lot of tension between people who support Palestine but still want to vote for Kamala Harris.

They’re calling it [Palestine] a single voter issue. Some people say if you’re not voting for Kamala Harris, this is a single voter issue when in reality, Kamala Harris’ policies are not that substantially [different] compared to Donald Trump’s. And it’s a little bit interesting to see how she’s trying to appeal not just to liberal voters anymore, but also a little bit of the Republicans as well. And I think that just shows how adaptable these politicians are. But that their true [desire] for the people doesn’t lie in our interests, but to serve their own and to serve their seats in the government. And to speak to her policies about Palestine, she’s continuing to say that she will unwaveringly support Israel and would unwaveringly give Israel the ability to defend itself, when defense to Israel looks like displacing 1.9 million Palestinians; defense to Israel looks like the death of over 100,000 Palestinians; defense to Israel looks like the spreading of mass diseases that have been eradicated for decades at this point. It doesn’t make sense. What does defense look like in your mind? Because what we’re seeing right now, as declared by international structures, is genocide, and that is not defense. And so for her to come out and say, I will continue to defend Israel’s right to defend itself, I think it just shows that she doesn’t care about Palestinians….the reality is that she’s continuing to send Israel weapons of mass destruction to use on innocent Palestinian lives. There are people who think that she might be a better fit than Donald Trump, or might be less harsh than Donald Trump, but the reality that we’re dealing with here is the lesser of two evils is still committing a genocide.

So, to tell people whose families are being slaughtered, who are also being displaced, and now we see ground invasions happening in the West Bank, with Palestinians being killed there and also arbitrarily arrested, then telling us that we are just making this a single voter issue and that we shouldn’t let Donald Trump win and we’re just giving Donald Trump a vote is a slap in the face. Because this isn’t just about Donald Trump not winning. This is about not only the Palestinian lives, but also people acknowledging that this two-party system has shackled us. That we believe that these are the only two options that we have, and that we will continue to always advocate for the lesser of two evils, even when the lesser of two evils is committing a genocide, doesn’t make sense to me. We need to realize our power as voters and not allow the Democrats or the Republicans to guilt us into voting for either or. I think that that’s been a huge point of contention within the past couple of months, and we’ll continue to see that. But ultimately the overall collective consensus with Palestinians and their allies is that we’re not going to vote for Kamala Harris if she continues to send arms to Israel,…and we will give our vote to whoever actually cares and whoever actually will represent us.

CM: Have there been discussions about what happens if Trump wins or what happens if Kamala Harris wins and are there plans for demonstrations or activities after election day?

AA: I think the reality for Palestinians will not change. We will continue to be protesting, because either party will continue the onslaught that is happening in Gaza. I don’t see any calming of like the civil unrest that we’ve seen. However, to say what will happen if Trump wins or what will happen if Kamala wins, I think I’m just going to go back to what I said earlier. They’re both pretty much the same in my eyes, whether it’s for the Palestinian cause or immigrant rights or workers’ rights, essentially. I think that they’re all trying to serve the same purpose, which is themselves and the purpose of the greater institution that runs this country, and that’s not our interests, the people. Ultimately we will have to continue protesting this genocide until one of them somehow decides to stop sending arms to Israel.

CM: Could you talk about some of the outreach you’ve done? Could you talk about the breadth of the movement and the efforts to reach out to other forces in society?

AA: I think it’s been a historic intersectional struggle. This isn’t something that happened after October 7th. I remember when George Floyd was murdered, Palestinians were at the protests because we understand that the same force that killed George Floyd is the same force that killed Shireen Abu Akleh. Or same thing when Sonya Massey was murdered. That was just another reminder of the connections between the police force in America that trains with the IOF [Israeli military] in Palestine. So there has always been this historic connection of struggle. And the same thing with immigrant rights – Palestinians are immigrants as well. And so we understand that struggle in our way, but ultimately in the greater picture, you know, the exclusion of immigrants or the criminalization, the villainization of immigrants is something that we can’t stand for.

But I will say that I think there was like an awakening or a resurgence of the ties or the connection between all of these struggles, because we’re seeing it full force in Gaza what this can come to anywhere in the world, that this can happen anywhere, not just in Gaza. And that serves as a really harsh reminder to all of us that if we don’t link arms and don’t commit to this as a joint struggle, this can happen anywhere else. And that is ultimately what we don’t want to see anymore. Even on our campus within the last year we formed a coalition of progressive student orgs that support Palestinian human rights, immigrant rights, workers’ rights, and liberation.

…And again, acknowledge that it is the same structures committing a genocide in Gaza that want to build a wall on the Mexican border. It is the same notion and ideology of building the apartheid wall and the border wall in America. It is the same entity that is training the police in America and in Israel. So we see that and it creates this deeper tie for us to build off of.

CM: The other thing that doesn’t get talked about a lot in the mainstream American media is just incredible amount of money that the state of Israel gets from the U.S. and what that money could do in the United States. One of the main slogans of the march at the Democratic convention was money for jobs and healthcare, not for war.

AA: I totally agree. I’m going into education and so I’m doing observation hours right now at a CPS high school, and the disparities are insane to me. What do you mean students don’t have enough books? What do you mean there’s not enough laptops? Students are reading at a second grade level when they’re about to graduate high school. This stuff doesn’t make sense when homelessness is at an unprecedented rate and our students are not receiving quality education, and when our college students are facing immense amounts of student debt, and you say all the time, we don’t have money for that. Or making these false promises to hook people in to get people to vote for you and then never following through with them. But then in front of our eyes, sending billions of dollars to an entity that serves us no purpose other than an imperial stake in the Middle East. People are going to be outraged. And I think ultimately it shows the hypocrisy and the self-serving nature of these politicians who again, don’t care about us, don’t care about our needs, and instead want to serve the needs of the groups funding their campaigns and filling their pockets and saving them their seats in the government.