[News] ‘Hunger is our weapon against injustice’: Stanford students and faculty launch hunger strike for Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

mondoweiss.net
<https://mondoweiss.net/2025/05/hunger-is-our-weapon-against-injustice/?ml_recipient=154375685044962976&ml_link=154375611842823424&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2025-05-14&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines+RSS+Automation>
‘Hunger is our weapon against injustice’: Stanford students and faculty
launch hunger strike for Gaza
Stanford Hunger Strikers for Justice in Palestine
May 13, 2025
------------------------------
[image: IMG_0756.jpg]
Gaza encampment at Stanford University, on April 26th, 2024. (Photo:
Stanford SJP)

*Hunger is our weapon against injustice*

Yesterday we began our hunger strike. In every slowed minute we remember
the children of Gaza, now surviving on boiled weeds and muddy water
<https://www.npr.org/2024/03/29/1241148952/gaza-hunger-famine-aid-israel-hamas-war#:~:text=Hourly%20News-,In%20Gaza%2C%20people%20boil%20weeds%20and%20eat%20animal%20feed%20to,%2C%22%20a%20teenage%20girl%20says.>.
It is now day 584 of the genocide in Gaza, and more than 60,000 Palestinians
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/3/gaza-death-toll-rises-close-to-62000-as-missing-added>
have been murdered by the Zionist entity. Just last week, at least
<https://www.nbcnews.com/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-war-strikes-children-killed-hostages-netanyahu-rcna205526>
four
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/11/israel-kills13-including-children-amid-dire-humanitarian-crisis-in-gaza>
separate
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/8/israeli-attacks-kill-16-in-gaza-as-aid-kitchens-shut-after-supplies-run-out>
massacres
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/10/israel-kills-in-gaza-as-it-throttles-enclave-under-aid-blockade>
have occurred
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/7/israeli-attacks-kill-at-least-16-as-gaza-blockade-accelerates-starvation>
in Gaza, leaving hundreds murdered and wounded. Two months have passed
since Israel’s total siege
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/25/a-timeline-of-israels-weaponisation-of-aid-to-gaza>of
the strip on March 2nd, completely blocking all food and aid from entering
Gaza
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/world/europe/israel-gaza-blockade-humanitarian-crisis.html>.
Israel has completely weaponized food
<https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/05/1162946>; aid convoys remain blocked
<https://www.npr.org/2025/05/08/nx-s1-5392324/world-central-kitchen-gaza-aid>,
grain silos stand empty and parents barter wedding rings for flour
<https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/palestine-israel/2024/02/06/gazans-sell-gold-wedding-rings-to-buy-food-and-shelter-for-their-families/>
that never arrives. A generation is being starved in full view of the
world.

If ever there was a moment that demands civil disobedience, it is the hour
of genocide. We walk in the footsteps of earlier Stanford students who
occupied this same plaza to end the Vietnam War
<https://stanfordmag.org/contents/at-the-hands-of-the-radicals> and later
to force partial divestment from apartheid South Africa
<https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/11/stanfords-rich-history-of-divestment-movements/>.
Now that baton passes to us. On October 20, 2023, Stanford students built
the nation’s first Gaza‑solidarity encampment. For 120 days, hundreds of
Stanford community members sustained this encampment to demand an end to
the genocide in Palestine
<https://stanforddaily.com/2024/04/25/pro-palestine-students-establish-encampment-amid-admit-weekend/>
and to press Stanford University to act — by providing direct support for
Palestinian students and, ultimately, by divesting its endowment from
defense contractors and surveillance firms complicit in that genocide. Our
university’s leadership and administration ignored the calls
<https://stanforddaily.com/2024/04/29/students-overwhelmingly-support-pro-palestine-divestment-resolution/>
from the overwhelming majority of the Stanford student body to take action
and only reacted with escalated repression.

Just this past quarter, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen
indicted
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/us/stanford-protesters-palestine-felony.html>
twelve of our classmates in an attempt to silence protest through
prosecution. This isn’t random, it comes in tandem with federal crackdown
on nationwide pro-Palestinian speech across campuses. Federal agents have
abducted and threatened to deport noncitizen students and scholars — Mahmoud
Khalil
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/16/nyregion/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-university.html>,
Leqaa Kordia
<https://www.splcenter.org/presscenter/leqaa-kordia-challenges-unlawful-confinement-federal-court/>,
Rumeysa Ozturk
<https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/26/metro/tufts-student-video-shows-arrest/>,
Yunseo Chung
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/nyregion/columbia-student-ice-suit-yunseo-chung.html>,
Badar Khan Suri
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/05/08/georgetown-scholar-badar-khan-suri-camera-middle-east-forum/>,
Momodou Taal
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/01/momodou-taal-pro-palestine-cornell-student-leaving-us-detention-fears>
and Ranjani Srinivasan
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/nyregion/columbia-student-kristi-noem-video.html>—
simply for standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We know that
our federal and educational institutions aim to silence and crush the
movement for Palestine through attacks, extreme punishment and repression,
even though the movement has grown and built power beyond their control.

We call on Stanford to publicly urge District Attorney Jeff Rosen to drop
the unjust, excessive charges against our peers. We will continue to defend
and support the Stanford 12 and students nationwide who stand with
Palestine and oppose the genocide in Gaza.

In response to the encampment, Provost Jenny Martinez announced a clutch of
policies
<https://stanforddaily.com/2024/09/18/stanford-updated-free-speech-policies/>
— Orwellianly named “Freedom of Expression” rules — that require protesters
to secure permits days in advance, forbid overnight sit-ins and demand
identification from anyone who dares pass out a leaflet. Just as Secretary
of State Marco Rubio invoked a McCarthy‑era law
<https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/04/05/visa-immigration-first-amendment-protest-speech>
to abduct and deport students, Stanford has resurrected
<https://freespeech.stanford.edu/> its 1968 Policy on Campus Disruptions
<https://freespeech.stanford.edu/policies-and-guidance/core-policies/campus-disruptions#:~:text=provides%20as%20follows%3A-,1968%20Policy%20on%20Campus%20Disruptions,opinions%20with%20which%20they%20disagree.>
— once wielded against anti‑Vietnam War and civil‑rights protesters — to
suppress student movements today. The intent is not peace but intimidation,
a reminder that the price of dissent is surveillance and possible
disciplinary actions. Decades from now, the university may upload glossy
timelines celebrating the Gaza encampment’s moral courage just as today it
celebrates <https://exhibits.stanford.edu/activism/browse> the anti‑Vietnam
and anti‑apartheid struggles fought on these same lawns. In the present,
however, the message is plain: ‘we endorse every protest except the one
unfolding at this very moment.’

Why a hunger strike? Because every register of dissent — petitions,
resolutions and divestment plans — have been stamped “neutral” and shelved
<https://stanforddaily.com/2024/10/16/board-of-trustees-rejects-proposal-to-divest-from-israel/>.
When the university threads bureaucratic wire around our throats, we reach
for the one instrument beyond its jurisdiction. The body speaks in a prose
no committee can redline: it quivers, thins, goes ice‑cold after sunset.
Each tremor mirrors, on a minute scale, the famine tightening its fist
around Gaza — funded in part by our tuition and fattened by Stanford’s
endowment.

Some of us carry American passports; others exist on visas whose codes can
be erased by keystroke. The Trump administration threatens to terminate the
status of any international student deemed a “foreign‑policy threat”
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/04/29/khalil-mahdawi-deportation-foreign-policy-rubio/>—
a phrase elastic enough to encompass a slogan, retweet or the mere act of
standing within earshot of dissent. To protest under such restrictions is
to wager one’s education and one’s right to exist. Several international
members of the Stanford community have joined the fast unnamed. In a
country where speaking truth about genocide is branded as sedition, even
the right to starve — and to grieve — becomes a privilege conferred by
birthplace.

Still, hunger clarifies. Between the pulses of dizziness, we see plainly:
an institution cannot claim moral neutrality while a captive population
starves. It cannot champion academic freedom while collaborating with
prosecutors who criminalize dissent. It cannot pledge inclusion while
profiting
<https://www.palantir.com/assets/xrfr7uokpv1b/3MuEeA8MLbLDAyxixTsiIe/9e4a11a7fb058554a8a1e3cd83e31c09/C134184_finaleprint.pdf>
from firms that supply white phosphorus
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/12/11/israel-us-white-phosphorus-lebanon/>
or refine digital dragnets
<https://www.thenation.com/article/world/nsa-palantir-israel-gaza-ai/> for
an occupying army.

We do not know how long our bodies will hold. We know only that this fast
etches a record of choice. What will Stanford do as mass atrocity knocks
against its sandstone arches: will it marshal the courage to confront
injustice with unequivocal action, or cling to a veneer of neutrality until
that timidity congeals into complicity?

Students bent over problem sets, faculty refining lectures, staff who keep
the lights burning: join our fast for an hour, a day or the duration;
gather on the lawn for nightly prayers; organize, agitate and speak until
repression tires of chasing every syllable.

Justice for Palestine, migrant rights and academic freedom on this campus
are the same fight. Come claim them with us — bringing nothing but resolve
if you wish, hunger if you can, but unmistakable presence.

Stanford Hunger Strikers for Justice in Palestine
Stanford Hunger Strikers for Justice in Palestine Demands

*Hunger Strike for Justice in Palestine & People’s University*

We, members of the Stanford University community, compelled by moral
conscience, announce today our decision to embark upon a hunger strike to
protest the Israeli government’s ongoing siege on Gaza. Since March 2,
2025, Israel has systematically blocked food, fuel, medicine, and other
essential humanitarian supplies from reaching Gaza, precipitating
widespread malnutrition, suffering, and death—especially among children. We
view these deliberate actions as evidence of Israel’s intent to use
starvation as a weapon, aiming to continue through deprivation what it has
failed to achieve militarily over the past eighteen months. This siege is
nothing short of an act of genocide, a calculated effort to annihilate an
entire people through weaponized starvation.

Our hunger strike stands in the lineage of national liberation movements
that wields bodily abstention as a weapon of resistance. From the
coordinated fasts of Palestinian political prisoners—most recently in 2012,
2017, 2021, and 2023—to the 1981 H‑Block strike in Northern Ireland, hunger
has exposed crimes of empires by rendering vulnerability unignorable. By
refusing sustenance, we convert our own physiology into evidence of Gaza’s
suffocation and of the complicity that sustains it. At this moment,
students across California and throughout the United States are engaging in
hunger strikes to bring attention to the starvation inflicted upon Gaza’s
population by the Israeli government’s blockade. In solidarity with their
protest, we are launching our own campus action and call upon Stanford
University to demonstrate urgent moral leadership by meeting the following
demands:

   1. *We demand full transparency and **principled stewardship** of
   Stanford’s endowment.* Building on the university’s own precedent of
   divestment from apartheid South Africa, Stanford must publish a
   comprehensive inventory of all direct and indirect holdings and immediately
   divest from companies that profit from Israel’s siege of Gaza. The
   university’s endowment cannot underwrite the machinery of genocide; at
   minimum, its portfolio must exclude firms that enable war crimes, mass
   surveillance, or systemic repression—among them Lockheed Martin, Chevron,
   and Palantir Technologies.
   2. *We demand that President Levin publicly call on Santa Clara County
   District Attorney Jeff Rosen to drop the unjust felony charges brought
   against the twelve Stanford students and alumni arrested during a June 2024
   protest.* Student sit‑ins are part of Stanford’s activist tradition,
   from the 1969 occupation of the Applied Electronics Laboratory—which
   hastened the end of classified military research on campus—to the 1977
   demonstration in Old Union that led to the Board of Trustees’ adoption of
   an ethical investment policy. By inflating and obscuring its alleged repair
   costs while styling itself as the principal “victim,” the university has
   enabled DA Rosen’s prosecutorial overreach that chills political expression
   and betrays its professed commitment to free expression.
   3. *We demand that President Levin sign the American Association of
   Colleges and Universities’ open letter denouncing federal assaults on
   academic freedom and pledge Stanford’s noncompliance with any unlawful
   mandate *— whether from the Trump administration or Congress—that
   requires the disclosure of student records, disciplinary files, or
   identifying information on participants in Palestine‑solidarity actions in
   violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
   4. *We demand that Stanford University rescind its post‑encampment
   speech restrictions*—specifically the advance‑registration requirement
   outside White Plaza, the sweeping Major Events Protocol, the selective
   overnight‑camping ban, and compulsory ID or face‑covering checks. Together
   these rules operate as prior restraints and impose content‑based burdens on
   expression safeguarded by California’s Leonard Law. They flunk the Supreme
   Court’s narrow “time, place, and manner” test, chill lawful dissent, and
   expose students to punitive discipline merely for supporting Palestine and
   calling for an end to the genocide. Their repeal is essential to restore
   full First Amendment protections and uphold Stanford’s professed commitment
   to open inquiry.

This university administration faces a stark choice: how will Stanford be
remembered? Will you stand on the right side of history by unequivocally
opposing injustice, or will you be forever marked by complicity in genocide
abroad and the embrace of authoritarianism at home? Will Stanford truly
champion their so-called mission of academic freedom, or will you be
remembered as a collaborator with forces undermining students standing
against a genocide and for the Palestinian people? At this critical
juncture, silence or neutrality amounts to cowardice and complicity,
perpetuating the profound suffering inflicted upon the Palestinian people
in Gaza while eroding justice and accountability here in the United States.
Our hunger strike has become necessary precisely because our prior appeals
for ethical action, divestment, and the protection of free speech have been
repeatedly ignored or outright rejected. In the face of gross injustice,
the only path forward is action guided by principle—find the courage to
take it.

We would like to invite President Levin, Provost Martinez, and all members
of the Stanford administration to join us at the table in good faith to
discuss these urgent demands. Our hunger strike is not an act of defiance
for its own sake, but a desperate appeal for moral clarity and
institutional accountability. This past year, thousands of Stanford
community members have organized and called for Stanford to take action
against the bloody genocide in Gaza. We are willing to endure sacrifices to
make our voices heard, but we would far rather see Stanford act and uphold
its mission, values, and justice that it consistently boasts. Let this be a
moment of dialogue, not further silence; of action, not evasion. We welcome
you to meet with us, listen, and most importantly, take the steps necessary
to align Stanford with the principles of humanity, academic freedom, and
justice for Palestine.

Never forget your roots, Stanford. As founding visionaries, Leland and Jane
Stanford declared, this university was built “to promote the public welfare
by exercising an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization.
” Grow the courage and live up to that.

Where will you stand?

Stanford Hunger Strikers for Justice in Palestine

*An urgent ask from Stanford SJP is to sign and circulate the Drop the
Charges petition
<https://actionnetwork.org/forms/support-the-stanford-12-drop-the-charges-on-students/>
which demands that the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office drop
the felony charges brought against twelve Stanford University students and
alumni following their participation in a protest advocating for Stanford’s
divestment from corporations implicated in the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.*

*To keep up with developments in the hunger strike, follow @StanfordSJP on
Instagram and Twitter.*
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