Hunger-striking students sit at the AMS Student Nest. Image by UBC Divest student.
Today, UBC Divest, a coalition of students, staff, faculty, and alumni are launching a Hunger Strike for Palestine.
The University of British Columbia has repeatedly been asked to divest from the over $110 million it has invested in weapons manufacturers and corporations that sustain Apartheid Israel’s ongoing occupation, annexation, and genocide in Occupied Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
Since May 15, 2024, we have called upon UBC to meet these demands:
1. Divest from all companies complicit in the Israeli apartheid regime and the genocide of Palestinians.
2. Boycott Israeli universities and institutions. Terminate all AMNE archaeological escalations on stolen Palestinian land. Cut all ties with these three Israeli universities that are complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians: Tel Aviv University, Technion- Israel Institute of Technology, and Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
3. Condemn and demand an end to the genocide in Gaza, and condemn scholasticide in Gaza.
4. Campus safety: Keep cops off our campus. RCMP engages in suppression and violence against BIPOC and other marginalized communities.
5. Reaffirm Palestinians’ right to resist and their Right of Return.
To date, the university has not announced plans to respond to any one of these urgent concerns. Thousands upon thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children have been bombed, displaced, starved, tortured, and killed in the interim.
UBC students have created petitions, written letters to the UBC administration and Board of Governors and Provost, organized teach-ins, rallies, and marches, undertook a 71-day-long encampment, and put in countless hours over months of meetings with the administration. We submitted a comprehensive Responsible Investment Proposal on February 12th with concrete, clear, and perfectly feasible actions that the university is in the capacity to take to implement its responsible investment obligations. That proposal was ignored. Now, we feel like we have no option but to insist, through a hunger strike, for the right to present our concerns directly to the UBC Board of Governors.
Why Hunger Strike?
Apartheid Israel has systematically weaponized starvation and aid blockades to break the will of Gaza’s population, a blatant violation of international law that it has engaged in for decades. Since the start of Ramadan (March 1, 2025) Apartheid Israel has resumed restricting all food, water, power, aid, and medical supplies from entering Gaza, deliberately exposing 2.3 million Palestinians to conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction. This is a genocidal act intended to in whole or in part destroy the population of Gaza.
We are on hunger strike to foreground the suffering and human cost of the world’s silence over Gaza and stand in solidarity with the elders, men, women, and children who are being deprived of their basic rights and denied sovereignty and self-determination. Our hunger strike is an act of protest against UBC’s irresponsible investments that knowingly profit from war crimes.
From the suffragettes of the early 1900s to Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance in the 1930s and 40s, from Irish nationalist prisoners in Northern Ireland in the early 1980s to the ongoing mass hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners since 1968, and from Indigenous hunger strikers on Turtle Island—such as Chief Theresa Spence in 2012—to the recent historic hunger strike at McGill University in 2024, the longest in Canadian history, we have witnessed courageous individuals driven to this extreme form of protest. These acts of desperation are a response to systemic oppression, a cry to be heard by those in power who perpetuate injustice.
Just as Palestinians embody Sumoud—steadfastness, resilience, and endurance in the face of adversity—we too stand resolute in holding institutions like UBC accountable for their complicity in normalizing violations of international law. We demand better. We demand justice. We demand a world where universities are held to the highest ethical standards and where their actions align with the principles of human rights and dignity.
Join us
March 17th onwards
AMS Student Nest - 6133 University Blvd.
9am - 9pm
Bring Your Own Iftar - every day at sunset