For the past six months, Palestinians have faced a brutal ongoing genocide in Gaza.
From the latest United Nations reports, over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 14,500 children.

This post was updated May 12 at 8:48 p.m.
In my classes on the sociology of violence, I often tell my students to ask themselves: Who wins?

We are writing as UCLA community members to express our disappointment in Chancellor Gene Block’s leadership of our campus during the recent violence. On Thursday, Block’s campuswide email demonstrated that he has learned the wrong lessons about how these protests have been managed.

In response to the shocking and terrifying violence of counter-protesters Tuesday night, some close friends, classmates and I joined hundreds of other students outside of the Palestine solidarity encampment Wednesday night.

On April 28, a racist, Zionist mob verbally and physically assaulted students who were calling for UCLA to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s genocide in Gaza that has killed over 34,000 Palestinians.

A message to our students:
We write today with hearts full of sadness and outrage. Your university administration has failed you. It has failed to protect you and support you, and in doing so, it has made clear where its priorities lie: in silencing protests and maintaining the status quo at the cost of your rights of free speech and assembly.

I feel compelled to write this letter from faraway South Africa as a gesture of support and solidarity for UCLA students and those at other US universities who have been protesting in solidarity with Palestine and have been met with violence and arrest for their efforts.