Police “just escalate stuff when they come in here,” but “it was really awesome to see people outside the doors all night. People out here supporting us, keeping watch. They were here with us, and they are here with Palestine.”

Students demand: boycott, divest, ceasefire

“Once I found out this was happening,” said LJ, a Jewish art student from the Bay Area, “I was frozen in my kitchen, and I knew I needed to be here.”

LJ grew up going to Jewish private school and has visited Israel twice.

“I felt an obligation to be in this space as somebody who is a Jew, and people are using being a Jew to justify this whole situation, and I am a Jew who doesn’t want to justify that situation.”

The “situation” is Israel’s continued attacks on Gaza after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Israel has killed a reported 34,000 people while thousands more suffer grievous injuries, famine, and displacement.

“I need to be there right now,” LJ told herself when she caught wind of the student demonstration, despite many members of her community calling her a “self-hating Jew.”

“Honestly,” LJ said, “I’ve never felt more Jewish, fighting for someone that I believe in. We have been taught to repair the world. It’s called ‘tikkun olam.’ Using the fact that you’re Jewish to justify the killings of innocent people ... it hurts the Jewish community.”

LJ is one of hundreds of students supporting occupiers’ five demands: The students won’t leave Siemens Hall until the university does the following: disclose all financial ties to “the Zionist entity,” cut ties with all Israeli universities, divest from all companies “complicit in the occupation of Palestine,” drop charges and attacks against student organizers, and call for “an immediate ceasefire and end to the occupation of Palestine.”

The university halted all campus operations on Monday amid the protests, calling the demonstration a “dangerous situation,” and emailed students that the campus would remain closed through Wednesday. Three students were arrested, and then released, Monday night.

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