University of South Florida students are on day three of a hunger strike to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians still under siege after an Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel triggered a military offensive that has has Benjamin Netanyahu’s government facing accusations of breaching the United Nations’ Genocide Convention.
Famine looms in Palestine, and Democracy Now! says that at least 27 people, mostly children, have died due to hunger and dehydration. A reported 2.2 million people have also been displaced as they’ve been pushed south into Rafah despite the ongoing threat of an invasion by Israeli defense forces.
As part of their pushback, on Tuesday, March 19 pro-Palestinian USF students marched from the Tampa campus’ Alumni Drive to Genshaft Dr., winding through the campus greens down through the main corridor.
The students saddled the march in front of the iconic sculptured bulls in front of the Marshall Student Center accompanied by four staff members, a couple community resource officers on bike patrol and six USF police officers.
Their stated goal as listed on the @usfhungerstrike Instagram page was to encourage the USF Board of Trustees and President Rea Law to boycott and divest from all companies and defense contractors which support the Israeli government's indiscriminate bombardments.
“Yesterday was the first day of our hunger strike. We went there to (The Board of Trustees Meeting) to tell them about our demands and they gave the same rhetoric they’ve given over the past 10 years,” Will Mleczko, who is striking, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “They can decide which companies we are investing in but they ultimately denied that, so we are gonna be marching across campus to make our demands heard. It's day two out of however many days it will take for us to get all four of our demands.”
