As part of a day of action organized by the national Students for Justice in Palestine organization and held across American college campuses on Thursday, students assembled by the Pegasus Statue to continue calling for Binghamton University to divest from Israel and denounce the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Organized by the BU chapter of SJP, the protest began shortly after 1 p.m. Several speakers condemned the University for their continued partnerships with the defense industry, like Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems, with signs reading “No $ for War Crimes” and “Let Gaza Live.” A few counterprotesters stood by for the majority of the rally, holding Israeli flags and calling for the release of the hostages held by Hamas.

“This rally was in solidarity with college campuses across the nation,” SJP’s E-Board told Pipe Dream. “We rallied to show our university administrations that we will not forget how they have chosen to be silent through 300+ days of genocide and their hypocrisy as they boast about divesting from South African Apartheid and yet refuse to act today. With our collective voices, we stand united and take a stand against their complacency.”

One speaker who did not identify themselves represented a local chapter of Dissenters, a self-described collective of antimilitarist organizers. They said that for 76 years, the Palestinian people have been denied their rights to statehood, their land and their lives, referring to what Palestinians call the “Nakba,” the mass displacement of Palestinians and the destruction of their property in 1948, the same year the state of Israel was established. He praised their resistance and resilience and urged rallygoers to stand in community and solidarity.

“Community in the face of oppression is what liberates us,” they said. “Seventy-six years of resistance. But at the end of the day, in the great words of Fred Hampton, you can kill the revolutionary, but you cannot kill the revolution. You can kill the protester, but you cannot kill the protest. You can kill the dissenter, but you cannot kill the dissent,” referring to the civil rights activist who was the deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party.

A speaker, who identified themselves only as Samuel, from the Yiddish Bund, a Jewish anti-Zionist organization on campus, then addressed the crowd, saying University President Harvey Stenger “trampled over” the voices of Arab and Palestinian students on campus. They mentioned the story of Thomas J. Watson, the former IBM chief executive officer and namesake of the University’s engineering school, who was decorated by Adolf Hitler in 1937.

“No one but Palestinians decides their path toward liberation,” the Bund representative said of the “multi-ideological coalition” in Gaza. “It’s not up to the oppressor to choose how the oppressed frees themselves from that oppression.”

The speakers celebrated last semester’s achievements in fighting for divestment, including the Student Association Congress’ passage of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions resolution in April — parts of which were later struck down by the SA’s Judicial Board — and the Peace Quad encampment in May. Speakers said students were harassed by administrators during the encampment, receiving letters from the Office of Student Conduct despite not leading or organizing the demonstrations.

Ryan Yarosh ‘02, MPA ‘09, BU’s senior director of media and public relations, said University leadership met with students over the summer, and no students were sanctioned for their role in the encampment.

A speaker read a poem for the people killed in al-Mawasi, an area previously designated a safe zone that the Israeli military bombed on Tuesday with 2,000-pound explosives, according to reporting from The New York Times. The poem mourned girls who have been killed in Gaza, including Rachel Corrie, an American activist crushed to death in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian home.

Another speaker said they were sickened by the many treating the crisis in Gaza as “business as normal.” They said that, as a queer person, they were uncomfortable with their identity being used to justify the bombings in Gaza.

“Queer Palestinians exist, shocker, and also deserve rights, shocker,” they said. “As a queer person, I am not comfortable with the genocide being perpetuated in my name. I think that everybody deserves rights. I think that no matter your race or your creed, you should not be subject to indiscriminate bombing.”

At the protest’s end, the speakers described how universities have divested from other industries, like Big Tobacco, which they said shows divestment is possible. They concluded the protest with a final poetry reading.

“We plan to continue this action through the semester by utilizing our collective voice to support our peers on campus and protest against the injustice happening to our brothers and sisters abroad,” SJP’s E-Board wrote.