*This article first appeared in The Muse’s 75th Anniversary Print Supplement magazine, published January 2026.
On Thursday afternoon in cell #12, we sat on the cool concrete floor and shared stories of how we’d gotten into activism.
It was our first day in Kt’ziot prison. We hadn’t eaten since our capture.
We were tired and on edge from the events of the day before: our ship hijacked by soldiers descending from helicopters, 12 hours of captivity in our ship’s dining room with IOF rifles trained on us.
We experienced and witnessed extreme violence and humiliation rituals at the port where they brought our ship, followed by a zip-tied and blindfolded journey on a freezing prison bus inside coffin-like metal cells.
We were talking about what brought us here to remember our dedication.
The reason was a genocide. There is a genocide happening in Palestine, and there has been for years.
Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, recently noted that the death toll in Palestine is likely close to 680,000 murdered by Israel since 2023. Currently, thousands of Palestinians remain captive in Israeli torture camps and prisons, suffering far worse than we experienced, and for far longer. Many don’t make it out alive.
The UN has determined that there is a system of racial apartheid ongoing to this day. Gaza has endured an illegal blockade since 2007.
There have been numerous massacres of Palestinians spanning from the Nakba in 1948, where hundreds and thousands of Palestinians were displaced as Zionists began their colonial project.
Despite the “ceasefire” declared on October 10, 2025, Dr. Elise Thorburn, an emergency Doctor from St. John’s, was sending messages to our group chat about mass casualty events while volunteering in the emergency room in Gaza. She attended to children who had been sniped by Israeli quadcopters.
Watching a genocide unfold in front of us was our primary motivator, but we also each had events and histories in our personal lives that precipitated our engagement with direct action.
For me, it was Memorial University exposing me to the lengths institutions and individuals will go to protect and enable complicity. I learned direct action was the most effective tool to combat their fumbling and morally corrupt attempts at “neutrality.”
Prior to the encampment, I attended a few rallies here and there, but mostly felt helpless. When there was a call for students to help with establishing a genocide resistance group on campus, I sent a DM on Instagram and got involved.
In our first meeting with the University administration, they refused to look at our requests, told us it was not their place to comment on whether a genocide was happening. The current administration refuses to discuss divestment at all.
After weeks of encampment and occupation of the Arts and Admin building, the administration finally revealed that they have money invested in weapons manufacturers and other companies complicit in illegal occupation and genocide in Palestine.
The then-chair of the Board of Regents stepped down after a scandal involving inappropriate behaviour towards student protestors.
Without adequately notifying students or the designated safety liaison, the administration called the police and used the RNC to shut down a peaceful protest and have 3 students arrested, including me.
These actions were done in the interest of maintaining their investments. Investments that enable what scholars are calling scholasticide, including the targeted killing of educators and the decimation of education infrastructure.
Ordinary people can make principled, moral choices to reject this as our reality.
When the opportunity arose to be a part of the Flotilla to Gaza, to try to break the illegal siege and bring attention to the genocide, I felt a need to partake, to reject complacency with atrocities created around the world by corrupt governments and corporations in the pursuit of profit and power.
There is no one coming to save us.
We can’t rely on the government or the law, or organizations claiming to represent and protect us. We can only rely on our own actions and the community we form.
So pay attention. Care about the people around you, and around the world, and then take action.
Editor’s Note: This article was initially written and edited in November of 2025, for publication in January of 2026. Since then, MUN administration has met with MUN Students for Palestine. Read their statement regarding this below.
