UPDATE 11/20: A student has reported to us that the poster depicted in the first photo had NOT been taken down as of today, November 20th. This is despite all of the below posters having been reported to UCF PD, which has been more than happy to tear down posters of hostages in the Gaza Strip.
Separately, our open records request against UCF PD is scheduled to be completed by mid-December, according to their records department.
Last week we covered UCF PD’s teardowns of flyers for those kidnapped during the Simchat Torah war, and their citation of UCF policy as the justification for doing so.
Today we can report that the genocidal, pro-Hamas PSA has posted flyers all over campus, and unlike with our posters, UCF PD has been slow to respond — in some instances, not responding at all.
Students on the ground, who (unlike with the hostage posters) contacted UCF PD to have them enforce this policy, reported that this time UCF PD quavered on the idea of removing these posters, expressing uncertainty as to their authority to remove them, although they eventually did — much later in the day compared to the Jewish community’s hostage posters.
No similar concerns were expressed to Jews putting up hostage posters — only threats of arrest.
Here is an example of one of the posters UCF PD had not torn down at the time:
The poster reads, in full:
Palestine 101
The Israeli Colonization of Palestine
What’s the problem?
Israeli colonization of Palestine.
Israel is a settler colony that has been stealing land from the indigenous Palestinians. 85% of the land is now occupied and under Israeli military control.
How did this happen?
The Zionist movement.
Before 1948, Palestine was under British colonization. Without permission from the native Palestinians, the land was “given” to the Jewish people through the Zionist movement in order to establish a Jewish settler colony named “Israel.” This was heavily supported and funded by the West.
As a result, in 1948, more than 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from the land through mass murder and forced evacuation. This is called the Nakba, meaning “catastrophe.”
How is this still happening today?
Through Israeli apartheid.
The settler colony of Israel maintains control over Palestinians & continues to steal land through a brutal system of aparteid operated by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Palestinians are geographically categorized into 5 groups — West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, “Israeli” territories, & those in exile. Each group has varying levels of freedom & rights.
There are now over 6 million Palestinian refugees in the world, many of whom are not allowed to return to Palestine.
What do Palestinians want?
We demand our land back — all of it. Through collective resistance against the colonizer, Palestine will be free. Take a free course on our history & decolonization movement at thepalestineacademy.com
Components of Israeli apartheid:
- 700+ Checkpoints for Palestinians
- On-going theft of land
- Settlement expansions
- Home demolitions
- Military-backed settler terrorism
- Administrative detention
- Denied right of return for the exiled
- Jewish-only road systems
- Military blockade of Gaza
- Occupation of al-Aqsa mosque
- Theft of natural resources
- Restricted use of water and electricity
The mask occasionally slips off of the author of these poster and shows their antisemitic and white supremacist tendencies: they call the roads “Jewish-only” instead of the pro-Hamas preferred dog-whistle “Israeli;” they call the State of Israel a “Jewish settler colony” instead of an Israeli one; and they “demand our [sic] land back — all of it” — openly calling for Jewish genocide and ethnic cleansing by denying the actual, original indigeneity of Jews to the Land (instead of the far more recent indigeneity of the Palestinians produced by the colonization and conquest of the Roman, Ottoman, and British empires). Our status as the first people of the Land has a tendency to irk white supremacists.
While our posters were almost all torn down in the early hours in the morning, these antisemitic posters were left up well into the afternoon. UCF PD’s asymmetric enforcement has allowed our murderers to speak and left us voiceless.
Our public records request against the UCF PD remains pending.