Can I have you say and spell your full name?
So my name is Jules J-U-L-E-S, and can I just provide that?
That's fine.
Are you here with a certain organization?
I'm just a student here.
Okay.
And tell me about why you decided to come today.
Yeah, so we're here because there is an ongoing genocide against Palestinians and UW-Madison
is complicit in this genocide.
And we're here to demand UW-Madison divest from occupation, borders, and prisons from Palestine
to Dejoke, which is a Ho-Chunk land that the university occupies here.
And what do you mean by divest?
So we mean that we need the university to divest from all the companies on the American
Friends Services Committee list.
They have a list of companies that invest in occupations, militarized borders, and prisons
around the world, including in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
So we want University of Wisconsin-Madison to divest from that list.
And do you have a personal connection to the situation in Gaza and Israel?
I'm not Palestinian myself, but I do understand the trauma of genocide as my family is Jewish
and I'm Jewish and I've had family members die in the Holocaust.
So this feels really, really important for me to stand up and make sure that when we say
never again, we actually mean it.
And how do you feel on campus in terms of safety as a Jewish student here?
I feel completely safe as a Jewish student.
I would say that Palestinian students and Arab students here are much, much more unsafe
on this campus.
Yes.
And do you have a message to Palestinian students on campus?
Can you give me a second?
Yeah.
So my message is that the UW-Madison community is here to support y'all as well as Palestinians
in Palestine right now who are experiencing genocide.
And do you feel like in your Jewish community on campus you've felt solidarity with Palestinian
people?
Can I have a second?
Yeah.
I think in my own Jewish community I have felt support for the Palestinian people, but in
other Jewish communities on campus that support is not as much there.
But I do think that we focus too much on religion when we talk about this conflict.
Or sorry, can I start over?
Yes.
So I have felt support for my own personal Jewish community, but I can't say the same
for the rest of the Jewish community on campus.
But I also want to recontextualize the situation here.
There is an ongoing genocide against Palestinians and focusing on religion and religious issues
just takes away from the fact that this genocide is still happening as we speak.
And do you have a message to Jewish people in Madison who think that Hamas is a terrorist
organization?
To that I would say that it's important to remind ourselves that the UN does not consider
Hamas to be a terrorist organization because occupation, I would say it's important for
us to remember that the UN does not consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization and that
is because according to the UN resistance to occupation is a human right.
Yes.
We'll cut all this out.