Several hundreds of protesters rallied and marched in support of Palestine on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill on Sunday.
The rally began at 3 p.m. in front of South Building, with a large crowd of students, faculty, community members, and entire families with young children filling Polk Place, the main quad on campus.
Speakers led the crowd in songs, prayers, and many different chants including “free, free Palestine,” “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “Gaza you are not alone,” and “globalize the intifada.”
Rally organizers also repeated chants of “BDS now,” referring to the international movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel, and called on UNC to “disclose” and “divest” from any investments in the Jewish state.
Students at UNC began pitching tents on campus on Friday, creating a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” similar to others that have been formed at universities across the country.
Encampment organizers reached an agreement with UNC officials Friday afternoon to take down the poles of their tents, but left the flattened tents on the quad, which is where they remained during Sunday’s rally.
Students at many colleges, including at UNC Charlotte are protesting the ongoing Israel-Hamas War, which began Oct. 7, the Charlotte Observer previously reported. That’s when Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, launched a terrorist attack that killed more than 1,200 Israeli civilians, with 240 hostages being taken.
Since then, Israel has dropped thousands of bombs in Gaza. More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed since October, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
During the rally, speakers criticized UNC and other universities for their response to the encampments, and claimed that UNC officials were stopping trash collection and blocking access to restrooms and campus buildings over the weekend.
Students from other Triangle universities including N.C. State attended Sunday’s rally as well. On Instagram, the chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at N.C. State said it was encouraging its members to come out to the “Triangle Region encampment” at UNC.
“The entire UNC system has extremely insidious and deep rooted investments in the Zionist occupation, and we must tackle that one school at a time, which is why we need to show out united and strong in Chapel Hill,” the N.C. State SJP chapter said in a post before the rally on Sunday.