We publish a collection of essays on #StudentIntifada on Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, April 17, 2026. This date also marks the establishment of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University in 2024. Student movement scholar and organizer Mjriam Abu Samra accepted JCSZ Editorial Collective’s invitation to write an introduction to the four student essays assembled in this cluster. As she writes, “the #StudentIntifada is not reducible to encampments, occupations, or demands for divestment, important as these have been. It is a broader process through which students have begun to transform the university from a site of passive credentialing into a site of confrontation, political education, and anti-colonial struggle.”
Besides the introduction by Mjriam Abu Samra, this collection features three original essays by US-based student organizers who responded to our call to reflect on Palestine-solidarity organizing on their campuses in the wake of the encampments. The final contribution to this collection is Diaries of the Uprising, a booklet produced and published in Arabic by the Edward Said Forum in 2021. The Journal for the Critical Study of Zionism commissioned a translation of the original booklet, and we are now making both the Arabic- and English-language versions available in this collection of Thawra.
About the Contributors
– Mjriam Abu Samra
Mjriam Abu Samra is a Marie Curie Post-Doc Fellow at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at the University of Venice Caโ Foscari and at the Department of Anthropology at UC Davis, USA. She has been based in Amman, Jordan where she has taught courses on international politics, developments, and history of colonialism at the University of Jordan and American education abroad programs in Amman.
Mjriam received her Ph.D. from the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, UK and her MA in Middle East Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), UK. Her research focuses on Palestinian transnational student and youth politics and Third World solidarities. Her work intervenes in the critical study of refugees, colonialisms, social movements and it is grounded on critical theories on subalternity and decolonization.
Mjriam was actively involved in Palestinian transnational youth organizing.
– Eric Sandoval
Eric Sandoval is a student at Arizona State University and a board member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at ASU. This work is a reflection of my experience organizing at the intersection of the global arms trade and domestic state violence, written to affirm that our path forward lies in a unified, anti-Zionist front that refuses to accept anything less than total liberation.
– Emile B.
Emile B. is a writer, teacher, and organizer interested in co-creating archives and analysis to support future generations of student organizers.
– Drin Shapiro
Drin Shapiro is an alum of the University of Michigan and a former member of SAFE (Students Allied for Freedom and Equality,) UM’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. He, along with ten others, were prosecuted by Dana Nessel for their involvement in the Gaza Solidarity encampment in September 2024.
– Edward Said Forum
Kenana and Hala Taha were responsible for the cover design and the digital production of the booklet. Shada Darawsheh led the initiative and served as the main researcher, collecting the texts and testimonies.
Introduction
by Mjriam Abu Samra
