At about 12:12 p.m. on Monday, approximately 40 students and community members gathered for a rally held by UW Voices for Palestine (VFP), calling on the university to fully divest from organizations deemed complicit in the destruction in Gaza.

“This rally and our divestment campaign is really focused at making sure that the community understands that our institution is not just a passive institution, neutral, whatever the university is trying to peddle,” said a VFP executive who requested her name be omitted due to safety concerns. “It is our role as students, and as people of conscience, to not allow ourselves to be bystanders to our own complicity in these horrific crimes.”

The current conflict was sparked by Hamas’ attacks on an Israeli music festival that killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. In September, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Palestinian Territory found that Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip since 2023, which have killed over 64,000 Palestinians, amount to genocide against Palestinians.

Attendees gathered in front of DP, where various speakers led chants including “UW pick a side, justice or genocide” and “If Gaza gets no justice then you will get no peace.” Special constables and several Waterloo Region Police Services community liaisons were also present.

After roughly 15 minutes of chants, a VFP executive took the mic to welcome attendees and draw attention to UW’s current investments. They pointed out that despite its decision not to renew its partnership with Technion, “UW provides countless other lifelines to the Zionist entity.” In August, UW released a full list of its investments, which included companies like Lockheed Martin Corporation, an American defense and aerospace company, parts of whose fighter jets are used by Israel.

The rally then circled around the Grad House before stopping in front of MC. Here, the president of Wilfrid Laurier’s Palestinian Justice Club took to the steps to speak about Laurier’s own investments in companies deemed complicit in the conflict.

The rally continued through the SLC to chants of “Disclose, divest, we will not stop we will not rest,” before pausing in front of QNC, which houses the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC). “This is the Institute that partnered with Technion, the genocidal Israeli university, dubbed the research wing of the IOF,” a speaker said, with responding cries of “shame” from the audience. Activists critical of Israel have used the term IOF (Israel Occupation Forces or Israel Offence Forces) in place of the official term IDF (Israel Defence Forces).

The speaker said that UW has facilitated their relationship with Technion through the IQC, “normalizing Zionism on this campus.”

When it was first announced, UW’s partnership with Technion was said to aid both institutions in “accelerated progress in the key areas of quantum information science, nanotechnology, and water.” Raymond Laflamme, IQC’s then-executive director, presented at a research conference previously hosted between the two schools.

The march continued towards Needles Hall, pausing there for the last time as a VFP speaker listed several “complicit companies of the genocide of the occupation” that UW has investments in as per their endowment investment list, including defense companies Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, a business unit of RTX Corporation.

The speaker called on the Board of Governors, which they called the “Board of Butchers,” to divest from “every company that has played a role in normalizing Zionism,” and criticized the board for “silenc[ing] calls for divestment and an end to UW’s complicity.” They referred to an incident earlier this year when, according to the speaker, a governor’s motion including information put together by VFP on the university’s investments was excluded from the meeting agenda.

In August 2024, the university assembled the Task Force on Social Responsibility in Investing, whose final recommendations included that the university’s Responsible Investment Policy be updated to include “priority Social factors.” These include adhering to the UN’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which “prohibits the use of certain weapons which may be
deemed excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects.”

First-year students Alex, a biomedical student, and Hashem, a physics and astronomy student, said the rally made them see the school in a different light, “more of a for-profit than just an educational institute,” Hashem said.

Alex pointed out the stark contrast of the rally’s focus and the messaging the school gives to incoming first-years. “All the things we’ve heard up until this point [were] like, learning, education, get your degree,” he said. “I never really thought about where the [tuition] was actually going.”