Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from University of Minnesota Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

SDS and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) have just been made aware that the Consul General of Israel Yinam Cohen will reportedly be meeting with University of Minnesota Vice President Croson along with a group of Zionist community leaders. Given various factors: the climate of repression of Pro-Palestine activism on campus, the genocide being carried out by the illegal Israeli occupation, and an ongoing Department of Education investigation into false claims of anti-semitism, this meeting is shameful complicity in Israel’s crimes.

Any collaboration by administration with representatives of the settler state of Israel is disgraceful. SDS and SJP fully condemn this reported meeting, as well as all collaborations by the UMN with Israeli Universities, study abroad trips in Israel, and investments in entities that benefit from the occupation. VP Croson will be meeting with an Israeli representative, at the same time the IOF is bombing millions of Palestinians in Rafah, and Palestinian Muslims are being blocked from praying at Al-Aqsa Mosque on the first days of Ramadan. These crimes are paid for by investments like those of the UMN in weapons companies and Israeli linked entities.

This meeting may also have further implications for heightened levels of repression of students and faculty for their activism on campus. Israel is well-known for its aggressive repression of Palestine solidarity activism abroad; this meeting will certainly have wide reaching impacts for activists organizing on campus. Any attempts by administration, alone or with the Israeli government, to repress our movements in solidarity in Palestine will be strongly resisted.

Student Protest is Here to Stay!

End UMN Investments in Israel!

Free Palestine!

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