A college student body at the Columbia University has voted in favor of boycotting all companies that support the Israeli regime’s apartheid and genocidal practices.
The vote was held by Columbia College Student Council, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, a student group, said in a post on X social media platform on Monday.
According to the post, the impacts of the boycott amount to “$1 million in student fees.”
“In addition to divestment, a student referendum has been initiated by the Council demanding economic and academic boycott of the Israeli occupation. Referendum will be sent to the student body to vote on,” it added.
Anti-Israeli activities have gathered momentum at the University since October 7, when the Israeli regime mounted an all-out genocidal war against the Gaza Strip.
More than 30,500 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have died so far during the war that was launched after al-Aqsa Storm, an operation staged by Gaza’s resistance movements against the occupied territories.
Early last month, hundreds of anti-Israeli demonstrators gathered outside the university’s main gates to protest the war.
Denouncing the Israeli regime as “the New Nazi Germany,” the students chanted, “Long Live the Intifada (Uprising)” and “Settlers, Settlers Go Back Home…Palestine is Ours Alone.”
In mid-November, more than 40 student groups at the University formed a coalition to push for the seat of learning’s divestment from the “Israeli apartheid,” and “challenge the settler-colonial violence” that Tel Aviv has been perpetrating with the support of the United States and its allies.
The groups said in a statement back then that the Columbia University Apartheid Divest, as the coalition had been named, would seek to force the University to divest its entire economic and academic stakes in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
