ACADEMICS ON HUNGER STRIKE, DEMAND MEXICO END RELATIONS WITH ISRAEL

This article by Emir Olivares Alonso appeared in the May 26, 2025 edition of La Jornada, Mexico’s premier leftist daily newspaper.

Academics from various universities have once again demanded that the Mexican government sever political and diplomatic relations with Israel and review its economic and military cooperation with that country due to the genocide it has committed against the Palestinian people for more than a year.

During the 24-hour fast that university professors began Saturday afternoon at the foot of the Juárez Monument, they issued a statement yesterday in which they questioned:

How does the Mexican government want to be remembered? As the Latin American country that was consistent with its own historic foreign policy, recognized for defending the free self-determination of all peoples? Or will it prefer to be among the cowards who dared not fight to build a better future for all?

The academics noted that even governments and parliaments in several European nations have made increasingly clear calls to sever trade relations and sanction the Israeli government for the forced starvation it has imposed on the Palestinian people of Gaza for more than 80 days.

The members of the collective Academics with Palestine Against Genocide, who carried out the fast, urged the government of President Claudia Sheinbaum and the authorities of the universities of which they are part, to break all types of academic, political and diplomatic relations with Israel.

“In the current situation, Israeli institutions at all levels employ xenophobic thinking and the use of technologies of control, hyper-surveillance, and expulsion to the detriment of the dignified life of the Palestinian population. In short, they justify the dehumanization of Palestinians and their extermination,” they noted.

They also demanded that all economic relations and military cooperation with the current government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu be verified and made transparent.

They also called on the Mexican government’s representatives at the United Nations to demand sanctions against both Israel and the countries that, through their support, arms sales, and silence, make the ongoing genocide possible.

Academics and colleagues from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Autonomous Metropolitan University, and the Autonomous University of Mexico City, as well as members of human rights organizations, participated in the fast, which concluded yesterday at 6 p.m.