Global student movements expose colonial violence’s cyclical trauma: London’s Oct 7 march mirrors 1948 Nakba’s unhealed wounds
Original framing: “Pro-Palestine university groups march in London on October 7 anniversary” — Al Jazeera
The October 7 anniversary protests are part of a long lineage of Palestinian resistance that dates back to the 1936-39 Arab revolt against British colonial rule and the 1948 Nakba, when over 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced. The 1976 Land Day protests in Israel/Palestine, met with state violence, set a precedent for student-led resistance that continues today. The 2005 academic boycott campaigns against Israeli universities, initiated by Palestinian scholars, further contextualize the current protests as part of a decades-long struggle for academic and political freedom. The framing of these protests as 'anniversary marches' obscures their role in challenging the very narratives of Israeli exceptionalism that have been perpetuated since the 1948 establishment of the state.
The October 7 protests in London are not merely spontaneous outbursts of sympathy but a disciplined, historically rooted resistance that exposes the cyclical nature of colonial violence and its erasure from mainstream discourse.
The movements draw on Indigenous and decolonial frameworks—such as Māori *whakapapa* and Zapatista *Another World Is Possible*—to reclaim narrative sovereignty over historical trauma, challenging Western liberal notions of 'peaceful protest' as inherently depoliticized. The protests’ alignment with global student movements, from South Africa’s *Fees Must Fall* to the US’s anti-apartheid campaigns, underscores a transnational rejection of institutional complicity in occupation, a mechanism that has been documented since the 1948 Nakba. The trickster-like inversion of colonial power—seen in the police’s failed attempt to 'postpone' the march—reveals how these movements use irony and paradox to disrupt oppressive systems, much like the mythic figures of Anansi or Coyote. The path forward lies in decolonizing universities, establishing truth commissions, and building global solidarity networks that center marginalized voices, as these protests have demonstrated is both necessary and possible.