By: The Nightly Crew

During the recent courageous student take-over of the HUB, students present reported Daily staff behaving inappropriately. Notably, The Daily’s Editor-in-Chief was reported have laughed at the Nakba, the 1948 Zionist invasion and genocide of the Palestinian people. Following the protest, The Daily has put out non-stop propaganda, trying to distract us from genocide by playing themselves and the university as ‘real’ victims. This is consistent with the paper’s right-wing reputation and is further reason to boycott The Daily.

According to students present, five Daily reporters including the Daily’s Editor-in-Chief, Luke Amrine, would not leave the building even after being repeatedly asked to do so by the students. When interviewed, an anonymous student present told The Nightly, “With concerns for student safety after we heard The Daily talk to the police about students, we asked them to leave multiple times. Despite our requests a few of them did not leave until much later in the night.”

At one point students pulled the Daily reporters aside to have a more serious talk. Students inquired about the Daily’s right-wing reporting and their complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people. Despite confidently regurgitating zionist propaganda in articles, Daily staff did not know basic facts about Palestine, the Palestinian people, and the ongoing genocide. After a Daily reporter mentioned that their ancestors were colonized too, a student present is reported saying that those ancestors would be ashamed of them. The Daily would later publish an article confounding this with racism, conveniently neglecting to mention that the student speaker was a person of color making a statement about the reporter’s betrayal of communities of color.

After that exchange, a student present asked if the reporters knew what the Nakba was. To this the Editor-in-Chief acknowledged that he did not. He was instructed to look it up on the internet. Students present reported that after the results loaded on his phone he began to laugh. He would later deny laughing. However, multiple individuals were able to confirm the events.

The Nakba, meaning The Catastrophe, refers to the 1948 systematic genocide of the Palestinian people, which led to the installation of a racist and Zionist Israeli state. According to a SUPER UW, this has manifested in over “75 years of forced displacement, illegal occupation, mass incarceration, collective punishment, destruction, and murder at the hands of the Zionist Israeli regime.” Students were quick to point out that the current escalation of the genocide has seen twice the number of people killed in just six months than in the entire Nakba.

The Daily and their reporters’ writing asks us to be complacent in this genocide. The fact that The Daily’s Editor-In-Chief finds genocide humorous is not surprising. It is to be expected of someone who spends so much of their time boot-licking the imperialist system. Equally as concerning is The Daily’s lack of knowledge about Palestine and the Palestinian people. The Daily loses all legitimacy when they don't even research the topics they report on.

For students and workers, The Daily’s role as a tool of control is more clear than ever. It is also becoming clear that The Daily is a reactionary force and will not hesitate to lie and embellish the truth to cover its own ass. As a result, the newspaper’s popularity is tanking. At the same time, numerous small-scale student publications and artist collectives are springing up on campus. With The Daily’s monopoly on on-campus press and arts coming to an end, the only thing keeping it afloat is money. We must continue to boycott The Daily, raging against it and anyone else calling for complacency in genocide.