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STUDENTS FOR GAZA ARE UNDETERRED  
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Arun Gupta
May 16, 2024
Yes Magazine
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_ Beaten, doxxed, threatened, arrested, and suspended, college
students learned from past movements to put their bodies on the line
for Gaza. _

Students stand in their protest camp at Columbia. Many wore masks and
keffiyehs to hide their identities after doxing campaigns last October
against students protesting Israel's war on Gaza led to harassment and
death threats., (Photo by Arun Gupta)

 

Most media coverage of the spring 2024 student protests for a free
Palestine misses the most important element: hope. 

Students hope to bring greater attention to Israel’s war on Gaza.
They hope to highlight their universities’ complicity with Israeli
colonialism. And, in spite of the brutal police responses, they hope
to inspire their fellow students.

They have succeeded wildly by capturing the world’s attention and
sparking a youth movement that has gone global
[[link removed]].
Their calls for universities to divest from Israel have revived
the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions
[[link removed]] movement modeled on the campaign that
helped topple South African apartheid. And, as student protests
swelled, President Joe Biden for the first time delayed
[[link removed]] sending
3,500 bombs to Israel after authorizing more than 100
[[link removed]] separate
weapons shipments in the first five months after Oct. 7, 2023.

For more than a week I bicycled up and down Manhattan, visiting five
universities where protest camps had sprouted. Conversations with
dozens of students and supporters indicate a large swath of youth have
been horrified and radicalized by the Israeli war and found hope in
the protest camps they created, however brief.

NYPD riot police prepare to move into the City College of New York the
night of April 30. After barricading the campus located in upper
Manhattan, police arrested 173 people breaking the bones and teeth of
some protesters according
[[link removed]] to
reports. _Photo by Arun Gupta._

On April 22, in front of the New York University (NYU) Stern School of
Business, I watched as the New York Police Department (NYPD) riot
police evicted a peaceful protest camp just hours old and arrested
[[link removed]] more
than 130 people, including students and faculty. Ryna Workman, 24, who
is in their third year at the NYU School of Law, provided legal and
logistical support for the protests and negotiated with university
officials. They say, “These encampments are places of dreaming, of
building better community. We see how we can be better and we hope for
a future where that kind of community spreads everywhere.”

At Columbia University, on April 29, the day before the NYPD stormed
the campus and evicted a student encampment for the second time in as
many weeks, Jamil Mohamad, 32, spoke next to a camp of some 130 tents
on the south lawn. A Ph.D. candidate in Middle Eastern history at
Columbia, Mohamad says, “The encampment was really inspiring and
created a community like I have never seen. It was a very beautiful
expression of solidarity. Before that I was watching the genocide
happening on my own, not knowing how to carry on with my life.”

At City College of New York, in the northeast reaches of Manhattan,
hundreds of police outfitted with zip ties, batons, and ballistic
helmets fenced off the campus on April 30. Before cops crushed
[[link removed]] the encampment
that night, arresting at least 173 people, a student at the
five-day-old protest said, “Some people are singing ‘The
Internationale.’ Others are praying to Allah.”

Having covered social movements and increasingly violent police
response for decades, I knew the camps would be steamrollered sooner
rather than later. That was the fate of hundreds of Occupy Wall Street
encampments that popped up in 2011, Occupy ICE
[[link removed]] in
2018, and Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest
[[link removed]] during
the George Floyd movement. 

Hundreds of pro-Palestine protesters make their way to a student
encampment at the Fashion Institute of Technology on April 30. _Photo
by Arun Gupta_

Many students have been undeterred by universities siccing police on
them. After being ejected from Stern, NYU students resettled two
blocks away for a week
[[link removed]] before the
police raided their new camp as well. At the New School, located a
half mile north of NYU, teachers initiated the first faculty-led
[[link removed]] encampment
on May 8 after police quashed a student protest on Fifth Avenue. At
the Fashion Institute of Technology, located near the Garment District
in Manhattan, the pro-Palestine camp sprung up after a student was
suspended, thrown out of housing, and fired from her campus job for
posting a flier about the Gaza war in an area approved for political
speech, according to other student protesters.

This followed a pattern seen at campuses nationwide. At MIT
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students tore down fencing to retake their camp despite threats of
suspension. At Harvard University, the suspension of a student
group spurred
[[link removed]] a
takeover of the historic Harvard Yard. Students
[[link removed]] at
the University of Texas at Austin kept protesting after police
attacked a peaceful gathering with chemical spray, beatings, and stun
grenades that can maim and kill
[[link removed]]. 

Today’s student movement follows in the footsteps of Occupy Wall
Street. In 2011, police repression of the camp a stone’s throw from
the New York Stock Exchange caused the movement to spread around the
world. As of May 6, Wikipedia tallied
[[link removed]] pro-Palestine
protests and camps at almost 140 universities in 45 of 50 states and
in 29 countries from Argentina to Yemen. 

The catalyst for protests began when the University of Southern
California announced on April 15 it was canceling
[[link removed]] the
commencement speech of student valedictorian Asna Tabassum over
“safety” concerns. The real reason seems to be that she
was smeared
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Zionists as antisemitic for being pro-Palestine. Then on April 17,
Columbia University President
[[link removed]] and Baroness
[[link removed]] Minouche
Shafik testified
[[link removed]] at
Congressional hearings on antisemitism flanked
[[link removed]] by
the co-chairs of the board of trustees. Before the hearing, 23 Jewish
faculty warned
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she would be joining in the “political theater of a new
McCarthyism” seeking to destroy intellectual inquiry. Critics said
Shafik “threw
[[link removed]] academic
freedom under the bus” and revealed investigations of prominent
professors who were unaware of the crosshairs trained on them. Hours
before the hearing, Columbia students erected a Gaza Solidarity
Encampment
[[link removed]] on
campus. Once back on campus, Shafik authorized a “notoriously
violent
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NYPD force on April 18 to arrest
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than 100 students. Perhaps Shafik thought she was putting a lid on the
simmering anger. It blew up in her face. 

After hundreds of police blockaded the City College campus on April
30, supporters hoisted supplies over a locked gate to protesters
inside. _Photo by Arun Gupta_

Sebastian Gomez, a Columbia senior, said police “swooped in from
every side” as they arrested 108 students
[[link removed]].
Watching from his lab where he researches plasma physics, Gomez said
it was “a terrifying experience.” But Columbia students poured out
in support of the activists, reviving the camp within 24 hours. That
day Gomez went from supporting the camp to joining it, saying before
the April 30 crackdown, “This is a beautiful place with students
from every walk of life supporting each other. We have seminars,
teach-ins, and I am learning about so many things. People are bringing
us wonderful food every day. I’ve eaten better than I have in
months.” 

Gomez showed me a chart
[[link removed]] that
students created that was far more sophisticated than the
“administration versus students” media narrative. Students
portrayed the university as a right-wing institution
[[link removed]] controlled
by wealthy trustees who oversee a $13.6 billion endowment fund that
invests in “war profiteers” such as Lockheed Martin and Google.
Students claim at least five trustees
[[link removed]] are
tied to military contractors, the NYPD, and Zionist organizations
that, in the words of the chart, “manufacture consent” for Israel.
Shafik is just a hatchet man “intimidating” faculty and staff,
calling in the NYPD to “punish” students, and doing the bidding of
far-right politicians. 

In front of the Butler Library, emblazoned with the names of ancient
thinkers from Homer to Vergil, Columbia students erected their second
peaceful protest camp in two weeks only to see it squashed by the
university administration and NYPD. _Photo by Arun Gupta_

Columbia is so entangled in the web of maintaining Israeli power that
the day after mass arrests at Columbia and City College, New York City
Mayor Eric Adams said [[link removed]],
“I really want to thank” Rebecca Weiner
[[link removed]],
the NYPD deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, for
“monitoring the situation.” Weiner also teaches
[[link removed]] at
at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and at the
press conference with Adams, she accused
[[link removed]] Columbia
students of the “normalization and mainstreaming of rhetoric
associated with terrorism that has now become pretty common on college
campuses.”

Other heavyweights trying to strangle student dissent at Columbia
include sports mogul, Trump financier, and Columbia University
“megadonor
[[link removed]]” Robert
Kraft
[[link removed]] who
has bashed students with full-page ads in New York media
while pumping
[[link removed]] millions
of dollars into pro-Israel
[[link removed]] projects. 

Despite facing such powerful opponents, Jamil Mohamed says,
“Students were very optimistic about divestment happening. They
really believe all the things they are demanding are possible.”

Darializa Avila Chevalier, who graduated from Columbia University in
2016, is also optimistic. A regular at the camp, she says Columbia is
known as the “activist Ivy, where students can engage in
demonstrations and speech.” The demands, says Avila Chevalier,
“are incredibly reasonable, and the university has met them
before.” That includes Columbia divesting
[[link removed]] from
South Africa in 1985, private prison corporations in 2015, and fossil
fuel companies a few years later. 

Ryna Workman calls the 1968 protests at Columbia “the compass” for
students today. That movement culminated in a police riot with over
700 arrests. Faculty and students went on strike in response, forcing
Columbia to cancel
[[link removed]] its contract
[[link removed]] with
a military-research outfit, the Institute for Defense Analyses, and
scrap an athletic facility, dubbed “Gym Crow,” that would have
displaced many Black residents near the university.

For the two weeks student protesters camped on the Columbia campus,
teach-ins, trainings, and visits from author Norman Finklestein, 
Gazan journalist Motaz Azaiza, and politicians from Green Party
presidential candidate Jill Stein to Rep. Ilhan Omar were an everyday
occurrence. _Photo by Arun Gupta_

Today’s student activists rattle off influences from previous social
struggles and are eager to learn from the past (unlike many Occupy
Wall Street protesters who were allergic to history based on what I
saw across the country). Workman says, “A lot of people were
radicalized by the George Floyd movement,” and mention the
anti-apartheid divestment movement as a model. 

I cut my activist teeth helping build and occupy a shanty at the
University of Maryland, Baltimore County in the late 1980s. By that
point divestment from South Africa was inevitable. But when the
economic campaign against apartheid first began in the 1960s
[[link removed]] it seemed
impossible, much as the campaign to end Zionist colonialism may seem
today. 

This time around, the stakes are higher, repression more vicious, and
politics more Orweillian than in earlier social movements. The free
Palestine movement at Columbia was pummeled by pro-Zionist forces the
moment it got off the ground after the Oct. 7 attacks. “Doxxing
trucks
[[link removed]]”
circled Harvard University on Oct. 11 and Columbia on Oct. 25. The
trucks displayed electronic images of students with their names.
Accuracy in Media, a right-wing outfit known for disinformation, was
behind the trucks and published websites labeled “Columbia Hates
Jews,” naming dozens of students.

Many students who were named were inundated
[[link removed]] with
online harassment and death threats. One Columbia student, who
didn’t identify themselves, said the administration amplified the
hostility as it “suppressed and harassed students who voiced their
support for the Palestinian people since October.” On Nov. 10,
Columbia suspended
[[link removed]] chapters
of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace on
thin procedural grounds. 

The attacks they face echo what Palestinian civilians are facing from
Israel. On Jan. 19, Columbia students holding a divestment
rally claimed
[[link removed]] they
were attacked with a noxious chemical sprayed by two individuals
[[link removed]] who
also called protesters “Jew killers” and “self-hating Jews.”
Palestinian students say they recognized the odor, a combination of
sewage and rotting flesh, as “Skunk
[[link removed](IDF)%20on%20Palestinians.],”
a chemical weapon used in the West Bank by Israeli forces. The
university initially blamed the students for holding an
“unsanctioned
[[link removed]]”
rally. On April 3, Columbia suspended
[[link removed]] four
students and gave them 24 hours to clear out of their housing for
holding a webinar entitled “Resistance 101” with a Palestinian
activist whom Zionists accuse
[[link removed]] of being
a terrorist.

The repression of student protests is happening in a post-Trump world
of surveillance, far-right mayhem, and disinformation. At Northeastern
University in Boston, the administration listed “reprehensible
antisemitic statements” as a rationale
[[link removed]] to use
police force to rout a student protest camp there, arresting nearly
100 people. However, reporters
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evidence that the incident involved a pro-Israel student demonstrator
yelling “Kill the Jews,” apparently trying to provoke a large
pro-Palestine gathering. 

University administrators across the country have invoked
technicalities on where, when, and how students are protesting to
declare them in violation of codes of conducts. Many strict codes,
however, were recently enacted
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prevent pro-Trump extremists from bringing violence to college
campuses. The codes, however, did not stop a pro-Israel mob at
UCLA funded
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part by Jessica Seinfeld, wife to tedious comedian Jerry Seinfeld,
from attacking
[[link removed]] a
pro-Palestine camp with fireworks, tear gas, pepper spray,
and violent beatings
[[link removed]] that
sent 25 students to the hospital. Various police forces watched for
hours without intervening. But the university used the far-right
violence as a justification to send in police the next day
to brutalize
[[link removed]] student
protesters, arresting more than 200 of them. 

The melding of state and mob violence is a microcosm of
Israel-Palestine, in which extreme right-wing settlers
[[link removed]] guarded by
military units have been on the rampage since Oct. 7 in the West Bank,
killing, ethnically cleansing, and seizing the land and property of
the indigenous inhabitants. 

Police violence is not inevitable. Authorities choose to allow
peaceful dissent or crush it. At least six university administrations
have agreed to some demands of student protesters without going from
zero to police batons in an instant. The president of Wesleyan
University in Connecticut wrote
[[link removed]] in _The
New Republic_ why he wasn’t sending in police. Brown University
students in Rhode Island packed up
[[link removed]] tents
after the university corporation agreed to a process and vote in
October on whether or not to divest from Israel. Students at Rutgers
University dismantled
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camp after the administration agreed to eight of their 10 demands
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although not divesting from Israel nor canceling plans to open
a branch
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Tel Aviv University in Rutgers tech hub in New Jersey. In
Philadelphia, progressive district attorney and right-wing bane Larry
Krasner helped keep police at bay from the University of Pennsylvania
for more than two weeks. Krasner visited
[[link removed]] the
then week-old protest camp on May 3. While talking of upholding the
Constitution, Krasner said, “We don’t have to do stupid like they
did at Columbia.” 

The pro-Palestine student movement has displayed an admirable
resilience, even in the face of violence and misinformation. The
passion, discipline, and sophistication by students against all odds
show they represent the best of humanity. Their opponents represent
the worst of America. 

_ARUN GUPTA [[link removed]] is a
graduate of the French Culinary Institute and has written for
the Washington Post, the Nation, The Daily Beast, The Raw Story, The
Guardian, and other publications. He is the author of the
upcoming Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction: A Junk-Food-Loving
Chef’s Inquiry into Taste (The New Press)._

_YES! Media is independent and nonpartisan. Our EXPLANATORY
JOURNALISM analyzes societal problems in terms of their root causes
and explores opportunities for systemic, structural change. Our
stories uncover environmental, economic, and social justice
intersections. Our SOLUTIONS REPORTING spotlights the ideas and
initiatives of people building a better
world. Our COMMENTARIES address dominant economic, political, and
social structures and consider alternative ways of thinking that can
produce a more equitable and Earth-friendly world._

* student movement
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* Gaza
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* Palestine
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* repression
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