How a Cynical Protest Movement Fuels Antisemitism While Doing Nothing for Palestinians
In this contrasting response to Jeremi’s column on the peaceful protests disrupted by university leaders at the University of Texas at Austin, Zachary describes the intimidation and antisemitism of protests at Yale.
By Zachary Suri
In mid-October 2023, I woke up from a nap in my dorm room at Yale University to the sounds of loud chanting. I walked down onto the quad and crossed the street. I followed a protest of masked students and young New Haven residents chanting, “From the river to the sea,” “Intifada,” and “Revolution is the only solution.”
That same day, Yalies4Palestine, the most vocal of the student groups leading protests on campus, posted the following on Instagram: “We hold the Israeli Zionist regime responsible for the unfolding violence and denounce the Israeli occupation, apartheid system and its military rule.” “The events of October 7th,” the post continued, “are the inevitable outcome of a decades-long apartheid and suffocating blockade that continues to escalate…Yalies4Palestine stands in full support of the Palestinian people’s right to resist colonization and return to their land…Breaking out of a prison requires force, not desperate appeals to the colonizer or the ‘international community’.”
This was just two weeks after the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, when Hamas systematically raped, tortured, and murdered thousands of Israeli civilians and took hundreds hostage. Hamas’ attack left Israelis and Jews around the world, including on Yale’s campus, deeply traumatized.
Months of protests cannot be separated from their beginning
Israel’s military response had hardly begun. Israel had begun bombing Hamas targets in Gaza on October 7th and a limited ground campaign with mass evacuation orders on October 13th, but it was not until October 27th that Israel launched its complete ground invasion of Gaza. This protest took place on October 22nd, but Yalies4Palestine had championed a similar protest on October 9th, only two days after the attack.
From the beginning, leading voices in the student movement for Palestine not only denied Israel’s right to defend itself, but actively celebrated the senseless murder of Israeli civilians and blamed Israel for Hamas’ murderous rampage. The story of the protests and encampments which followed cannot be separated from this extreme beginning. For Yale’s Jewish community, of which I am a part, this first protest and social media post on October 9th foreshadowed a semester of hate and defined our understanding of the protests we encountered.
In the first few days, there was a chance for conversation. Jewish students held a vigil for the victims of October 7th, including members of the Yale community who were killed. Many non-Jews attended. Later, Muslim students held a vigil for those killed in Palestine. Dozens of my fellow Jews and I were there. The installment of encampments and the occupation of university spaces in April and May of this year made such dialogue impossible.
“Zionist” as slur and the cover for antisemitism
At Yale and on campuses nationwide, “Zionist” became a slur, hurled at anyone who expressed sympathy for Israelis or defended Israel’s right to self-defense. Supporting Israel, even being Israeli, made one worthy of death. “Zionist” became a way to attack Jewish institutions and Jewish students while avoiding allegations of overt anti-Semitism. “Zionist” simply replaced “Jew,” and suddenly the worst anti-Semitic rhetoric could be tolerated.
Even if not all protestors espoused this perspective privately, most condoned and endorsed it by marching side by side with groups like Yalies4Palestine (Yale’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine). I heard chants of “resistance by any means necessary” and “resistance is justified when people are occupied,” from my dorm room window this spring. Videos circulated of protestors chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab” in Arabic, including at the October 22nd protest. Those among the protesters who expressed sympathy for Israelis were silenced. An Israeli friend of mine in Jews for Ceasefire who was participating in the protests tried to attach a sticker to one of the tents calling for the hostages to be freed, and they were immediately forbidden from doing so.
Another Israeli friend asked me to walk her two blocks back to her dorm room because she did not feel safe. On the way to Passover services, friends were told they must agree to support “Palestinian liberation” before crossing a main campus thoroughfare occupied by protestors. They were inexplicably asked to take off their shoes, a request seemingly reserved for visibly Jewish students on their way to synagogue.
In the past few weeks alone, I have seen friends on social media call for “tightening the grip on Israel’s neck” and gush over photos of fully armed Palestinian terrorists. One of the most popular symbols of the protest movement has become the red triangle used by Hamas to mark Israeli targets for elimination. It has been displayed outside synagogues, museums, and on college campuses. Other friends of mine, who are not Jewish, follow the same organizations on Instagram, march alongside them, chant “Intifada,” and never say anything about the hostages still held by Hamas. These are my roommates, my classmates, my friends.
I too care about Palestinian liberation. I too want to end the occupation of the West Bank. I too want Netanyahu removed from power. But I also care about the people of Israel and my fellow Jews. These protests left no space for people like me, the vast majority of Jews on campus. These protests were not about participation and big tent organizing, but ideological purity. Ideology to the point of inhumanity.
The Emergence of a ‘Solipsistic’ protest
These protests are not rooted in “concerns about campus governance,” as my father claims. They are rooted in a sense of helplessness. Students feel guilty about their inability to alleviate the suffering of those in Gaza, so they tell everyone else — especially the institutions they benefit from — how guilty they are instead. As a friend likes to say, these protests are fundamentally “solipsistic.”
Protestors turn to easy solutions which are nothing less than mirages. Solutions like divestment. Many are calling not just for the destruction of Israel, but the severing of all ties with Israel and Israelis, all while they justify and celebrate the killing of civilians. It often seems like they no longer want peace. Calls for ceasefire have become few and far between. President Biden, on the other hand, is pushing for the only practical resolution — an immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages, and a two-state solution.
The protests and the response from university administration do not mirror each other. There are, without doubt, long-standing issues of donor influence and conservative manipulation in America’s universities, but this is not what students are reacting to. They resent their universities for supporting Hillel, for sponsoring academic exchanges with Israeli universities, for investing in index funds which include defense contractors sending weapons to NATO allies, Ukraine, and yes, Israel. They want to divest from democracy.
Protestors today are not, like Mario Savio and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the 1960s, “putting their body in the machine.” They are sitting on the lawn of the “machine.” They are screaming about genocide while they continue to benefit from all of the trappings of that “machine,” and Palestinians in Gaza continue to suffer. They have brought no real help to Gazans. And they refuse to see the real harm they are causing in their own communities: Jewish students afraid to walk across campus, berated as Zionists, hiding their kippot under baseball caps.
From the beginning, these protests were not hopeful. They were, at best, deeply cynical, and they remain so. But there is still hope: hope that with the protests’ end, students can have real conversations with empathy, hope that Jewish life on campus can thrive again as it has, and hope, most importantly, for a lasting peace and a just resolution to the conflict. If we can accomplish this, as I believe we can, it will be despite my classmates camping on the college quad, not because of them. It is not too late for them to pack up their tents for good and join us.
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Zachary Suri is a rising sophomore at Yale University studying History. He is actively engaged in Jewish life on campus, serving as Gabbai for the traditional egalitarian minyan at Yale Hillel and associate editor of Shibboleth, Yale’s Jewish studies journal. He is also a reporter for the Yale Daily News covering Connecticut and New Haven politics, a published poet, and podcaster.