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| Fifth Column |
| Gaza ‘solidarity encampment' shakes up Northwestern campus but leaves no clear winners |
| 2024-04-27 |
| [IsraelTimes] Jewish students unnerved, but defiant; pro-Palestinians enjoy growing numbers, but demands unmet; university head avoids punishing violators but still accused of ’genocide’ by demonstrators The crowd of several hundred Northwestern University students at the newly established "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" erupted in cheers Thursday morning as an approaching car loudly honked in apparent support of their cause. But then the vehicle turned onto the road adjacent to the suburban Chicago school’s quad, entering the pro-Palestinian protesters’ line of sight, where it could be identified as a firetruck. The honking, therefore, was likely more a case of standard procedure for clearing a congested street when responding to a 9-1-1 call than an endorsement of the protesters’ key demand that the university divest from Israeli institutions. And so it seemed like an apt snapshot for a day in which no side really came out on top and victories were at best imagined. Because while the protesters managed to balloon from several dozen at 7 a.m. to a crowd of well nearly 1,000 by nightfall, a school administrator speaking to The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity said the chances of the students’ demands being met remained close to nil. As for Jewish students on campus, they might have been able to take initial solace in the university’s decision to bar the tents erected at the start of the protest, but that ordinance went largely unenforced. By midnight, the number of outlawed tents had swelled to roughly 80, and anti-Israel chants rang out from similarly unapproved megaphones on repeat. "Hey, hey. Ho ho. Israel has got to go!" "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!" "Long live the Intifada!" In a correspondingly no-win situation was Northwestern President Michael Schill, who is still in his first year on the job. The 65-year-old legal scholar is trying to prevent the campus from descending into the type of chaos seen through the past week at Columbia University. There, his counterpart dispatched the NYPD to clear an anti-Israel encampment in what led to the arrests of over 100 students and the sparking of a national protest movement. Ostensibly recognizing that another aggressive crackdown would not calm the campus temperature, Schill withheld enforcement of the updated code of conduct. This did not shield him from the anti-Israel protesters’ chants of "Schill, Schill, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide!" MASKING THEIR IDENTITIES The protest was well organized from the outset, with organizers donning yellow traffic vests and effectively communicating with participants via megaphones and social media. Participants were instructed to form a ring around the encampment to serve as human shields if campus police — who were at the site periodically throughout the day — were ordered to try and remove the tents. This was enough to thwart one such directive in the morning, which led to a minor scuffle, and authorities didn’t try again for the rest of the day. Student groups supporting the action sponsored water and snacks for participants, many of whom skipped class to stay at the encampment all day. Nearly 100 were still on site Friday morning, receiving "arrest training" to be ready for the event that police would move in a second time. Organizers pledged to remain on Deering Meadow quad until the university condemned what they said has been its censorship of pro-Palestine speech and ceased all academic partnerships and investments in Israeli groups and companies. Nearly all protesters covered their faces with either COVID masks or Palestinian keffiyehs, which several participants said were designed to prevent them from being identified. They were also all coached not to speak with the media, and each of the many journalists on campus was diverted to one of the organizers. This writer was repeatedly refused interviews when identifying as a Times of Israel reporter. "Since that’s an Israeli propaganda tool, that’s not going to have a place here," one of the organizers said. Nonetheless, the mood on the quad was light for much of the day. Music blasted from loudspeakers; some participants learned and performed the dabke Palestinian folk dance; incenses were passed around at one point in the afternoon. Curious onlookers stopped to take pictures before continuing to their classes at the surrounding lecture halls. HOW REPRESENTATIVE? The protest was located on south campus, where humanities majors are largely based. Students in this half of the university were said to be more politically active, with sympathies leaning more toward the Palestinian side of the conflict. North campus largely houses STEM students, who were said to generally be more indifferent about such issues. Still, students were split over how representative those occupying the quad were of the broader campus position on the war in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more broadly. Firmly pro-Israel students insisted the encampment amounted to a vocal minority. "I think a lot of these people aren’t even Northwestern students," said senior Josh Miller. A handful of older local Evanston residents were seen waving Palestinian flags on the outskirts of the encampment, which also housed graduate students and faculty. One participant wearing a sweatshirt featuring Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida said he was "affiliated" with the university and declined to elaborate. One onlooking Jewish student who asked to remain anonymous told The Times of Israel in the morning that most people on campus don’t have an opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But as the crowd expanded to nearly 1,000 people around sunset, he reached back out to correct his stance, saying that even though the overwhelming majority of Northwestern’s 8,000 undergraduates were not protesting on Thursday, a majority do care enough to have an opinion on the issue. WHAT DO WE WANT? Indeed, over 2,300 Wildcats signed onto a resolution listing the protesters’ demands that was passed — in a 20-2 vote on Wednesday night by the student legislative body. (The two nay votes were Hillel and college Democrats; nine members abstained.) "I was surprised that [so many] signed the petition. I thought this campus was lame and that nobody did activist stuff, but I guess they do!" said a junior who supported the protest but asked only to be identified by his first name, Dylan. He noted that there was more of a focus at the encampment on calls for divestment from Israel than for a ceasefire in Gaza, and figured that this was because Northwestern has virtually no sway over the warring parties. "They do, however, have a choice whether or not to cooperate with companies in Israel or support partnerships with them," said Dylan, who had to speak up to be heard over an organizer’s megaphone and the media helicopters flying overhead. When asked whether divestment from Israel is an end in of itself, he said it was not. "It’s a means to an end. I guess a ceasefire is the end." "If Northwestern divested and there was a ceasefire, I think the protest would end," he said. Pressed on whether the ceasefire should be part of the potential hostage deal currently being brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the US, Dylan said, "No, I don’t even think that Hamas has to be part of an agreement for [Israel] to agree to stop indiscriminately bombing." "Part of what Hamas wants is a ceasefire and maybe also an end to the occupation," Dylan said, apparently unaware of or indifferent to Hamas’s declared goal of destroying Israel and its invasion and massacre on October 7. "The hostages are their leverage, and I do think they should be released if there is a ceasefire," he added. ’UNCOMFORTABLE’ Multiple Jewish students acknowledged being distressed over the day’s protest. "Today, I feel uncomfortable and unsafe," said junior Eden while standing just several feet away from the ring of anti-Israel students surrounding the tents. "Yet I can’t help but stand here and just watch — watch all these people who heard that I was Jewish and and am not in support of this as they stare at me all of the time," she added. "There are a lot of people who aren’t forthcoming about their support for Israel... I do tell people I am, because I’m proud of it," Eden said. Later in the afternoon, she and another student joined an older Jewish local resident who had been jogging around the encampment since the morning wearing a white t-shirt with an Israeli flag. While Northwestern has a sizable Jewish population, the subset of Modern Orthodox students is smaller. Yarmulke spottings are accordingly rarer, save for the campus’s longtime Chabad rabbi, who was seen watching the protest from the other side of the quad with a group of Jewish students. Later in the day, though, this reporter caught up with Jeremy Berkun, who was making his way through Deering Meadow en route to class at the music school. He said he was choosing to wear a yarmulke Thursday, even though he doesn’t typically do so as a Conservative Jew, so that his Modern Orthodox friends wouldn’t be alone in donning them during this more tense period on campus. "I have had a few instances of my friends getting their mezuzahs taken off their doors last semester," Berkun said. Along with his more religious "brothers," he said he also has a friend who was leading the anti-Israel protest. "I’ve had a lot of discussions with him about how we both think violence is bad, but he posted that he supports ’the resistance’ the day after October 7," Berkun, a sophomore, said sadly. BUT NOT GOING ANYWHERE As Berkun walked through campus, he was greeted warmly by Jewish and non-Jewish friends. "I don’t think I would ever reconsider coming here. I think this is the perfect place for me. No matter where I was going to be in this country, I was always going to have some problems on campus. It was just a matter of where." "If I was at Columbia, Yale or Michigan, I’d have the same problems I’m dealing with now. It’s just a question of how I deal with them, and that’s by being with my Jewish community, being with Hillel, being with Chabad," he added. Freshman Maia Egnal described a similar sense of comfort at Northwestern even while acknowledging the uncomfortable, "antisemitic" nature of the day’s protest. "I have not seen these people who are out there today protesting loss of civilian life in other places," she lamented during an interview at Northwestern Hillel, a block away from the encampment. "I’ve been horrified, horrified, horrified to see the loss of Palestinian life during this war, but I wouldn’t say that Israel doesn’t deserve to exist over this, the same way I didn’t say America didn’t deserve to exist over the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq," said Egnal who is involved in the school’s J Street U chapter, which advocates for a two-state solution. She discussed sometimes feeling isolated — particularly since October 7 — between some of the more hawkish students at Hillel who have branded calls for a ceasefire "antisemitic" and those at the encampment who "don’t believe Israel should exist." "Nonetheless, I love my Jewish life here," Egnal said. "My younger sister was just choosing where to go to college, and I told her that if she came to Northwestern, she would have a vibrant Jewish life here. She’s committing here today." "I will never tell a Jewish student not to come here, and I think that is probably the attitude of every Jewish student here. Overwhelmingly, I know that this building will always support me." ’JEWISH LIFE IS THRIVING’ Downstairs, some 150 students were taking advantage of the Passover lunch Hillel was providing throughout the holiday. While a large group of them ate, campus rabbi Jessica Lott shared a few words about the importance of having both pride and empathy at this moment. "We serve students across the political spectrum, including ones who have been involved in the protest," Lott said, adding that she had originally scheduled to meet on Thursday with one of the organizers for a religious lesson, which was canceled "because she needed to be there [at the encampment] today and I needed to be here today." The campus rabbi adamantly rejected the notion that the anti-Israel activity was fundamentally changing life on campus for Jewish students. Hillel hosted hundreds of students for Passover seders earlier this week, and there were more students than ever asking for help to host their own seders in their apartments, she said, rejecting the suggestion that this was a reaction to October 7 and its aftermath. "They’re all excited to do this and see it as part of adulting. We do it every year, and it has been a growing program. It’s growing because it’s fun. Regardless of what’s happening outside," she said. "Jewish life on campus is thriving, and students are finding a way to make their own sense of what’s going on," Lott added, suggesting that while Thursday was certainly no win for Jewish students, they would do just fine regardless. |
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