As Israel continues its military assault on Gaza, some Palestinians in the US say they have been “heartened” by the “phenomenal” support they have seen from student demonstrators around the country.
Risking suspension, expulsion and even arrest, US students have spent the last few weeks protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza – which has so far killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, and reduced homes, hospitals and schools to rubble – and calling for their schools to financially divest from weapons manufacturing companies who supply the Israeli military.
The students’ show of occupying their campuses with tents and sleeping bags has struck a chord with many, with reports noting they had caused divisions among Democrats and unity among Republicans. A recent USA Today poll noted that two-thirds of voters (67%) have expressed concern that the demonstrations and subsequent police response could lead to more violence.
Some Palestinian Americans talked to the Guardian about how the movement has made them feel.
“It has been absolutely awe-inspiring to see the level of awakening that has happened around Palestine, and realizing how collective our liberation is,” said Colette Ghunim, a Chicago-based film-maker of Palestinian-Mexican heritage.
The 32-year-old added that she “did not expect all races and religions to come together to be able to rally around this. It’s really phenomenal.”
The Gaza solidarity encampments, which began at Columbia University last month, have spread to more than 80 universities around the US and since gone global, with encampment protests in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Mexico and beyond.
A good deal of schools have pushed back against the student encampments and demonstrations, prompting local police to dismantle encampments to clear campuses and scatter protesters. There have already been more than 2,000 arrests made on US campuses in recent weeks.
The Virginia Commonwealth University student activist Sereen Haddad, 19, who has had more than 100 family members killed in Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, said her school’s encampment protest was met with brutal police force last week, which landed her in the hospital.
“I went to the hospital immediately. I had to get a couple of head scans because I got absolutely hit in the head multiple times,” Haddad said. “I had my arm very aggressively twisted behind my back, resulting in me being in a sling.”
Videos and photos shared by Haddad and seen by the Guardian show Haddad being thrown to the ground by Virginia state police and pepper-sprayed. Haddad said she also injured her knee and had scratches and bruises on various parts of her body.
Despite the traumatic incident, Haddad said “these demonstrations and encampments are insanely powerful, not just nationally, but globally, as a message [of] standing in solidarity with Palestine. It’s also very apparent how meaningful these demonstrations are to our loved ones back in Gaza.”
Displaced Palestinians in Gaza expressed gratitude to the protesters in the US earlier this month, holding signs and banners thanking specific university student bodies.
“These protests and the solidarity have a great impact on the American government, the whole world, and the United Nations because students around the world rose up against injustice and against the oppression that the Palestinians are subjected to,” Mowafaq Kafarna, a Palestinian man in Gaza, said in a video shot by the Associated Press.
“God willing, it will have a positive impact.”
Displaced people in Gaza held a demonstration on Wednesday to express their gratitude to U.S. college students for carrying out pro-Palestinian protests.
— The Associated Press (@AP) May 1, 2024
“It is so wonderful,” remarked Abu Yusuf al-Habeel, who is displaced from Shati refugee camp. pic.twitter.com/RUYxiMjXWk
Police also raided an encampment protest at George Washington University in Washington DC on Wednesday under the cover of night. In response, Rashida Tlaib – the only Palestinian American serving in Congress – addressed the press at Capitol Hill the next day alongside GWU student protesters.
“All honor is to these amazing, incredible students,” Tlaib said. “I want all the Democrats and Republicans to know, they cannot arrest their way out of this growing dissent. Every corner of our country, people of different faiths, different color skins, ethnicities, backgrounds of different types are coming together and saying ‘Palestinians deserve to live.’”
Tlaib called the recent wave of police interventions on college campuses “outrageous”.
“Students are putting their bodies on the line to demand their universities divest from the same weapon manufacturers that are sending bombs to murder innocent children in Gaza,” Tlaib said. “We will not stop in defending these students until this end happens in regards to the genocide, until there is an immediate, permanent ceasefire that includes complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and the release of all hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians.”
Ahmed Abdelmageed, a Palestinian American pharmacist, said he was “appalled” by the police presence in academic spaces.
“It has exposed the lip service many institutions and organizations pay to DEI work, hypocrisy of ‘global consciousness’ slogans touted by such institutions, and the ‘we’re a post-racial society’ lie we like to tell ourselves when we tout our progressive values,” the 46-year-old said.
Still, Abdelmageed thinks the protests have been successful in raising awareness about what is happening overseas.
“I think it certainly has renewed hope in a peaceful future for many. I also think politically, it has introduced another variable in the Biden administration’s election winnability calculations,” he said. “And on a very personal level, as a Palestinian whose home town was ethnically cleansed in 1948, I am heartened to see how the future generations are able to see truth and seek justice.”
The police crackdown has been particularly heavy on campuses on the west coast. The Gaza solidarity encampment at UCLA was attacked by a violent mob while police looked on without interfering. USC announced that it was cancelling its 10 May graduation ceremony a day after more than 90 protesters were arrested on campus.
Despite many protests being met with violence and arrests, a few universities have come to agreements with their students.
Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, last week negotiated with student protesters and met eight out of 10 of their demands. The encampment protest there was subsequently taken down willingly by students in an attempt to avoid the scenes witnessed at other campuses like Columbia, UCLA and the University of Texas at Austin.
In response to the protests, the Rutgers associate professor and prominent human rights attorney Noura Erakat said: “As a Palestinian, and particularly as a Palestinian scholar-activist who’s dedicated my adult life to this, I could not be more happy.”
Erakat, who has for years been a vocal critic of Israel and its occupation of Palestine, said “the world is forever changed” as a result of the recent campus protest movement.
“I’m [of] a generation that also took over buildings and launched divestment [protests] on campus in 2001. I could not have anticipated this,” Erakat said. “There’s generations before me who laid groundwork that made our work possible and so to see the entire world catalyzed to understand that the cause of their time is the cause of Palestinian freedom, and to be able to articulate that with lucidity, clarity, analytical rigor – is not just a performance but something that they have studied and understand, and that has metabolized in their political consciousness.”
Sumaya Awad, a Palestinian American writer based in New York, commended the students and professors for showing “great courage and moral clarity” on the crisis in Gaza.
“For one, the protesters have given Palestinians in Gaza hope. Their message is being heard, letting Palestinians know that they haven’t been forgotten,” Awad, 30, said.
She added: “And I do think Biden is feeling the heat. Ultimately, this is up to him. If he wanted to throw the US’s weight behind stopping this genocide, he could. The student movement continues to reshape that political calculus.”
Ruwa Romman, a Democratic Georgia state house representative of Palestinian descent who is also the first Muslim woman elected to the state house, visited Emory University in Decatur shortly after the campus saw the mass arrests of students and professors.
“Part of me is worried because I’m watching these movements be vilified by really, really bad-faith actors who are so intent on misunderstanding what is happening right now,” Romman, 30, said. “It’s infuriating to me because it should not be controversial to say that it is not a solution to bomb children.”
But she continued: “It definitely makes me feel very heartened to see that so many people understand on a fundamental level that Palestinians are human beings deserving of safety, too.”
