The Israel/Hamas war has ignited harassment on the Ohio State campus

On the campus of The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal. Republish photo only with original story.)

The Israel/Hamas war has ignited harassment and intimidation on the Ohio State campus against both pro-Palestinian and Jewish students, but pro-Palestinian students say administrators have downplayed or ignored their safety concerns while also blocking the vote on a student government initiative demanding the university divest from companies doing business with Israel.

Members of OSU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) say the early removal of the initiative on March 5 after 12 hours of student voting is more evidence of the university’s bias against pro-Palestinian students. Since the outbreak of the Gaza war on Oct. 7, SPJ members say they have been targets of social media death threats, in-class harassment, public profiling and, in one female student’s case, a stalking incident.

“We’re told (by the university) either there’s nothing they can do about it or it’s outside their jurisdiction,” said Jineen Musa, an SJP board member. “Then they refer us to mental health resources.”

Mohammad Ghassan, also an SPJ board member, received death threats in October posted to his Instagram page, including this one: “Death to you and your family. I hope the IDF find (sic) you and you die slowly. It’s good to know you go to tosu (sic) terrorist, the dean will know your (sic) beheading babies b(****).”

Rotaj-Radeyah Khalil, an SJP member and third-year chemistry student, said she was stalked by a stranger who followed her several times from a chemistry class. “I filed a formal complaint (with the university) and reached out to supervisors at least 10 times” about being stalked “but nobody was really listening to me. I eventually quit going to the class.”

SJP Board Member Heba Latif said someone using a fake name and address sent a flyer of an Israeli hostage to her private address. “It was really, really scary because who knows? This person could come to my house and do something worse.”

In an email statement, a university spokesperson said the offices of Institutional Equity and University Compliance and Integrity “have reviewed these incidents and offered resources and support. An OSUPD detective also thoroughly reviewed the material and offered to meet with the students in person, on the phone or via Zoom to discuss their safety and security and what types of behavior rise to the level of a criminal threat. The offer still stands.”

SJP’s activities have not gone unnoticed by state legislators. In a post on X in November, Ohio state Rep. Brian Stewart called for firing OSU’s SJP faculty advisor, Pranav Jani, and another faculty member as “Hamas-propagandists…still pretending to teach in their make work jobs while they encourage demonstrations” in which students have chanted “Intifada,” a Palestinian term for uprising.

“There’s a knee-jerk association that defending the rights of Palestinians is antisemitic,” Jani said.

It’s that reaction, Jani said, that has led university officials across the country to discipline students and ban organizations protesting what they believe is Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza and U.S. complicity. SJP, the nation’s leading pro-Palestinian campus group, has been barred from private universities, including Brandeis, Columbia, and George Washington. In November, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered the state’s public universities to deactivate SJP and affiliated groups. The ACLU is challenging the order in court as a First Amendment violation.

In December, Ohio State temporarily suspended, and later reinstated, the Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists for several alleged violations of student group rules, including using meeting space on prohibited days.

Three students from Ohio Youth for Climate Justice have been called before the university disciplinary board for disrupting a presentation by OSU President Ted Carter during a staff wellness event. The students shouted for several minutes from the back of the auditorium demanding the university divest from the fossil fuel industry as well as from Israeli companies and corporations on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) list. Ohio State has outside investments worth $7.4 billion, according to its finance web page.

BDS is a hotly-contested issue at Ohio State and campuses nationwide. The aim of BDS is to pressure Israel to end its occupation of Palestine through a boycott of Israeli products and tourism, withdrawal of foreign investment from its economy, and financial sanctions against its government. BDS pressure from Europe and the Americas, including the U.S., helped in overturning South Africa’s apartheid system in 1990.

In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982 unanimously upheld the First Amendment right to boycott businesses in protest against segregation and racial inequality, a case cited in defense of BDS by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Yet under pressure from pro-Israeli lobbyists, 37 states, including Ohio, now have laws or executive orders banning state contractors from boycotting Israel or divesting from companies that support it. The ACLU has challenged those laws as a violation of free speech rights, but federal appeals courts have been divided in their rulings. The U.S. Supreme has declined to hear the case.

The Undergraduate Student Government Judicial Panel has twice paused voting on an Undergraduate Student Government ballot initiative sponsored by OSU Divest, a coalition of faculty, staff and students. The initiative was first removed on Feb. 23 after some petition signatures were gathered through social media rather than in-person, a violation of USG bylaws (This article has been updated to reflect that it was the USG Judicial Panel that twice paused voting, and that it is USG bylaws in question). After the groups appealed the decision, it was placed back on the ballot Sunday, March 3. Voting had begun at noon on Monday, March 4, and was supposed to continue until midnight on Wednesday, March 6. But university administrators again removed the initiative from the ballot 12 hours after voting began.

University officials said the vote was paused until student government’s election oversight panel could hold a hearing for all parties on the issue and a new review takes place. OSU administrators have posted on their website a March 6 letter from Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost advising that OSU may not legally “adopt or adhere to a policy of refusing to deal with or otherwise limit commercial relations with Israel or with any persons or entities associated with it.”

Pro-Palestinian students are upset that the university canceled the vote after they had spent all day Monday lobbying students to vote on the issue. By then, there appeared to be “an overwhelming amount of people voting yes,” said Ghassan. “Then, at 1 a.m., (the university) sent us an email saying they’re taking it off the ballot… It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen the university do.”

Jani said the student vote is not binding under law and, therefore, is not illegal. “Rather than hiding behind the Ohio law, which itself is unjust and discriminatory, the university — which claims to support freedom of speech — ought to have let the students vote,” Jani wrote in a text Friday. “Or they should be honest and say either that they do not value student voices, or that they were afraid of the outcome.”

Since the war broke out Oct. 7, SJP has sponsored dozens of events at OSU protesting the massive Israeli retaliation against Gaza civilians as well as what they say is U.S. and university complicity. Events include marches, teach-ins, walk-outs, a sit-in, and the continuing effort to pass a divestment resolution by OSU students. Musa said the group’s next move would be to challenge the Ohio anti-BDS law in court.

Pro-Israeli students also victims of harassment

Pro-Israeli students and organizations at OSU have also been the victims of harassment and intimidation. The day after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, a student in the OSU Oval trying to purchase an “I stand with Israel” bracelet was spat on by a male student.

In mid-November, two people leaving a Columbus bar got into an argument with “two Middle Eastern-looking males” who then punched them and called them “K*** Zionists.”

Hours before that incident, two women walked into the OSU Hillel Center and stole several small Israeli flags. When confronted by Hillel staff, the women ran from the building shouting “F–k you,” “You support genocide” and “Free Palestine.” Police say the two suspects are not OSU students or faculty members.

OSU officials have issued statements condemning the assaults on the university’s Jewish community. A U.S. Department of Education investigation into whether the university failed to protect Jewish students is ongoing.

The antisemitic incidents “are terrible. There’s no question about that. These things shouldn’t happen on a college campus,” Jani said. But “why haven’t similar incidents happening to us been reported (in the media) or talked about by the university?”

Jani said many of the SJP organizers are Palestinian-Americans “with deep ties to Palestine. They know people who’ve been killed, who’ve been wounded. They know people who have fled the violence, who are in exile, and that’s driving them every minute of the day. I cannot be more proud of these students.”

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