Students for Justice in Palestine organized a march to call attention to current events in the Middle East and to send a message to Ohio University about divesting in Israel.
Nearly 200 protestors participated in a peaceful protest that began May 1 at Bicentennial Park, near Walter Hall, and ended at Cutler Hall, the longtime home of OU’s administration. OU professors joined the march. There didn’t appear to be any top administrators in the crowd.
A video snippet of the march appears on the Athens News’ Facebook page .
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after Oct. 7, when Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages in an attack on southern Israel.
Before the march began, lead organizers advised people to turn off their cellphones, so if they were confiscated by law enforcement, police would not be able to “tap” into the phones to retrieve messages.
There was no police presence during the march nor were any arrests made.
When the activists assembled at the Baker University Center, they did several “laps” up and back down on Athens’ only escalators.
Marchers carried banners in support of Palestine and chanted slogans such as “Free, Free Palestine” and “OU divest, OU divest!”
As people left the Baker University Center, a small group of people held the flag of Israel near the exits. Though the groups were cordial with each other, each side stayed true to their message and point of view.
People gave speeches at the beginning and end of the march.
Dave McNally, of the Jewish Voice for Peace, explained that it is not anti-Semitic to out Israel.
“Being a Jewish person who grew up in southeastern Ohio, it’s sometimes rough,” he said. “You kind of feel like you’re on your own here. But I do want to say it’s definitely not anti-Semitic to call out Israel and to call out in apartheid state when it exists. These are our Jewish beliefs that you stand up for.”
McNally continued, “We just had Passover. Part of Passover is freeing people from bondage. And right now we have a whole class of people in Palestine who are treated as second class citizens. This is not OK.”
Ohio University senior Tal Mars spoke about how she deconstructed Zionism while maintaining her Jewish faith.
“I grew up with a lot of Jewish values being taught to me, but mostly they were undercut with Zionist ideology. I was forcefully told that Israel was my home. That I would go there and it would be like an immediate family — that I would realize that my identity was inseparable from Israel. And while concept of Israel may be historically inseparable from Judaism, in many ways I know it to be true, a distinction between Judaism and Zionism is not only possible, but radically necessary.”
Mars continued, “The most basic lessons of Judaism taught me, and I quote, ‘You shall not murder.’ Yet Israel perpetuates genocide. ‘You shall not steal.’ Yet Israel continues to fight for land claim that is not solely theirs. ‘You shall not stand idly by the blood of your brother.’ Yet, you do not even see them as brothers, do you? Not even as even humans.”
Reflecting on Passover, Mars said, “At the end of the Passover story, the Israelites are given their promised land. Today, Jews and non-Jews alike must ask themselves what a promised land means in the modern context of today. I stand firmly in the permanent ceasefire movement and urge Zionists to consider these questions. What Israel are you fighting for? One with decades of bloodshed? One with plans for more bloodshed in the future? One that contradicts the values it supposedly teaches?”
Rae Kuechenmeister read a letter from her friend Hora who she said is suffering in Gaza, how the family’s life is in ruins.
“We are exhausted both physically and mentally as we get sick with no medication,” Kuechenmeister said as she recited Hora’s letter. “I’m just 18 years old. How can I bear all of this? How can I bear seeing my mom not being able to sleep, having insomnia from the fear of losing one of her children? She prays the whole night just not to die. Your support will change our life. Please help us.”
A member of Students for Justice in Palestine, Grace Anne Gasperson spoke with passion when calling for the masses to overthrow the imperial ruling class’s grip on foreign policy and for OU to divest.
“You cannot have a state built on an apartheid genocide next to a state of rubble and cemeteries,” she said. “We do not believe that politics should be monopolized by the parties and policies of the imperial ruling class. We believe that politics begins with the power of the downtrodden and oppressed peoples of the world. Politics begins where the masses are, not where there are thousands, but where there are millions. That is where serious power begins.”
Gasperson continued, “We call on you to join the movement to hold Ohio University accountable to demand transparency in how it invests our tuition in public tax dollars to divest any and all money that is tied to propping up this genocide — To end US imperialism once and for all and to free Palestine.”
With the school year coming to a close that weekend, OU senior Henry Turner asked students to remain committed to the cause.
“We are about to leave Ohio University, but we are not about to forget,” he said. “Our demands will not change. We will not forget that our tuition funds apartheid and our tuition funds genocide. You do not have to stop taking action even if you are not here on campus. There are protests and there are movements, and there are sit-ins all over. … I’m sure that there are some in almost all of your cities. Continue to take action. Do not forget!”
There have been several protests in Athens since hostilities began Oct. 7.
In February, Athens City Council voted 4-2 to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
Entitled “A Resolution Calling for an Immediate De-Escalation and Cease-fire in Israel and Occupied Palestine,” the document also asks that the federal government to halt funding for the war and calls upon the Biden administration to facilitate the entry of humanitarian assistance.
On Monday, a coalition of Jewish groups sued Palestinian groups arguing they are “collaborators and propagandists for Hamas,” according to Center Square.
The global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP, the National Jewish Advocacy Center, the Schoen Law Firm, and the Holtzman Vogel law firm sued AJP Educational Foundation Inc., otherwise known as American Muslims for Palestine, and National Students for Justice in Palestine. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Virginia, Alexandria Division.
The plaintiffs are nine American and Israeli victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. They include survivors of the attack, family members of those Hamas murdered, and civilians still under fire from and displaced by Hamas’ continued aggression. The lawsuit alleges the plaintiffs continue to be injured by AMP and NSJP organizers who are knowingly providing “continuous, systematic, and substantial assistance to Hamas and its affiliates’ acts of international terrorism. AMP and NSJP are thus liable to Plaintiffs for the damages they incurred because AMP and NSJP aid and abet Hamas’s terrorism.”
According to the Associated Press, police cleared a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at the University of Chicago on Tuesday as tension ratcheted up in standoffs with demonstrators at other college campuses around the U.S. — and increasingly, in Europe.
Nearly three weeks into a movement launched by a protest at Columbia University, the Rhode Island School of Design held talks with protesters occupying a building, and MIT dealt with a new encampment on a site that was cleared but immediately retaken by demonstrators.
The confrontations come as campuses try a range of strategies, from appeasement to threats of disciplinary action, to resolve the protests against the Israel-Hamas war and clear the way for commencements.
At the University of Chicago, protesters numbering in the several hundreds had gathered in an area known as the Quad for at least eight days. Campus administrators warned them Friday to leave the area or face removal.
Police in riot gear blocked access to the Quad early Tuesday as law enforcement dismantled the encampment. Officers picked up a barricade and moved it toward protesters, some of whom chanted, “Up up with liberation, Down down with occupation!” Police and protesters pushed back and forth along the barricade as the officers moved to reestablish control.
At MIT, protesters were given a Monday afternoon deadline to voluntarily leave or face suspension. Many left, according to an MIT spokesperson, who said protesters breached fencing after the arrival of demonstrators from outside the university. On Monday night, dozens of protesters remained at the encampment in a calmer atmosphere, listening to speakers and chanting before taking a pizza break.
Sam Ihns, a graduate student at MIT studying mechanical engineering and a member of MIT Jews for a Ceasefire, said that the group has been at the encampment for two weeks and that they were calling for an end to the killing in Gaza.
“Specifically, our encampment is protesting MIT’s direct research ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense,” he said.
No arrests had been made as of Monday night, according to the MIT spokesperson.
At the Rhode Island School of Design, where students started occupying a building Monday, a spokesperson said that the school affirms students’ rights to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly and that it supports all members of its community. The RISD president and provost were on site meeting with the demonstrators, the spokesperson said.
The student protests have spread to Europe, where they are gaining momentum. Police arrested about 125 activists Tuesday as they broke up a camp at the University of Amsterdam, and German police dismantled an occupation at Berlin’s Free University. Students also have held protests or set up encampments in Finland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, France and Britain.
Many protesters want their schools to divest from companies that do business with Israel or otherwise contribute to the war effort. Others simply want to call attention to the deaths in Gaza and for the war to end.
Demonstrations at New York City’s Columbia University, where the protest movement began about three weeks ago, have roiled its campus. Officials on Monday canceled its large main graduation ceremony but said students will be able to celebrate at a series of smaller, school-based ceremonies this week and next.
Columbia had already canceled in-person classes. More than 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s green or occupied an academic building were arrested in recent weeks.
Similar encampments sprouted up elsewhere, leading universities to struggle with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining safe and inclusive campuses.
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