Attempting to maintain scrupulous neutrality, Emma Green takes a close look at the campus anti-Israel movement, focusing on the branch of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Hunter College in Manhattan:
If someone were looking for clichés about achieving peace in the Middle East, they would not find them here. “It is right to rebel!” the students shouted. “Israel, go to Hell!” Their politics did not follow the 1990s script of calling for Palestinian statehood within limited borders. “We don’t want no two states! We want ’48!” they yelled. “Settlers, settlers, go back home. Palestine is ours alone!” One student wore a bumper sticker on her vest: “Resist colonial power by any means necessary.” Many student groups have adopted the same tone on social media.
On October 7th, after Hamas attacked Israel, Hunter’s Palestine Solidarity Alliance posted an image of bulldozers breaking through the Gaza fence, overlaid with a cartoon of a person wearing a keffiyeh over his mouth and nose. “The resistance movement has initiated ‘al-Aqsa Flood,’” the post said. “This initiative, led by Mohammed Deif, the commander-in-chief of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, marks a significant moment.” It went on, “Similar to Deif, we demand ALL educational institutions to stand up against the occupation and actively support the al-Aqsa Flood Initiative.”
The Hunter students I talked to agreed that Palestinian resistance against Israel is justified, including Hamas’s attack on October 7th. “I have a human sympathy and understanding for people who were killed and deemed innocent,” [one] said. “But innocence is only so limited when you are occupying land.”
The other quotes Green elicits from students she interviews are equally revealing, as is the fact that the Jewish professor who spoke to her about the anti-Semitic environment on campus declined to be named.
Read more on New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/how-a-generation-is-being-politicized-on-palestine