Given these figures, it is not surprising that Jews have played a leading role in protesting Israel’s attack on Gaza. Eleven days after October 7, 2023, progressive and anti-Zionist Jewish groups (including the Jewish Voice of Peace) gathered about 400 protesters, many wearing shirts “not in our name” and occupying a Congressional building. Later that month, the Jewish Voice of Peace and its allies led the Grand Central Terminal in New York. At Brown University, the first sit-in required companies affiliated with Israel to divest only by Jewish students.
Jewish students are generally not as vulnerable as their Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Black and noncitizen counterparts, but it is this assumption of greater security that may make them more willing to protest in the first place. Many people have paid the price. Since university discipline procedures are often secret, it is impossible to know what the punishment for pro-Palestinian activism is. But anecdotal evidence suggests that this is important. And, regardless of the perception of how colleges should treat campus activism, it is strange in the name of Jewish safety when many of the repressed students are repressed.
Since October 7, at least four universities have temporarily suspended or suspended sentences, and their Jewish voices are about to be peaceful. In 2023, 20 members were arrested during a protest against the Jewish ceasefire in Brownou. (The charges were dropped.) A Jewish student briefly shouted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” during a pro-Israel event at the Rockland Community College of SUNY on October 12, 2023, and “Palestine Jews” were reportedly suspended for the entire school year. In May 2024, a tenured Jewish professor of anthropology at Muhlenberg College said she was fired after reposting an Instagram post that announced: “Don’t reject Zionists. In September, the Michigan Attorney General filed felony charges against or obstruction of police and misdemeanor trespassing charges, crimes against three Jewish activists and four other Jews, including crimes related to the Gaza Solidarity Camp at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. (None of them plead guilty).
Even if protests take the form of Jewish religious observation, they are often closed. Last fall, when Jewish students who opposed the war during the Sukkot holiday established Gaza Unity, Sukkahs, the temporary booth structures for Jews to eat, study and sleep during the holidays, at least eight universities forced them to be demolished, or asked students to do so, or requested them to do so, or canceled the approval of their construction. (The university says these groups are not allowed to build structures on campus.)
Nevertheless, the institution's Jewish pro-Israeli organization applauded the destruction of the Pro-Palestinian protests. When Colombia, along with Palestine students, suspended its branch of Jewish Voices, ADL congratulated the university on its “legal and moral obligation to protect Jewish students.” ADL thanked the college’s principal for “protecting the right of all students to learn in a safe environment” after New Hampshire Police broke the Gaza Solidarity Camp in Dartmouth. But for Annelise Orleck, former president of the school’s Jewish Studies program, the experience was almost safe, saying she was kidnapped, bound and forced to delay when she moved in. The state attorney general announced that she would be prosecuted against Jewish officials at the University of Michigan, who thought her Jewish were sued for the Jewish officials, and the law was sued for the Jewish officials, who had been prosecuted among Jewish officials. “Brave.” Since then, ADL has reversed previous support for the Trump administration's detention of pro-Palestinian militants. But it still hopes that the university imposes tough restrictions on campus protests. When I contacted the organization and asked if its position on Jewish students was swept up in campus repression, the representative referred me to Mr. Greenblatt’s recent opinion paper. Everyone reiterates the need to fight against a view of anti-Semitism on campus, but also promotes due process for everyone involved.
