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Roundup of SJP Chapters’ “Day of Resistance” Protests

Various Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters around the country held “National Day of Resistance” protests on myriad college campuses around the country on Thursday.
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Picture of Aaron Bandler

Aaron Bandler

October 18, 2023
Columbia students participate in a rally in support of Palestine at the university on October 12, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Various Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters around the country held “National Day of Resistance” protests on myriad college campuses around the country on Thursday.

National SJP had released a toolkit for their various chapters to hold these protests, which stated, per Jewish Insider: “Today, we witness a historic win for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air, and sea, our people have broken down the artificial barriers of the Zionist entity, taking with it the facade of an impenetrable settler colony and reminding each of us that total return and liberation to Palestine is near. As the Palestinian student movement, we have an unshakable responsibility to join the call for mass mobilization. National liberation is near- glory to our resistance, to our martyrs, and to our steadfast people.”

The toolkits at one point could be seen on a Google Doc, but Google appears to have since removed them.

“A lot of Jewish students are really struggling when they see their peers or their classmates celebrating, not just condoning, but celebrating what’s happening as a form of resistance,” Jewish on Campus CEO Julia Jassey told Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). “It’s a really impossible moment, a really impossible thing to grapple with and university administrations have an obligation to stand in support with Jewish college students.”

Here is a roundup highlighting some of the protests that took place on college campuses on Thursday.

UCLA

Hundreds of students held a pro-Palestinian walk-out on Thursday that was organized by 10 student groups on campus, including UCLA’s SJP chapter. Video footage shows protesters chanting, “Intifada intifada,” “Free Palestine,” “hey hey ho ho the occupation has got to go,” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

FOX 11’s Phil Schulman spoke with a pro-Palestinian student who said, “We’re here to condemn the genocide happening in [the] Gaza [Strip] and to hold our government and our university campus accountable for it.” Asked by Schulman about her thoughts on what Hamas has done to Israeli civilians, the student replied: “I think that the focus is on the wrong thing. I think people are neglecting to see that prior to anything happening this week, Gaza has been under a land, air and water siege.”

Schulman said that the students were rallying against “the perceived lack of empathy for their cause by UC officials” and called “for an end to the U.S. support of Israel in what they describe as the Israel government of apartheid.”

 

There were some pro-Israel counter-protesters as well, though they were smaller in number. “We’re just here to preach peace and preach love, and we are hoping for better days, both for Palestinians and Israelis,” one Israeli student told KCAL News, adding that that’s not going to happen “if they’re gonna support Hamas. We gotta condemn Hamas first.”

UCLA student Rachel Burnett told NBC Los Angeles regarding the protest, “Hamas didn’t just target Israeli Jews, they [targeted] Bedouins, Thais, Filipinos… and so these horrors affect all of us. And if you aren’t appalled and horrified and so upset with what’s happening right now, I don’t know what you stand for as a progressive.”

 

University of Washington

Perhaps the protest that has received the most attention on social media was from the University of Washington (UW), which was put on by the Students United for Palestinian Equality & Return (SUPER)-UW. The reason why this protest received a lot of attention was because a video went viral of a female student breaking down in tears as she pleads with an apparent university administrator to end the protest.

“They want our people dead,” the student says to the administrator. “They want us killed. How can you be allowing this? They want us dead. Please end it, please.”

 

The protest reportedly featured chants of “resistance is justified,” “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” and “there is only one solution intifada revolution.”

A purported UW student can also be seen in a video claiming that Hamas “is fighting for their people, fighting for their country. That’s what Hamas is doing. What America is saying… is that Israel is a victim. For what, Hamas defending their people?”

Another video from the UW protest shows a pro-Palestinian protester interrupting a Jewish woman while she was being interviewed a camera; the protester shouted cuss words as well as “end the occupation” repeatedly.

Other footage shows a pro-Palestinian protester saying “F— Israel” and then, when confronted about whether he supports the killing of innocent civilians, saying “you guys are all f—ing gay.”

Brooklyn College

Video footage shows pro-Palestinian protesters at Brooklyn College shouting, “globalize the intifada,” “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,” and “hey hey ho ho Israel has got to go.”

New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov (R) posted a video to social media, where she called the protest “a pro-Hamas rally.” “When Jewish women, children, Holocaust survivors and babies are being beheaded slaughtered and massacred, this is what they’re doing: protesting. Supporting Hamas. Asking to globalize the Intifada. To bring the terror that the people of Israel are experiencing now, to bring it here to New York City,” Vernikov, who is Jewish, said. “If you are here today standing with these people, you’re nothing short of a terrorist without the bombs.” Vernikov, along with her fellow city council members Kalman Yeger (D) and Farah Louis (D), had worked with the City University of New York (CUNY) to ensure that the protest was off campus; the protest reportedly took place right outside of the campus.

Vernikov was later arrested for bringing a firearm to the protest, as images surfaced on social media showing that the end of the gun protruding from her hip. Her permit license to possess the gun was surrendered at the police station. The New York Police Department did tell Fox News that “at no point in time was anyone menaced or injured as a result of her possessing the firearm at the earlier protest.”

 

George Mason University 

Photos and video footage from the protest at George Mason University (GMU) showed protesters chanting, among other things, “they’ve got tanks we’ve got hang gliders glory to the resistance fighters,” “smash the Zionist settler state” and “tear down Israel’s border wall.” The protesters were also repeatedly told not to speak to the media. There were also signs saying “Occupation is a crime” and “Zionism is terrorism,” with a Star of David replacing the “o” in “Zionism.”

Christian Julio Lasval, media manager of The Heritage Foundation, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that at one point a counter protester shouted to free the hostages being held by Hamas. In response, “a group of the young men in the crowd began chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ before being quickly silenced by the leaders of the rally,” Lasval claimed.

Columbia University

Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protest featured chants of “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” and pro-Israel counter-protesters held Israeli flags and signs of those who are being held hostage by Hamas. The pro-Palestinian protesters reportedly held a moment for Palestinian civilians, causing pro-Israel counter-protesters to shout that they should be holding a moment of silence for those killed by Hamas.

Hundreds of people reportedly attended the protest.

Penn State 

According to the Centre Daily Times, more than 100 people participated in the pro-Palestinian protest at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), which featured signs like “End Ethnic Cleansing” and “Anti-Zionism =/= Anti-Semitism.” Some pro-Israel counter-protesters showed up as well, featuring a large Israeli flag with a candle in front of it and a sign that stated, “I’m here to mourn, not to fight.”

The Centre Daily Times also reported that spoke to Penn State graduate student Roua Daas, who was among the pro-Palestinian protesters. She told the outlet, “The point today was to stand in solidarity of the Palestinian people who are currently enduring bombing after bombing after bombing at the hands of Israel.” Daas declined to provide the outlet with her stance on Hamas.

University of North Carolina

The pro-Palestinian protest at the University of North Carolina (UNC) reportedly became heated as pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counter-protesters were shouting at each other.

The Daily Tar Heel reported that Rev. Mark Davidson, executive director of Voices for Palestine, gave a speech during the protest where he said, “We contend the Hamas attack, as horrible and shocking as it was, but nevertheless, we understood in this broader context they were Palestinian freedom fighters using armed resistance in [an] attempt to throw off their Israeli colonizers.” This prompted pro-Israel demonstrators to shout, “Do you condemn Hamas?”

UNC Religious Studies Professor Evyatar Marienberg moved in front of the pro-Palestinian protesters on the steps of the university’s Wilson Library and held up an Israeli flag, prompting the pro-Palestinian protesters to start chanting, “Free Palestine.” He was pushed off the steps and escorted away by university police. Video footage also showed Marienberg going up to individual pro-Palestinian protesters and calling them Nazis.

Additional video footage appeared to show a UNC student shouting, “Hamas are Palestinians, ok? All of us Hamas!”

 

UMass Amherst

The pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass) reportedly featured a speaker who reportedly yelled, “Resistance is justified when people are occupied. What did you expect would happen when you besieged Gaza for all of these decades!” Olive, a Jewish student on campus, told Fox News that some of the pro-Palestinian protesters tried to trip her as she held an Israeli flag. “I don’t know what the semester is gonna be like for me here,” she told the outlet. “I don’t feel safe at all.”

Fox News reporter Kassy Dillon, who was one of the outlet’s reporters covering the protest, posted on X that when she left the protest, “two guys kept asking me my ethnicity. When I got into my car, I was approached by a group of the protesters demanding to know my address and phone number.”

 

University of Connecticut

The University of Connecticut’s (UConn) protest reportedly featured chants of “Free Palestine,” “end the occupation now,” “when people are occupied, resistance is justified,” and “it is right to rebel, Israel can go to hell.” The university’s SJP chapter president, Jenna Rabah, told the Hartford Courant, “From this day on no more condemning Palestinian resistance. We need to be revolutionary. We need to be unyielding. We need to be relentless. The tides of freedom have turned and it’s important now more than ever that we speak up against public perception.”

The Courant also talked to the chapter’s former president, Basel Alnajjar, who said: “Hamas is not a representation of the Palestinian people. We’re talking about freeing Palestine, we’re talking about supporting the people of Palestine … not any separate organization.” He argued that the protesters weren’t supporting violence.

However, UConn student Sadaf Zarei told the paper that the protesters didn’t denounce “the atrocities that Hamas committed and it’s very sad.”

 

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s (UIUC) protest, among the chants were “Palestine is our demand, no peace on stolen land,” according to The Daily Illini. The student paper quoted UIUC graduate student Josh Isaacs, who is Jewish, as saying: “The resistance that Hamas is putting forth, even if there are parts of it that I disagree with, is essentially the only shot — given global politics — that it (Palestine) has at freedom or liberation As long as the United States government and other institutions like UIUC continue to support Israel, then thereʼs not going to be (liberation).”

Rutgers 

SJP at Rutgers University-New Brunswick had moved the protest to Zoom, saying that University President Jonathan Holloway’s statement about road closures and increased security made the chapter feel unsafe, the North Jersey Media Group reported. But around 300 pro-Palestinian protesters still showed up, according to TAPinto New Brunswick; the outlet also reported that small group of pro-Israel counter-protesters showed up holding Israeli flags, and some of the pro-Palestinian protesters shouted at them to “put that flag down.”

University of Louisville

WAVE 3 News reported that the University of Louisville’s (UoL) pro-Palestinian protest featured chants of “hey hey ho ho the occupation has got to go” and “end U.S. funding to Israel apartheid.” The news outlet also noted that the UoL’s SJP chapter had advertised the protest with an image of a paraglider; Hamas terrorists abducted and killed Israelis at a music festival after flying in on paragliders. An SJP member told WAVE 3 that the image was intended to signify “our return to our land we are not sympathizing at all with the actions these people and these paragliders may be doing.”

Other SJP chapters at Georgetown University and UC San Diego reportedly held vigils for “martyrs” on Thursday.

 

 

 

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