Gaza ‘solidarity encampment’ shakes
up Northwestern campus but leaves no clear winners
Jewish students unnerved, but defiant;
pro-Palestinians enjoy growing numbers, but demands unmet; university head
avoids punishing violators but still accused of ‘genocide’ by demonstrators
By JACOB MAGID
FOLLOW
26 April 2024, 5:09 pm
EVANSTON, Illinois — The
crowd of several hundred Northwestern University students at the newly
established “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” erupted in cheers Thursday morning as
an approaching car loudly honked in apparent support of their cause.
But then the vehicle
turned onto the road adjacent to the suburban Chicago school’s quad, entering
the pro-Palestinian protesters’ line of sight, where it could be identified as
a firetruck.
The honking, therefore,
was likely more a case of standard procedure for clearing a congested street
when responding to a 9-1-1 call than an endorsement of the protesters’ key
demand that the university divest from Israeli institutions.
And so it seemed like an
apt snapshot for a day in which no side really came out and victories were at
best imagined.
Because while the
protesters managed to balloon from several dozen at 7 a.m. to a crowd of well
nearly 1,000 by nightfall, a school administrator speaking to The Times of
Israel on condition of anonymity said the chances of the students’ demands being met remained close to nil.
As for Jewish students
on campus, they might have been able to take initial solace in the university’s
decision to bar the tents erected at the start of the protest, but that
ordinance went largely unenforced. By midnight, the number of outlawed tents had
swelled to roughly 80, and anti-Israel chants rang out from similarly
unapproved megaphones on repeat.
“Hey, hey. Ho ho. Israel
has got to go!”
“From the river to the
sea, Palestine will be free!”
“Long live the
Intifada!”
In a correspondingly
no-win situation was Northwestern President Michael Schill, who is still in his
first year on the job. The 65-year-old legal scholar is trying to prevent the
campus from descending into the type of chaos seen through the past week at
Columbia University. There, his counterpart dispatched the NYPD to clear an
anti-Israel encampment in what led to the arrests of over 100 students and the
sparking of a national protest movement.
Ostensibly recognizing
that another aggressive crackdown would not calm the campus temperature, Schill
withheld enforcement of the updated code of conduct.
This did not shield him
from the anti-Israel protesters’ chants of “Schill, Schill, you can’t hide. We
charge you with genocide!”
Masking their identities
The protest was well
organized from the outset, with organizers donning yellow traffic vests and
effectively communicating with participants via megaphones and social media.
Participants were
instructed to form a ring around the encampment to serve as human shields if
campus police — who were at the site periodically throughout the day — were
ordered to try and remove the tents. This was enough to thwart one such
directive in the morning, which led to a minor scuffle, and authorities didn’t
try again for the rest of the day.
Student groups
supporting the action sponsored water and snacks for participants, many of whom
skipped class to stay at the encampment all day. Nearly 100 were still on site
Friday morning, receiving “arrest training” to be ready for the event that police would move in a
second time.
Organizers pledged to
remain on Deering Meadow quad until the university condemned what they said has
been its censorship of pro-Palestine speech and ceased all academic
partnerships and investments in Israeli groups and companies.
Nearly all protesters
covered their faces with either COVID masks or Palestinian keffiyehs, which
several participants said were designed to prevent them from being identified.
They were also all
coached not to speak with the media, and each of the many journalists on
campus was diverted to one of the organizers.
This writer was
repeatedly refused interviews when identifying as a Times of Israel reporter.
“Since that’s an Israeli propaganda tool, that’s not going to have a place
here,” one of the organizers said.
Nonetheless, the mood on
the quad was light for much of the day. Music blasted from loudspeakers; some
participants learned and performed the dabke Palestinian folk
dance; incenses were passed around at one point in the afternoon.
Curious onlookers
stopped to take pictures before continuing to their classes at the surrounding
lecture halls.
How representative?
The protest was located
on south campus, where humanities majors are largely based. Students in this
half of the university were said to be more politically active, with sympathies
leaning more toward the Palestinian side of the conflict. North campus largely
houses STEM students, who were said to generally be more indifferent about such
issues.
Still, students were
split over how representative those occupying the quad were of the broader
campus position on the war in Gaza and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more
broadly.
Firmly pro-Israel
students insisted the encampment amounted to a vocal minority.
“I think a lot of these
people aren’t even Northwestern students,” said senior Josh Miller.
A handful of older local
Evanston residents were seen waving Palestinian flags on the outskirts of the
encampment, which also housed graduate students and faculty. One participant
wearing a sweatshirt featuring Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida said he was “affiliated”
with the university and declined to elaborate.
One onlooking Jewish
student who asked to remain anonymous told The Times of Israel in the morning
that most people on campus don’t have an opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. But as the crowd expanded to nearly 1,000 people around sunset, he reached
back out to correct his stance, saying that even though the overwhelming
majority of Northwestern’s 8,000 undergraduates were not protesting on
Thursday, a majority do care enough to have an opinion on the issue.
What do we want?
Indeed, over 2,300
Wildcats signed onto a resolution listing the protesters’ demands that was
passed — in a 20-2 vote on Wednesday night by the student legislative body.
(The two nay votes were Hillel and college Democrats; nine members abstained.)
“I was surprised that
[so many] signed the petition. I thought this campus was lame and that nobody
did activist stuff, but I guess they do!” said a junior who supported the
protest but asked only to be identified by his first name, Dylan.
He noted that there was
more of a focus at the encampment on calls for divestment from Israel than for
a ceasefire in Gaza, and figured that this was because Northwestern has
virtually no sway over the warring parties.
“They do, however, have
a choice whether or not to cooperate with companies in Israel or support
partnerships with them,” said Dylan, who had to speak up to be heard over an
organizer’s megaphone and the media helicopters flying overhead.
When asked whether
divestment from Israel is an end in of itself, he said it was not. “It’s a
means to an end. I guess a ceasefire is the end.”
“If Northwestern
divested and there was a ceasefire, I think the protest would end,” he said.
Pressed on whether the
ceasefire should be part of the potential hostage deal currently being brokered
by Qatar, Egypt and the US, Dylan said, “No, I don’t even think that Hamas has
to be part of an agreement for [Israel] to agree to stop indiscriminately
bombing.”
“Part of what Hamas
wants is a ceasefire and maybe also an end to the occupation,” Dylan said,
apparently unaware of or indifferent to Hamas’s declared goal of destroying
Israel and its invasion and massacre on October 7. “The hostages are their
leverage, and I do think they should be released if there is a ceasefire,” he
added.
‘Uncomfortable’
Multiple Jewish students
acknowledged being distressed over the day’s protest.
“Today, I feel
uncomfortable and unsafe,” said junior Eden while standing just several feet
away from the ring of anti-Israel students surrounding the tents.
“Yet I can’t help but
stand here and just watch — watch all these people who heard that I was Jewish
and and am not in support of this as they stare at me all of the time,” she
added.
“There are a lot of
people who aren’t forthcoming about their support for Israel… I do tell people
I am, because I’m proud of it,” Eden said.
Later in the afternoon,
she and another student joined an older Jewish local resident who had been
jogging around the encampment since the morning wearing a white t-shirt with an
Israeli flag.
While Northwestern has a
sizable Jewish population, the subset of Modern Orthodox students is smaller.
Yarmulke spottings are
accordingly rarer, save for the campus’s longtime Chabad rabbi, who was seen
watching the protest from the other side of the quad with a group of Jewish
students.
Later in the day,
though, this reporter caught up with Jeremy Berkun, who was making his way
through Deering Meadow en route to class at the music school.
He said he was choosing
to wear a yarmulke Thursday, even though he doesn’t typically do so as a
Conservative Jew, so that his Modern Orthodox friends wouldn’t be alone in
donning them during this more tense period on campus.
“I have had a few
instances of my friends getting their mezuzahs taken off their
doors last semester,” Berkun said.
Along with his more
religious “brothers,” he said he also has a friend who was leading the
anti-Israel protest.
“I’ve had a lot of
discussions with him about how we both think violence is bad, but he posted
that he supports ‘the resistance’ the day after October 7,” Berkun, a
sophomore, said sadly.
But not going anywhere
As Berkun walked through
campus, he was greeted warmly by Jewish and non-Jewish friends.
“I don’t think I would
ever reconsider coming here. I think this is the perfect place for me. No
matter where I was going to be in this country, I was always going to have some
problems on campus. It was just a matter of where.”
“If I was at Columbia,
Yale or Michigan, I’d have the same problems I’m dealing with now. It’s just a
question of how I deal with them, and that’s by being with my Jewish community,
being with Hillel, being with Chabad,” he added.
Freshman Maia Egnal
described a similar sense of comfort at Northwestern even while acknowledging
the uncomfortable, “antisemitic” nature of the day’s protest.
“I have not seen these
people who are out there today protesting loss of civilian life in other
places,” she lamented during an interview at Northwestern Hillel, a block away
from the encampment.
“I’ve been horrified,
horrified, horrified to see the loss of Palestinian life during this war, but I
wouldn’t say that Israel doesn’t deserve to exist over this, the same way I
didn’t say America didn’t deserve to exist over the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq,”
said Egnal who is involved in the school’s J Street U chapter, which advocates
for a two-state solution.
She discussed sometimes
feeling isolated — particularly since October 7 — between some of the more
hawkish students at Hillel who have branded calls for a ceasefire “antisemitic”
and those at the encampment who “don’t believe Israel should exist.”
“Nonetheless, I love my
Jewish life here,” Egnal said. “My younger sister was just choosing where to go
to college, and I told her that if she came to Northwestern, she would have a
vibrant Jewish life here. She’s committing here today.”
“I will never tell a
Jewish student not to come here, and I think that is probably the attitude of
every Jewish student here. Overwhelmingly, I know that this building will
always support me.”
‘Jewish life is
thriving’
Downstairs, some 150
students were taking advantage of the Passover lunch Hillel was providing
throughout the holiday.
While a large group of
them ate, campus rabbi Jessica Lott shared a few words about the importance of
having both pride and empathy at this moment.
“We serve students
across the political spectrum, including ones who have been involved in the
protest,” Lott said, adding that she had originally scheduled to meet on
Thursday with one of the organizers for a religious lesson, which was canceled
“because she needed to be there [at the encampment] today and I needed to be
here today.”
The campus rabbi
adamantly rejected the notion that the anti-Israel activity was fundamentally
changing life on campus for Jewish students.
Hillel hosted hundreds
of students for Passover seders earlier this week, and there were more students
than ever asking for help to host their own seders in their apartments, she
said, rejecting the suggestion that this was a reaction to October 7 and its
aftermath.
“They’re all excited to
do this and see it as part of adulting. We do it every year, and it has been a
growing program. It’s growing because it’s fun. Regardless of what’s happening
outside,” she said.
“Jewish life on campus
is thriving, and students are finding a way to make their own sense of what’s
going on,” Lott added, suggesting that while Thursday was certainly no win for
Jewish students, they would do just fine regardless.
