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 Wednesday 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 different 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. This is not OK for Jewishness and the institutions that we currently have, put up that system and defend Israel at all costs. And we say, enough is enough.”
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.”
Mars said people engaged in this conflict should ask themselves the tough questions about genocide as it relates to the Promised Land.
“At the end of this all, if God forbid, in years from now Israel is granting Palestinians land acknowledgements as some sort of too little, too late reparations for the genocide currently ensuing, ask yourself, what have you made of your so-called Promised Land?”
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.”
Noting that commencement ceremonies are this 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.
According to the Associated Press, New York Police ordered pro-Palestinian protesters to abandon a tent encampment at New York University early Friday, following weeks of demonstrations and police crackdowns at college campuses nationwide that have resulted in more than 2,300 arrests.
About a dozen protesters who refused police orders to leave were arrested and about 30 more left voluntarily, according to NYU spokesperson John Beckman. The school asked the New York Police Department to intervene “to minimize the likelihood of injury” and disruption, Beckman said.
Classes will proceed as scheduled on Friday, he said. A larger NYU encampment was dismantled on April 22, when more than 130 protesters were arrested.
Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across U.S. campuses in a student movement unlike any other this century.
Israel has branded the protests antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, protest organizers — some of whom are Jewish — call it a peaceful movement to defend Palestinian rights and protest the war.
President Joe Biden has defended the students’ right to protest peacefully but decried the violence and disruption of campus life.
NYPD officers on Friday also cleared an encampment at The New School in Greenwich Village, where students were not able to attend classes in at least two buildings because of the protesters. Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry posted on the social platform X that the school asked the department to disperse the protesters.
Video posted by Daughtry shows dozens of helmeted officers massed outside the school. No arrests were announced.
Authorities said a further 133 protesters were arrested when police broke up a pro-Palestinian encampment at the State University of New York at New Paltz starting late Thursday, while nine protesters were also arrested at the University of Tennessee. Chancellor Donde Plowman said Friday that seven of those arrested are students who will also be sanctioned under the school’s code of conduct.
More than 100 people were arrested late Tuesday when police broke up the Columbia encampment. One officer accidentally discharged his gun inside Hamilton Hall during that operation, but no one was injured, NYPD said late Thursday. He was trying to use the flashlight attached to his gun but instead fired a single round that struck a frame on the wall, police said.
At University of California, Los Angeles, more than 200 people were taken into custody early Thursday, after hundreds of protesters defied orders to leave, some forming human chains as police fired flash-bangs to break up the crowds. Police tore apart a fortified encampment’s barricade of plywood, pallets, metal fences and dumpsters, then pulled down canopies and tents.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block told alumni on a call Thursday afternoon that administrators tried to find a peaceful solution and that things had been stable on campus until counterdemonstrators attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment late Tuesday.
Campus administrators and police did not intervene or call for backup for hours. No one was arrested that night, but at least 15 protesters were injured.
By Wednesday, the encampment had become “much more of a bunker” and there was no other solution but to have police dismantle it, Block said. Officers warned over loudspeakers that there would be arrests if the crowd did not disperse. Hundreds left voluntarily, while another 200-plus remained and were arrested.
Arrests have been made during at least 58 crackdowns on protesters at 44 colleges or universities since April 18, according to figures based on Associated Press reporting and statements from universities and law enforcement agencies.
University of Minnesota officials reached an agreement with protesters not to disrupt commencements, and similar compromises have been made at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Brown University in Rhode Island.
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