Chants of “from the river to the sea!” and “occupation is a crime, from New York to Palestine” could be heard on Ho Plaza Friday morning. A group of around 30-40 students and adults gathered to protest Israel’s recent reprisal raid, which killed 6. Israel launched the attack in response to the killing of twin brothers Hillel and Yagel Yaniv in recent weeks.
The protest was orchestrated by the Students for Justice in Palestine, a Cornell student organization. The protest was meant, “to be a celebration of Palestine.” Protestors were told not to engage with passers-by in conversation or debate; rather, the protest was “meant to be a show of solidarity with Palestine.”
Protestors held up signs such as “Resistance is Justified When People Are Occupied,” “From the River to the Sea,” and “Anti-Zionism does not Equal Anti-Semitism.” This last sign is a particular longstanding point of contention. For example, the Anti Defamation League defines anti-Zionism as a “prejudice” which is motivated by—or is the result of antisemitism—or comes from a climate where antisemitism is acceptable. Protestors chanted as well as read poems from Palestinian poets.
About 25-30 minutes into the protests, an adult speaker addressed the crowd, making various claims about Israel that were hard to follow. In summary, the speaker, who did not give his name, thanked the crowd for attending the protest, and proceeded to talk about Israel’s “atrocities” committed in Africa.
He focused on Israel’s indifference towards Algeria as well as its bombing of Egypt during the 6 day war in 1967. He claimed that the Anti Defamation League set up:
“pipelines for terrorist police departments to go to Zionist Israel to be trained by the Israeli Defense Force so they could come back to the US and terrorize people to prevent demonstrations like this, Israel is the enemy of all humanity.”
Notably, there was no police interference in the protest. He would later go on to call for all Israeli embassies to be “run off” of the African continent. Finally, his speech ended with a chant where he and the entire crowd, including the Cornell students participating, chanted “Israel out of Palestine…Israel out of Africa… Israel off the Earth.” The Cornell Review could not confirm whether this person has any connection to Cornell University.
It was not clear if this last chant of “Israel off the Earth” was a spontaneous turn or a planned chant. Speaking afterwards with members of the Cornell Hillel, one member stated specifically towards this last part that they were “upset, but unsurprised.”
The protest, other than the one speaker, was mostly innocuous. This is the second protest this week on campus where the Israel-Palestine conflict has been litigated. It remains to be seen if more activism will follow this model.
