"You Are Being Lied to About Gaza Solidarity Camps"
"One of the lies you have been told the most is that these encampments are antisemitic. It’s scurrilously perpetuated by journalists like CNN’s Jake Tapper, who are “reporting” from WhatsApp group chats, as well as by politicians, from Republican Speaker Mike Johson to President Biden.
I visited Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity encampment on Friday April 19, a day after the first police raid arrested 113 people and a new set of tents took over the southwest corner of the quad. One of the first things I saw made it apparent to me that early reports of religious strife were just moral panic. A group of Muslim students were kneeling in prayer and, in a scene I have since seen recreated at different camps, a group of students—many Jewish— held a tarp up around them to give them privacy. (Later that evening, Jewish students hosted a seder on the lawn.)
I also observed a group of speakers address the camp, including a Palestinian American nurse who had recently returned from a shift in Gaza, a white woman who had been arrested in that same spot in 1968 and, most controversially, Norman Finkelstein. Finkelstein is an uncontested expert on Gaza, but he is on the wrong side of some social issues for many students and he does not like the phrase 'from the river to the sea.'
And yet, in a scene that should have made contrarian 'free speech' diehard contrarians happy, the students listened to all the speakers respectfully. Even when Finkelstein welcomed criticism, it was given, and received, respectfully. (And when he left the lawn and the students chanted 'from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,' he laughed with good nature.)"
~ Steven W. Thrasher
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