As a warm-up for the Big Encampment planned to start here on May 1, UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP, a consortium of students including Students for Justice in Palestine) planned a big divestment rally on Friday afternoon. It was raining, so attendance was sparse, but the protestors were determined and marched from the administration building to various other buildings on campus. Here’s the poster that advertised it.
Below videos I took. I think this demonstration was legal since they didn’t block access to the administration building, but many demonstrators (behind me as I filmed) covered their faces, as they are cowards and don’t want to be identified. (After all, they could get arrested or suspended for civil disobedience, and they don’t really want people to know who they are.) Many are wearing keffiyehs, the hipster swastika. And, of course, their “demonstration” consists not of arguments or real speech, but chanting over and over again. That is the only thing they know how to do.
The “Paul” this bawling protestor refers to is our President, Paul Alivisatos. I’m not sure where all the photographers came from.
Their goal is to get the University of Chicago to diverst from Israel. They will not succeed, but I guess they feel virtuous with the shouting and marching. Note the recurring references to “genocide”. Of course they mean “genocide by Israel,” but the real genocide—the avowed determination to destroy another people—is enacted by Hamas, not Israel.
The students behind me as I filmed. “Hands off Rafah” can be loosely translated as “Let Hamas continue to rule Gaza.” That is an implicit endorsement of genocide, since Hamas’s charter and actions explicitly aim to destroy all the Jews. Perhaps these students are unwitting tools of the real genocide. Note that they’re all wearing masks. That is not because of covid!
Meanwhile, the Chicago Maroon, the student newspaper that might be called “The Voice of Hamas”, reports on the demonstrations with a photo BLURRING THE FACES OF THE DEMONSTRATORS! That is deliberately done to help the protestors: they can’t be identified in case they were doing something illegal. And in the Maroon the report includes only quotes from people in favor of the demonstration; there are no dissenting voices. This is why I believe the Maroon is “all the pro-Hamas news fit to print.” An excerpt:
“As a coalition of organizing groups, we have asked several times over the years for the University to disclose and divest from these unethical investments. We are a university that still continues to invest in fossil fuels at the cost of perpetuating climate change. We are a university that continues to militarize this campus with more police rather than listening to its community,” said Sarah, an organizer with UCUP, speaking to the crowd outside of Levi Hall. “It is our duty, our moral imperative, our responsibility to stand up for the Palestinian people. It is our duty to show up, it is our duty to be here right now.”
Many students expressed uncertainty about whether the rally and protest movements on campus would spur the University to take action, but said they felt that participating in the protest was a means of expressing their dissent against UChicago’s role in the war in Gaza.
“I’m just doing my part as a student. I know that the University is complicit in the genocide that is currently taking place in Gaza, and as a UChicago student, I am mainly concerned with how UChicago is implicated in all of this,” one of the protestors, a fourth-year political science major, told the Maroon during the march. “There has never been such a large movement for Palestinian liberation in the U.S., and I’m gonna try to be part of it—whatever I can contribute.”
And so on. Note the blurred faces below. Do you know of any real mainstream newspaper that does anything like this? And they still haven’t come through on their promise (last November!) to publish a long piece by a pro-Israeli student. As far as I know, my op-ed in a January issue is the only opposition piece that was printed.
Meanwhile, the Jewish students erected two banners and then departed. The contrast between the angry, hateful demonstrators and the peaceful but determined counter-demonstrations, instantiated in these banners, is striking.
Another one, appropriate for Passover:
This is an announcement from the university-affiliated Hillel foundation, posted on Friday. Note the call for peace and denigration of hatred. (“Shabbat” is of course the sabbath.)
But where was my box of free matzos? I love ’em when they’re slathered with sweet butter.
The critically conscious audience is hearing the call.
Do majority of protestors realize that the border between Gaza and Israel had to be restricted because of suicide bombers and other attacks? Ironically the Hamas attack demonstrated clearly why access to Israel had to be controlled. And were there reports that even some Gaza citizens allowed to work in Israel were complicit in the Hamas attack?
I wonder if the protesters themselves, and their parents, are divesting from Israel. Nothing that they own has any link to that country or to Jewish people in general? Clothing, footwear, tents, phones, apps, ETF shares?
“Divestment,” a reference to the selling of stock, is foolish. To control a company one must buy stock. Wall Street pros will buy the divested stock, and the pros won’t give a hoot about student issues. But the students will feel good because they have “accomplished” something.
Changes brought about by divestment in the last fifty to sixty years have come from the publicity alone.
I agree that the “divestment” part is foolish, it’s actually just an excuse because they don’t know what they’re talking about. It isn’t either about the war in Gaza, at least that’s not the main point. What they really want is freedom to harass the Jews with impunity.
Could you tell how many protestors there actually were?
The Maroon says 200, but there wasn’t near that when I showed up early in the demonstration. They could well have accumulated others after I left and as they wended their way across campus.
I believe mainstream newspapers and magazines will often blur out the faces of minors involved in a crime (perpetrator or victim.) Children are routinely protected from being publicly outed.
So, given the disturbingly childish behavior of many of these protestors, The Chicago Maroon just might have a point.
I don’t think these are minors. The Maroon does this regularly.
The Jewish students usually play by the rules. Hence their respectful banners.
Regarding the one-sided coverage and masked faces: “Do you know of any real mainstream newspaper that does anything like this?”
Well, not exactly. The biases shown by more mainstream sources are more subtle, but taken as a whole, are more damaging. Their circulations are massively greater (obviously) and because their bias is less in-your-face, more readers are persuaded.
Elder of Ziyon has a good piece on how NYT happily repeats everything Hamas says but is more cautious about Israeli statements.
https://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2024/04/once-again-reporters-know-hamas-lies.html
It looked to me like the leader of the chants had to continually check his phone (teleprompter) for the next line. There’s something strange about that for the ostensible leader of a cause.
I had the same thought. Given the simplicity of the chant, the need to refer to his phone constantly seemed, umm, curious.
They need to refer to personal devices continuously, devices designed and produced and functional by the same society they denigrate and despise, touch of hypocrisy here? Perhaps ask what Palestine has ever produced apart from mayhem extreme violence and lies. Wonderful benefit to the planet. The loud hailer user has no idea how to wear the thing masquerading as a “ hijab” perhaps he should view a few pics of the “git” who lionized it and we all know who that was, great at getting rich on Norwegian Krona and lies and violence and murder and aircraft highjacking all in all a good all round Islamic terrorist.
The crowd following the leader in chanting are just sheep following along.
The rhythmic chants are just hypnotizing. How mundane and ignorant.
My own student activist group, the Student Interplanetary Mobilization for Peace, Lawns, and Equity (SIMPLE), will soon spring into campus action. We will occupy our administration building on behalf of our ultimate, non-negotiable principle: we demand that the University impose no penalties on students for occupying the administration building. After that, we will occupy the campus lawn over something that we think involves a river and a sea, or was it a lawn?
The only organisation that makes “demands” and elicits a response from me at least is HM Revenue and Customs usually wanting tax money on pain of death. All other “demands” invalid.
Perhaps somewhat tangential, but all this has me thinking to the book I just read, “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class” by Rob Henderson.
To summarize, Henderson tells his story of being taken from his drug addict mother and spending years in the foster care system. He goes from very troubled youth, with his own substance abuse and emotional issues, to eventually getting his PhD in psychology from Cambridge.
Henderson explains his concept of “luxury beliefs.” These are beliefs that those who seek entry into elite class circles espouse to signal that they belong in that circle. According to Henderson, these “luxury beliefs” have no cost to those expressing them, while causing real harm to some group or groups in the lower classes.
Defunding the police is one luxury belief Henderson explicitly mentions. It seems to me, supporting the women-repressing-and-raping, homosexual-murdering theocracies of Gaza, the West Bank, and Iran, to name just three, is just the latest, hip-at-the-moment, luxury belief.
Agree!
Those useful idiots would not know the difference between a moral imperative and an abhorrent crime.
Could the university not stipulate that if you are going to protest you are not allowed to cover your face? Bit like banks don’t allow motorcycle helmets on heads in banks.
And here is what is going on at USC:
https://voicesagainstantisemitism.substack.com/p/newsletter-april-28-2024
Vandalism continues… Faculty from the Gender Studies cancelling exams and inciting students to join illegal protests.
Jill Stein arrested last night at Washington University in St. Louis.
Most, but not all, of these protests are at institutions with tuition over $60,000.
Ref Roger Rabbit, the Maroon may be living up to its name in the more recent lexicon.