As I reported earlier, last Friday anti-Israel protesters at the University of Chicago went wild, vandalizing our Henry Moore sculpture and the surrounding area with spray paint, putting up illegal banners, trying to lock the main northern gate to the campus, and battling with police (three protesters were arrested). University of Chicago United for Palestine (UCUP) issued a document (below) explaining their actions.
And they also put an “installation” on the Quad, consisting of a tent. It’s clearly designed to evoke the Encampment of last year, and has a sign saying “We are still here and Palestine is still here”. According to the placard, the tent should be down by today. It’s authorized free speech, but I can’t say that it doesn’t make me queasy. Another year of demonstrations, Jew hatred, and disruptions seems to be in the offing.
The installation, photographed by a member of the University community:
UChicago United for Palestine, a group of students that includes the Students for Justice in Palestine, also put up a Google Document declaring their intentions and motivations. This too is free speech, but to me it’s nauseating. Click headline to read:
It’s the same boilerplate activism, but I noticed the repeated use of the words “Zionist entity” to refer to “Israel”, with the latter word hardly being used at all (and not capitalized when it is). The new term is of course meant to deny the existence of Israel, and also to suggest that it’s an artificial entity, i.e., that Jews aren’t indigenous to the area that is now Israel.
Some excerpts. First, the opening two paragraphs, nearly every word of which is a lie:
It has been more than a year since israel commenced its genocidal assault on Gaza. Armed and enabled by the US government, the Zionist entity has slaughtered more than 42,000 captive Palestinians within this timeframe while also systematically destroying Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and killing tens of thousands more by starvation and preventable disease. Nor has israel’s genocidal rampage been limited to Gaza—Zionist forces have murdered hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank within this timeframe, aggressively expanded israel’s settlement enterprise, and launched repeated attacks on Yemen, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq.
In the past week, israel’s aggression both in Gaza and across the region has reached unprecedented heights. As part of its ongoing effort to ethnically cleanse and erase Northern Gaza, it has imposed a total siege on the area, preventing all food and aid from entering it for the past 13 days. Deliberately assassinating journalists in the northern Gaza Strip, few bravely remain to broadcast to the world. Simultaneously, Israel [they forgot to use a small “i”] has launched an all-out invasion into Lebanon, displacing over a million Lebanese citizens and slaughtering nearly 2,000 in recent weeks.
Below: a vow to disrupt the University of Chicago. Unfortunately, the demands they list will not be met by the University, so their demonstrations are futile. I think they know this, which is why they act out, yelling, attacking cops, and vandalizing University property. Will they be taken any more seriously after throwing red paint on a Henry Moore sculpture? I doubt it.
Note that they say Israel is conducting a “war of expansion in Lebanon”, which is simply a lie showing their willful ignorance of history. Do they not know about UN Resolution 1701 or Hezbollah’s repeated rocket attacks on Israel for a year?
UChicago United for Palestine called this action to interrupt business as usual at the University of Chicago, whose financial and institutional ties with the Zionist entity mirror its objective role as a colonial outpost on Chicago’s South Side—gentrifying neighborhoods and surveilling, policing, and displacing the people who live here. Our experiences during last year’s encampment taught us that our demands—disclosure, divestment, and repair—would not be taken seriously without demonstrating our willingness and ability to use every means at our disposal, including suspending the daily operation of the university. We called this action in conjunction with an international movement against a civil society, state, and international order that prop up the Zionist entity, facilitate its genocide in Palestine, and enable its war of expansion in Lebanon.
Their attack on the statue, which is far more than a celebration of the University’s involvement in developing nuclear weapons. Read what the sculptor said about it.
More from the document, in which UChicago United swears “to pick apart this university”:
On the afternoon of October 11th, following a rally that drew more than 150 students, community members, and faculty, protestors locked the main gate of the University of Chicago shut before hanging a banner reading “FREE PALESTINE – HANDS OFF LEBANON.” This was the first of a series of autonomous actions that marked the end of the Week of Rage for Palestine and Lebanon, as we passed a year of genocide in Gaza.
Protestors later marched to a statue commemorating the University’s involvement in the development of the nuclear bomb. A speaker said: “Today, Palestine and Lebanon are being used as the testing grounds of technologies built by universities like this one.” Tags reading FREE GAZA, FUCK THE BOMBS, and KEEP ESCALATING proliferated, and balloons full of paint were thrown at the statue. He continued: “our ultimate message today is that we can pick apart this university, and when we do, we can build something better in its place.” When the crowd regrouped and began to march north to disperse, UCPD cut into the middle of the march, targeting several protestors.
They then recount their battle with cops from the University as well as Chicago city cops, and make clear that their enemies are not just the University of Chicago, but America in general. At least they admit that! Good luck with dismantling America! But Americans should realize that the aspirations of the organized nationwide demonstrations go far beyond erasing Israel, extending to the erasure of Western democracies.
. . . . Whether on campus, in the city, or in the street, the Palestine movement must recognize and confront its enemies: the university, the police, American civil society, and the state, all of which collaborate to facilitate dispossession, land theft, and occupation at home and abroad. The people who locked the gate did so to shut down a university that has refused to even acknowledge the destruction of all Gazan universities, much less the ongoing genocide. It symbolized how, while we walk to class every day, the schools in Gaza are bombed, while israel’s genocide against Palestinians continues and the university remains materially and intellectually invested. Protestors painted the nuclear bomb statue red to expose the university’s culpability in the nuclear weapons program, a fact they memorialize through a statue that was explicitly designed to reflect “the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion, but also ha[ve] the shape and eye sockets of a skull”—mirrored in the present by its ‘neutral’ research and development programs which directly abet the slaughter in Gaza and Lebanon.
They end by promising to disrupt the campus until Palestine is free. For them that will be, well, forever, for “Palestine” includes Israel (aka “the Zionist entity”), and Am Yisrael Chai:
. . . We will never stop fighting as long as [Palestinians] face genocide and occupation. We will remain steadfast and committed in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation, and the cause of all those who face brutal violence and occupation from UCPD and CPD every day. And we will not stop fighting until Palestine is free!
I hope they’re prepared for a long and futile battle. They’ve already lost on campus, and, as Israel slowly wins the war in Gaza and Lebanon, they’ll become increasingly angry that they haven’t removed the Zionist entity “from the river to the sea.”
Will these people ever learn that the situation in Gaza and now in Lebanon is just the status quo for the foreseeable future and there is nothing they can do about it?
As PCC says: They can talk about it and that is what they are doing.
[ GIF of Captain Picard “facepalm” ]
Whoever wrote these statements clearly has no interest in receiving the education the University of Chicago can provide … so surely it’s time for their enrolment to be annulled so they can make way for people who are. Quite apart from anything else, why would they (or more likely their parents) want to continue paying tens of thousands of dollars a year to an institution they apparently despise, to receive something they don’t want?
Many are probably not registered students. The Canadian encampments were heavily skewed toward labour-union muscle and professional troublemakers (but I repeat myself) drawn from the larger community of the oppressed. They are essentially immune.
Unions, really? Y’don’t say, Leslie.
Well color me amazed!
HAHAHAH
D.A.
NYC
The following is today’s ADL Campus Crisis Alert mail to which I subscribe:
Chicago. Three anti-Israel protesters were arrested at the University of Chicago after a confrontation/brawl between hundreds of demonstrators and the police. A statement from the school explained what happened: “Protesters instigated confrontations with police by physically surrounding a police car, further vandalizing and damaging property, blocking the public road, and striking police officers who responded.” According to reports, two of the arrests were for battery to a police officer and one for criminal damage.
The e-mail includes reports from other campuses across the country as well, but I am not including those here.
All very deplorable. ‘The Zionist entity’ is how the ‘Government’ of Iran has consistently referred to Israel for decades. Could be a pointer to where these people are getting their funding from.
Most of the Arab world has used this phrase for a long time. Iran particularly uses it.
I think – and don’t quote me – it was made up by the Stasi/KGB/PLO in the 60s.
Did you know they have a “Countdown Clock” in Palestine Square in Tehran, with the wiping of Israel off the map for 2040 (I forget the exact date).
So something for our calendars!
A-holes. I can’t wait until the Iranian people take their revenge on the “people of faith” Ayatollahs who have wrecked their country. It’ll be before 2040 I think.
D.A.
NYC
We live in an upside down world, morally.
Or these idiots do.
How’d they get there? Honestly… ticktok is where they get all their info so thanks Commie Pukes for switching the algorithm (which they did in Oct last year) and the main prize for this ignorance goes to… woke.
D.A.
NYC
I am as close to a free speech absolutist as I can imagine. Like many in both the military and the police force, I have always held that now clichéd principle of perhaps disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it. That said . . .
When I see the Jew hatred on campus, when I hear chants or read placards about the desired demise of America, when I watch people using their rights to subvert those of others, then my first thought is whether the miscreant is a US citizen for whom I would offer my life in defense of principle. Legal scholars can feel free to tell me how the Constitution, at least most of it, applies to citizen and noncitizen alike, but when I hear people spew hatred with talk of dismantling America, my first inclination is to ask whether they are guests here. I would throw every damned one of them who lacks citizenship out of the country–permanently.
We may not get to choose our families, but we sure as hell can choose our friends.
“our ultimate message today is that we can pick apart this university, and when we do, we can build something better in its place.” How nice that they promise to
“build something better” someday, details left out. Presumably, given the Gaza connection, the something better will resemble Hamas—although the NKVD, the Stasi, and North Korea’s Ministry of State Security might also be worthy models.
Good point. Do they realize that the “better” structure that their heroes in Hamas would like to replace America with would be an Islamic theocratic dictatorship? Perhaps yes, for the Muslim activists. Of course not, for the rest of the “useful idiots”. As has been well documented by this point, positions such as “Queers for Palestine” show a level of ignorance that aspires to the pinnacle of Darwin Award stupidity. Performative foolishness, but mindless and harmful.
I think these people have already had their “moment”. They’ll keep making noise for a while and instigate the occasional disruption, and they’ll probably dream up some further provocations. But “pick apart” the university? I don’t think so. They’re not going to topple American society, and before long society’s ADD will kick in and these performative tantrums will be old news. People will stop paying attention. In the end, they only have what power the media gives them.
But scant consolation perhaps to those presently being harmed by this madness. This will blow past but not without causing damage along the way.
The damage caused by the pop-Left has long been substantial, but it has never been suffered by its supposed targets. Throwing paint on statues in Chicago or blocking commuters in NYC does no damage whatsoever to the state of Israel, or to the dominant classes in the USA. On the contrary, the antics of the pop-Left invariably discredit the general ideas of the Left, thus bolstering the conservative position and impeding possibilities of reform. The SDS “days of rage” useful idiots in Chicago in 1969 were useful all right, to the Nixon administration—a comedy repeated endlessly, it appears. Maybe the converging doctrines sometimes found at both tips of the horseshoe reflect a deeper kinship.
Two thoughts:
1. I think I know what Dr. Coyne meant by the following statement but I was a bit confused by it: “Unfortunately, the demands they list will not be met by the University, so their demonstrations are futile.” Don’t we want their antics to be futile?
2. Countering hateful speech with humor can be a wonderful tool for turning people away from darkness and toward light. Especially young folks who are seeking adult peer groups. Most folks shy away from groups and ideas that are ridiculed.