From The Front Lines of Campus Protests at UCSC: Bring Them Home Now

It was a beautiful day for a protest. The sun was shining, flowers were blooming, and good music was emanating from the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) across the road. Grad students and members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union had gathered beneath the UC, Santa Cruz sign at the entrance to the campus to start their strike “to free Palestine.” Palestinian flags rippled in the breeze as keffiyeh-clad students struggled to keep a larger-than-life, keffiyeh-wearing paper mâché figure upright.

I took my position across the street and held up my “kidnapped” poster, displaying a photo of 23-year-old Nepali student Bipin Josh, one of 128 hostages kidnapped from Israel and being held by Hamas in Gaza. The hostages are citizens of 20 different countries. Among them are Jews, Christians and Muslims (Hamas did not hesitate to kill and kidnap Arab-Israeli Muslims as well).

Bipin had been in Israel to learn new farming techniques when he was abducted from the kibbutz where he was studying. Since then, Hamas has refused to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross access to the hostages.

Unbelievably, the world seems to have largely forgotten the hostages and their status as victims of an ongoing war crime.

I came to the university that day with my poster so people would be forced to remember the hostages. My poster did not contain an image of an Israeli flag. My poster said, “Bring Them Home NOW” with the hashtag, “#kidnapped from Israel.”

I stood and watched and continued to hold my poster high.

The graduate students, holding their UAW strike signs, were joined by keffiyeh-clad undergraduate students and community members, and began marching and chanting. I heard “Globalize the Intifada” and “We will honor all our martyrs.” Did they really understand what they were saying? “Intifada” may mean “uprising” or “resistance” in Arabic, but Palestinian terrorists in Israel have been using the word to describe more than civil disobedience and riots. In the late 1980s and during the aughts, Palestinian terrorists coopted the term to describe crushing the skulls of passing Jewish drivers with heavy blocks of concrete and blowing up Israeli public buses and restaurants. The year 2015 saw the “Knife Intifada” when so many Israeli Jews were stabbed to death (as well as murdered in a variety of other ways).

If UCSC is still enforcing its own enumerated policies that discourage microaggressions, as a community member, I’m having a difficult time seeing it.

I will say, none of the “pro-Palestine” protestors harassed me. They all civilly exercised their free speech rights. But I did wonder who the students included in their definition of “martyrs” that they were honoring. Were they also honoring the approximately 14,000 Hamas combatants who were killed, along with the innocent civilians?

My thoughts were interrupted by a student who came up to me and identified himself as one of the strike security officials. He told me he wanted to ensure that there would be no violence during my “counter protest.”

His words struck me. Why was my holding a sign that displayed a kidnapped college student and demanded his freedom a “counter protest” to a strike in solidarity with the rights of Palestinians? If one is “pro-Palestinian,” does that necessarily mean that one is pro-war crimes so long as they are perpetrated in Israel or against Israelis?

It mystifies me as to why the US student protestors repeatedly fail to condemn Hamas for hiding behind the Palestinian civilians of Gaza and bringing such misery to them. Apparently, the students are not curious as to why only the Hamas combatants have access to underground shelters (and five-star hotels in Qatar) while their Palestinian countrymen suffer. Perhaps these students do not understand that the Hamas they are glorifying is the same Hamas that opposes secularism, freedom and democracy for Palestinians?

I love Israel and its people but have no difficulty criticizing the government of Israel. I wish the student strikers could do the same. And I wish that US students could see that demanding Hamas return the hostages immediately would go far, not only to end the suffering of the 128 and their loved ones but also to end the suffering of the Palestinian people too.