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Under Attack
With Israel under attack, students face the possibility of a different type of attack
As news broke of the Iranian missile attacks Tuesday afternoon, my friends and I were preparing for another type of attack. For many students at the University of Texas at Austin, Tuesday marked the first day this school year in which we felt the same anxieties of the past spring as we watched our campuses be inundated with encampments and anti-Israel protests. Now, as we approach the anniversary of 10.7.2023 – our hearts deep in the tunnels of Gaza as they have been for the past 362 days – Tuesday was a stark reminder of the belligerent transformation of our campuses within the past year.
Tuesday evening, the Palestine Solidarity Committee of Austin, along with UT Austin’s own Arab Student Association and Ahlul Bayt Student Organization, held an on-campus vigil to honor their martyrs. Donning keffiyehs and flooding the South Lawn with Lebanese flags, the assembled students claimed to be commemorating “all our martyrs, everywhere,” an alarmingly vague euphemism. This event simultaneously occurred with Austin for Palestine Coalition’s promotion of their weeklong commemoration of “One year of genocide. One year of resistance.” beginning this Saturday. Both of these events were, terrifying, yes, but nothing that I hadn’t seen before on the “campus front.” The true root of my resurgent anxieties came from a rally hosted by University Democrats as part of a national campaign titled Our Fight, Our Future.
At first glance, Our Fight, Our Future brought together American progressive icons with Texas politicians to promote voter registration and discuss the future of progressivism in the United States. Taking place on the UT campus, the student organization University Democrats helped arrange the event and behind-the-scenes efforts. Though aimed at the more progressive-leaning student, there was nothing that appeared so provocative about the rally; Texas candidates Lloyd Doggett, Beto O’Rourke and Greg Casar each took the stage before big-namers Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders concluded the program. Yet, I sat through each with a pit in my stomach, I slowly realized that it was not so much what the speaker was saying about Israel and the war in Gaza but how it was said that resurgent prompted my anxieties. Not one ever uttered the word Israel, scared of publicly acknowledging the existence of such a dirty entity. Each, though, alluded to the war: After juxtaposing the innocence of “every Palestinian and Lebanese baby” with “the charlatan Trump,” Lloyd Doggett conceded that “what happened today didn’t have to happen” in reference to the barrage of Iranian missiles directed at Israeli civilians just hours before. Greg Casar then included the prospect of “a lasting and just peace in Gaza” within a call to action. And finally, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez concluded her speech comparing American involvement in Vietnam to our younger generation’s “inheritance” of war in the Middle East, calling it a “failure” of Americans and older generations alike. The crowds erupted, chanting her initials and jumping at the opportunity to snag a photo of their icon. I was in shock.
More than just a persuasive rally cry, the speeches intentionally conflated American democratic ideals of free elections with anti-western sentiment, threatening the very future of the United States if attendees’ votes did not align with the speakers’ slates. Reaching a ceasefire (without regard to the return of our hostages) and ridding the Middle East of America’s assumed democratic outpost became another bullet point on the social justice agenda propagated at the rally. Many of the speakers had referred to the war within their rapid-fire calls to action, completely disregarding the nuances of this war from which so much of our pain arises; the three-thousand-year-old Jewish struggle for self-determination was now neatly packed into a task for American voters to resolve come November 5th. Buried within this utter reworking of a civilization and culture’s history is the root of the campus insurgencies of the spring: a call for the young to mobilize protests on something that does not exist as simply as they are misled to believe.
As we welcome in 5785, we stand at the cusp of a new year separated from the terror and pain of the past. With heavy hearts, we can see these multitudes of horrors as a causal chain to interrupt, rather than as isolated events to plunge us into despair. It is from such observation that we can predict the present before it occurs. For students at the University of Texas at Austin, Tuesday was our reminder of the realities we lived and the narratives we must share to thwart the return of such animosity. Though the Nation, State and Land of Israel are under attack, the People and Spirit of Israel have never had a greater time to show our strength. Shana tova umetuka – am Yisrael chai.
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