Protests erupt at NYC colleges responding to Israel-Hamas war

Protests and counterprotests over the bloody war in the Middle East erupted at colleges across the five boroughs Thursday as supporters of Israel and pro-Palestinian advocates clashed over the ongoing violence that broke out last week.

Student groups at Brooklyn College, Hunter College and Columbia University, among others, coordinated protests largely intended to condemn Israel, but were met with counterprotesters in often tense exchanges. The rallies throughout the city came on the eve of a large protest planned in Times Square and heightened security concerns particularly among the city’s Jewish and Muslim communities.

‘Everyone wants to end this bloodshed.’

A crowd of 200 Brooklyn College students gathered outside the school’s entrance draped in Palestinian flags and traditional keffiyehs, chanting, “The people are occupied. Resistance is justified.”

Beside them stood a little-known network of Orthodox Jewish men and their sons condemning the Israeli government's actions in the occupied Palestinian Territories.

“We cannot just look at what happened now or the day before,” said Joseph Cohen, an Orthodox member of the group. Cohen, 35, was born and raised in Brooklyn. “Everyone wants to end this bloodshed. But in order to bring a solution, you have to understand the full scope of the thing.”

About 10 counter protesters waving Israeli flags stood several feet away. Both groups were sectioned off by NYPD barricades. More than 50 law enforcement officials were stationed within a three-block radius of the rally.

Several people drove past the rally on Bedford Avenue, rolling their windows down to blast Israeli and Palestinian music.

Scarves in solidarity

At Hunter College later in the afternoon, about 200 people turned out to a rally for Palestinian rights and resistance organized by the Palestine Solidarity Alliance, a CUNY Hunter College student group.

More than half the crowd wore keffiyehs — traditional Palestinian woven headscarves — after the group earlier encouraged students attending the rally to wear the scarves on campus Thursday in solidarity with Palestinians. The gathering was also flanked by a small contingent of NYPD officers, including counterterrorism officers, and helicopters circling above.

A handful of counterprotesters were separated from the rally by police barricades, where they waved Israeli flags. At times, the event turned to a chanting match, where the rally drowned out pro-Israel demonstrators with the call, “Resistance is justified when people are occupied.”

Both Israelis and Palestinians highlighted the pain of a conflict that has cost the lives of children.

Palestinian Amin Othman, 24, was at the rally to protest Israeli violence in Gaza. He has lived in the United States for three years.

“What is happening in Gaza is not right,” he said. “They are killing women, children, innocent people.”

Jonathan Benami was among about a dozen counterprotesters. He held a sign depicting a graphic image of violence he says was meted out by Hamas on an Israeli child.

“My heart is shattered in a million pieces,” he said.

An observant Jew, Benami said he found out about the Hunter College pro-Palestinian rally in a WhatsApp group with other people from his congregation.

“There were some Hunter students who expressed that there was a large rally and not much counter support… my office is in the area and I was able to come by, thank God,” he said.

The Hunter College pro-Palestinian rally was made up of a diverse crowd: a Cuban student supporter chatted with an Iranian student, and at one point a chant of, “Africans for Palestine” erupted.

Students were repeatedly told by rally organizers not to speak with the media.

Columbia closes its gates

Uptown at Columbia University, the sun set over a charged and divided campus Thursday evening, where tensions were seen bubbling over across campus after hundreds of students turned out on the college’s main lawn for dueling protests that both started at 4:30 p.m., and stretched into evening.

Outside, the austere gates of the university were firmly closed and only students flashing ID were allowed to enter.

Inside, on the east side of the South Field, at least 400 students, many cloaked in keffiyeh and Palestinian flags, rallied in support of Palestinians, with one protester – who was perched on the shoulders of another – leading the group in a circular march around the lawn to the loudspeaker cries of “Free, Free Palestine.”

At one point, the hundreds of students dropped silently to the lawn in unison, to represent Palestinians who have lost their lives in Gaza. The protest was organized by the group Students for Justice in Palestine.

On the west side of the field, Students Supporting Israel organized a dueling “silent protest” which was broken by students singing, arm-in-arm.

On the sidelines of the protests Thursday, Gothamist witnessed terse arguments breaking out between multiple groups of students.

One student arguing for Israeli rights was pulled away by an older man wearing a yarmulkes, who told him he “needed to leave” after yelling at a group of pro-Palestinian students. Another pair of arguing students got in each other’s faces, one of the man’s hands shaking, before they were separated by a Columbia University Public Safety officer.

In another campus corner, four students with Israeli flags were seen in a heated exchange with one student who had a Palestinian flag tucked into her bra.

As night fell, the air was thick with tension as chants could still be heard ringing out in the dark, and NYPD cars and vehicles lined Broadway outside Columbia University.

A student who wanted to be known only by her first name, Sokainah, fearing for her safety, said she moved to the United States from Saudi Arabia just one month before, and was “extremely surprised” by the amount of pro-Palestinian students, and the their diversity.

“One Jewish-American was standing next to me and he told me, ‘I don't support Israel,’ and I wasn't really wasn't expecting that,” she said. “Someone has to stand up for these innocent people,” she said.

Sokainah, who wears a hijab, said she didn’t necessarily feel unsafe on campus, but she felt “tension.”

Another Columbia University student stood nearby wearing an Israeli flag around his shoulders.

Meanwhile, one student stood alone in between the two protesting groups, silently holding a sign scrawled in black ink: “Empathy for all.”