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Content warning: This article contains mention of antisemitic language.

Ahmad Zatar, a local Palestinian-American, heard about the start of Syracuse University’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment through text threads two days ago. After learning about Wednesday’s pro-Israel demonstrations, Zatar arrived on campus with a keffiyeh tied around his head and a Palestinian flag around his neck. He extended a pole to hang another flag high above the Shaw Quadrangle.

“I feel very powerful holding it,” said Zatar, who lived in Palestine for six years. “There’s all types of people here. Different nationalities, different backgrounds, different identities. They’re all here in solidarity, standing for one thing and one thing only. All we want is peace with what’s going on over there, that’s all we ask for.”

At roughly 10:40 a.m. Monday, several dozen members of the Syracuse community, including SU and SUNY ESF students, faculty and locals, began setting up tents in the Shaw Quad. At approximately 10:40 p.m. Wednesday, roughly 70 tents are set up in the Shaw Quad with 60 protestors.

The group confirmed to The Daily Orange that it is in talks with university administrators and currently has legal counsel in place. They also have no intention of leaving until their demands are met.

“We’re going to be here until our demands are met, until the suffering in Gaza stops,” one organizer, Adeline Spallina-Jones, said.

Following the beginning of the encampment, SU’s GSE released an email statement to The D.O., writing that it was started “in protest of Syracuse’s complicity in the genocide and slaughter of millions in Palestine.” The group initially listed seven demands in its email statement but cut it down to six in an Instagram post by Students for Justice in Palestine and the SU Palestine Solidarity Collective at 2:07 p.m. Wednesday.

“We, members of the Syracuse University community, are mobilizing today in solidarity with tens of thousands of Palestinians massacred by Israel’s ongoing ethnonationalist genocidal war in Gaza, Palestine,” the post reads. “We urge Syracuse University to take immediate and concrete actions that reflect our ethical commitments and responsibilities.”

The “official demands” include a call for SU to “publicly support a permanent ceasefire in Palestine,” full disclosure about the university’s funds to Israel and its subsidiaries as well as the amnesty of protesters. The fifth demand also ensures the protection of academic freedom.

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Gaza Solidarity Encampment demonstrators sit on the quad to listen to a speaker during a Wednesday “teach-in.”

“Ultimately we’re here until the university hears the will of its students, which is overwhelmingly in support of disclosure and divestment,” said SJ, a member of the protest who has stayed all three nights and chose to only share their initials.

Throughout Monday and Tuesday morning, multiple organizations on campus released statements of solidarity for the encampment, including Syracuse’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, Faculty for Justice Palestine SU and the executive committee of SU’s American Association of University Professors chapter.

“We are particularly impressed the protestors at SU have placed protecting academic freedom at the core of their demands, as the AAUP believes this vital principle, so central to University life, is under attack both at SU and across the nation,” the executive committee wrote.

SU’s Student Association also unanimously passed its “Resolution in Solidarity with Syracuse University Encampment and Condemnation of Antisemitism” at its Monday meeting. The resolution called for students to have permission to openly “express discontent” and condemned “hate of any kind,” which includes “antisemitism, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim speech” on campus.

Syracuse Hillel released a statement on Instagram Tuesday morning writing that several Jewish students spoke during the SA meeting about feeling unsafe and frustrated in response to the encampment. Also on Tuesday, a group of SU parents released a public letter “denouncing a Hitler praising organizer” of the encampment.

The letter claimed graduate student Aziza Zahran has tweeted under the account @IsisLayla2, and references three tweets, which are now deleted, from November 2012: one calling for “death to Israel, death to Jews” and another stating “I wish Hitler would have finished what he started.”

Zahran addressed the protestors at the encampment Monday and was involved with a demonstration in front of the James M. Hanley Federal Building on Jan. 27. SA released an email statement denouncing an SU graduate student due to past “antisemitic remarks.”

“Our solidarity with the encampment does not implicate solidarity with the hateful rhetoric of this individual,” SA’s Tuesday statement reads.

Spallina-Jones confirmed the graduate student is no longer at the encampment. Spallina-Jones also said the group created a “coalition of Jewish people” after the “onslaught of tweets” were brought to the public. The coalition makes sure Jewish members of the encampment have a space to decide if speakers are actively spreading a message they all agree on, Spallina-Jones said.

There are multiple groups within the encampment, including a negotiating one, but the leadership is overwhelmingly community-based, Spallina-Jones said. Spallina-Jones said the encampment holds two daily meetings for the whole group.

Spallina-Jones also encouraged anyone having concerns about antisemitism to visit and talk to the many Jewish members of SU’s GSE.

“Over half the people on this encampment are Jewish themselves, including myself,” Spallina-Jones said. “We think that it is incredibly problematic to use our religion that is based on love and unity for one another to justify this kind of violence.”

At around 7:40 p.m. Tuesday, roughly 70 people within the encampment took part in an “untraditional” Havdalah, a Jewish ceremony marking the end of specific high holidays and Shabbat.

Olivia, a graduate student at ESF who identified as an Ashkenazi Jew, and Jess, an SU faculty member who called themself as an “Ashkenazi Jew of heritage,” marked the end of Passover with the event. Neither Olivia nor Jess gave their last names while speaking to the group.

“For us, this is religious observance,” Spallina-Jones said. “Yesterday was the last day of Passover, and I don’t think there’s any better way to celebrate a holiday in which we are celebrating our freedom from persecution and our freedom from slavery than to be here and fight for the freedom of persecution and enslavement of other people.”

At noon Wednesday, roughly 100 pro-Israel demonstrators walked from Ernie Davis Hall, down Waverly Ave. and then up to the side of the quad opposite the encampment. The demonstrators sang, danced and chanted “Am Yisrael Chai” while some people in the encampment held up signs and faced them.

Neither group made direct contact with each other throughout the afternoon. A graduate student, who requested to stay anonymous, said the group is there to support Palestine and not engage in anything that may potentially turn violent.

“They can be here and they can express their opinion, but they’re going to be gone in two hours,” Spallina-Jones said.

Most of the group dispersed from the quad around 12:45 p.m., though Mendy Rapoport, a rabbi with Chabad House Jewish Student Center, stayed behind with members of the group to perform the Shema prayer.

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Since the start of the encampment, Spallina-Jones said most of the conversations with administration as well as SU’s Department of Public Safety have been “tight-lipped” and that the group is still in the process of communication with the university about their demands.

A member of the encampment’s media team also said they haven’t felt threatened in any way by DPS or the Syracuse Police Department, but they’ve had meetings about the possibility of police presence based on law enforcement’s response to other encampments nationally.

Part of the communication with the administration came on the first day of the encampment, when DPS Chief Craig Stone and other administrators distributed a document containing SU’s campus disruption policy. Among those is the prohibition of “banners, signs, or flyers, or verbal statements that constitute harassment.”

The university administration asked the encampment to take down a sign that they deemed threatening, and the group complied. In response, SU’s GSE released a statement, which addressed the “racist character” of a campus-wide email sent by Senior Vice President and Chief Student Experience Officer Allen Groves Monday and confirmed the sign said “intifada.”

Administrators first asked community members to take down a sign with the word “intifada” during a “study-in” at Schine Student Center last December. After that incident, a university spokesperson wrote in a statement to The D.O. that SU respects students’ right to peacefully assemble and protest “up to the point when speech or conduct threatens our students’ wellbeing and violates University policies.”

“It was only when other students reported feeling threatened by displayed flyers stating ‘globalize the intifada’ that the University was required under its policies and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to engage,” the spokesperson wrote.

“Intifada” translates directly to “shaking off” in English but is typically used to mean “uprising.” Spallina-Jones said that the administration attacking their language is a “classic deflection tactic” and calling “intifada” antisemitic shows an “inherent lack of understanding of different cultures and languages.”

“Our language is much less important than our message,” Spallina-Jones said.

The message right now is to advocate for peace, Spallina-Jones said, in a way that aligns with the group’s civil rights. SJ said SU’s GSE is a diverse group of people who are all there with one mission, putting “community care and disability justice in action on our campus.”

The graduate student said student advocacy has been at the forefront of crucial movements across history and this is a chance for students to learn in spaces outside of the classroom.

“We’re not here to cause violence or cause issues. We’re here to draw attention to the horrific actions that are happening to people in Gaza,” Spallina-Jones said.

Published on May 2, 2024 at 2:45 am

Contact Anish: asvasude@syr.edu | @anish_vasu