The student protests for Palestine are awe-inspiring. But we must not get distracted from Gaza.

I was glued to my phone yesterday. 

It was no different than most of my days over the past seven months. But for perhaps the first time since last October, I wasn’t completely overwhelmed with grief and sadness. I was feeling inspired, invigorated, and hopeful. 

I was watching videos of students and faculty at my alma mater, NYU, linked arm in arm, as they stood proudly in solidarity with Palestine at the newly established NYU Gaza Solidarity Encampment – which had been set up in the same location where 10 years earlier, I participated as a student in a much smaller protest for Palestine.

When I was a student at NYU and a part of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group on campus, we were subjected to fear-mongering by the university over our actions, demonization by the press, and the constant threat of being falsely labeled as antisemites. Essentially, all the same challenges students are facing today. The only difference was, when I was a student, I would have never imagined in my wildest dreams that pro-Palestine protests would be drawing the crowds they are today.

By the time I was watching the events at NYU unfold, NYU was already one of around a dozen universities where students had established similar solidarity camps, emulating the Columbia camp that was established, dismantled, and reestablished last week. 

Watching the Columbia student protests – which have remained steadfast for months despite physical attacks on student protesters and a national smear campaign against them – and all the other protests they have inspired has been a truly incredible thing to witness unfold.

We are witnessing history in real time, and one can’t help but feel that while the crackdowns will no doubt escalate, these students are charting a new path forward in this country. A path that rejects colonization and imperialism, and rejects the complicity of our academic institutions in the U.S. war machine and in global oppression. And of course, feeling that with every new protest, these students are creating a future where solidarity with Palestine can one day be expressed freely, proudly, and without consequence or fear for your academic career or future job prospects. 

But as I scrolled on social media, my feed inundated with posts and videos of different encampments and protests, I could not shake from my mind a conversation we had in our editorial meeting earlier that day.

Another mass grave – yes, another one – was being uncovered outside the Nasser Medical Complex in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. Reports were still emerging, but there were hundreds of bodies of men, women, and children being uncovered – and practically no one was talking about it.

Later that day, amid a sea of posts about student protests, I scrolled on X only to see a photo of a decomposing body in Gaza, in what appeared to be medical scrubs, with the hands of the person zip-tied together. A few posts down, I saw two more photos: one of a buried body with bandages still wrapped around the person’s legs, and another of a body covered in sand, with what looked like a catheter still attached to the person’s abdomen.

Unspeakable crimes happened there. And Israel tried to cover them up, literally, by burying these bodies in mass graves. The fact that a new mass grave was found outside a hospital that Israel raided – just one week after another mass grave was found outside a different hospital in northern Gaza – should have been front-page news on every media outlet in the U.S., and around the world. It should be the lead story on every cable news network, and it should be getting round-the-clock coverage as bodies and crimes continue to be uncovered.

Except, when you Google search the term ‘Gaza’, these are the top headlines that come up:

Washington Post: Middle East conflict live updates: Campus antiwar protests escalate; U.N. officials call for probe into graves at Gaza …

AP News: With graduation near, colleges seek to balance safety and students’ right to protest Gaza war

BBC: Mass arrests made as US campus protests over Gaza spread

Reuters: What is behind US college protests over Israel-Gaza war?

NPR: Up First briefing: College protests over Gaza war; SCOTUS Starbucks union case

The Hill: Columbia kicks the hornet’s nest with student protests over Israel-Hamas war

You get the picture. 

It was quite incredible to see how quickly even those of us who have been speaking about the atrocities in Gaza since Day 1, quickly got distracted by events unfolding on U.S. college campuses. How, protests that were quite literally started in order to bring attention to the genocide in Gaza, have instead themselves become the story. 

It is by no fault of the students, however. In fact, the courageous students at Columbia and elsewhere have been clear: their protests are in solidarity with Gaza, and they reject the cooptation of their movement to distract from the genocide. 

So, in order to do justice to the movement, and do justice to the Palestinian people who are fighting for survival under a genocide that has surpassed 200 days – we must not let the protests, or the bad-faith attempts to smear them, distract us from the real issues at hand; from the fact that mass graves are being uncovered all across Gaza at alarming rates, that the bombing continues till this day, and that an invasion of Rafah is just a matter of when, not if. 

These protests should be amplified, and the attempts by the universities to quash free speech and free expression should be condemned. But we must force ourselves and the media to re-center the conversation to Gaza. After seven months, 200 days, of genocide, the people of Gaza cannot afford our distraction.