Recently, Haviv Rettig Gur— political analyst for the Times of Israel— visited Haverford College to give a talk entitled Roots, Return, and Reality: Jews, Israel, and the Myth of Settler Colonialism. Knowing what I already knew about Gur’s politics and analysis, and having made the mistake of attending previous events organized by the same small group of Zionist faculty members, I had no intention of attending. Given the first-hand accounts from students who did attend— and given the shared tactics of Zionist agitators all over the country— I didn’t need to be there to have a fairly clear view of what transpired. But for context, here’s a brief summary of what occurred:
The crowd for the event was a mix of students from the area, including some younger people wearing keffiyehs, and older suburbanites from the area around the school, where the Philadelphia chapter of the Zionist Organization of America has an active and broad base. Before anyone did anything to actively disrupt the event, Gur berated these young people for over an hour, exclaiming that they knew nothing, were simply parroting what they heard on TikTok, and had no relevant experience to inform their political views. Eventually, and understandably, given the hostile atmosphere created by the speaker and the event organizers, someone began to actively disrupt the talk with a megaphone. While this young person was in the process of being ejected by campus security, they were physically assaulted by a middle-aged man.
Gur wrote an Op-Ed about this experience in the Free Press, the conservative publication founded by Bari Weiss. In it and in the accounts of the few Zionist faculty who were responsible for putting on the event, the man who hit a protester has been recast as a brave victim who had no choice but to act in self-defense. Campus leaders, intent on damage control and wary of calling any further attention to themselves after being targeted by the fascist and anti-Palestinian congressional dragnet, denounced the disruption of the event for its incivility and its refusal to engage with difficult ideas.
By now, this is a well-worn script. And what tends to happen next is also old hat: students express their sadness and frustration in the wake of the violence; administrators distance themselves as much as possible from said violence and do everything they can to place the blame solely on the two people involved; and then pray that some sort of minor change to the events policy or the formation of a new committee will be enough to satisfy the community (at least until everyone gets busy with midterms and moves on).
If our colleges and universities want to hang on to even a shred of the credibility many of them have worked so hard to destroy over the last three years by criminalizing political speech, meeting protest with sniper rifles, and sacrificing the ethical pursuit of knowledge for the endless pursuit of capital, this tired pattern needs to be put to rest. And so I am writing this piece in an effort to represent those of us who got interested in the academy for the right reasons: to facilitate learning, thinking, and conscientious inquiry. These practices are allegedly meant to be at the core of our institutions, but they have been dislodged in favor of political expediency. It felt appropriate to write this in a way that appeals to these practices and the commitment to them that most in the academy would claim to have. In that spirit, let us proceed by critically dissecting this pattern with an eye towards extracting some general lessons for those within the movement for Palestinian liberation.
The issue is not de-platforming, it’s Zionism
Far too often, we hear the refrain from our administrators that loudly disrupting an event is anti-intellectual. This is the sort of argument that only makes sense when you don’t think about it. When you do, even for a moment, its logical crags begin to reveal themselves. For example, are we really always against this sort of disruption, full stop? In a hypothetical situation in which the KKK holds a rally on campus, surely a vast majority of the people who claim to be against de-platforming in the abstract would support any efforts to do so.
This is not a randomly chosen hypothetical: incredibly, it is the exact same one posed by Zionist congresspeople when they grilled campus administrators in regards to permitting pro-Palestine speech. And in those exchanges, administrators agreed that no, they most likely would not allow the KKK to come to campus. There are some who might argue that there is a distinction between an administrator disallowing an event before it begins, and a group of unruly students interrupting after it has. And sure, there absolutely is, but the core of that distinction is in regards to the tools each community member has at their disposal. If students were given the right and the institutional power to prevent racists from coming to campus with the swipe of a pen or a quick email, they’d do so. Unfortunately, on many campuses it’s the students who have the least access to the more formal means of saying no.
There are also those who worry that if the left justifies, or even attempts to contextualize, the practice of de-platforming, then we risk its use against us. While I understand the concern, I think it fails to take into account these very same power imbalances between students and administrators, and between Zionists and the rest of us. First, de-platforming is a tool that is at its strongest when a movement has little access to institutional power and when it has tremendous access to populist power. The target of a successful de-platforming is perhaps less the people in the room than it is those who aren’t, who understand and who empathize with the decision to engage in that way, and who will see a video or hear about it after the fact. It can be an effective way to raise consciousness across campus. Zionists by and large do not engage in de-platforming because they have correctly deduced they have a much bigger chance of convincing an administrator to cancel an event from the get-go than they do in reaching a majority– or even a sizeable minority– of the students, faculty, or staff on campus.
So let us dispatch with the falsehood that de-platforming is always wrong and misguided. It is a particular tactic that sometimes makes sense to pursue, and sometimes doesn’t. Most of those who say otherwise and who argue that it’s never to be used under any circumstance, are just against it being used against a particular person who they feel didn’t deserve it. Thus, when a campus becomes embroiled in a debate around the act of de-platforming, what it actually should be focused on is whether that tactic was appropriate in the particular instance in which it was used. The disagreement here is ultimately about Zionism, not about the style or form of protest.
And so after a disruption of this nature, a healthy academic community should engage in thoughtful discussion about the event itself. If there is widespread disagreement around whether an interruption was appropriate, then at the very least people can stop spinning their wheels in regards to de-platforming, and start talking about the root of the actual disagreement (in this case, the nature of Zionism). If on the other hand there is broad consensus that the disruption was actually warranted, then the only emotion administrators should dare express to any of the participating students is gratitude: they’ve done something senior staff was either too cowardly or too derelict in its own duties to have done in the first place.
It would have been wonderful – and actually indicative of being a part of a community of genuinely deep and careful thinkers- for something like this to have happened in the wake of Gur’s talk on my own campus. If it had, my contribution to the discussion would have been to express that Gur’s politics have no place in a civilized learning community. Downplaying and justifying the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people and denying even an ounce of agency to the victims of that act of genocide should be anathema. Of course, actually holding this discussion brings up a sort of paradox: those who disagree with me would be expressing the very political ideas that I just claimed have no place being expressed. But wrestling with that sort of tension is exactly what college communities do when they’re at their best. I don’t think it is at all contradictory to believe that people with such views shouldn’t be made honored guests for the express purpose of circulating those very views, and to believe that in order to reach a future in which that is our reality it is imperative that we talk critically about this with one another, potentially across vast political difference.
For the record, I for one do not believe that calling for the termination or firing of faculty who espouse Zionist views is a reasonable or helpful tactic. Indeed, unlike de-platforming, this is the sort of move that has the potential to be turned back on to us ten-fold if we were to embrace it, precisely because it relies on appealing to administrators and board members and the general cowardice that permeates most academic institutions. And this should go without saying, but given the readiness of Zionists to hurl totally unjustified accusations of political bias in the classroom, it absolutely doesn’t: I of course also do not believe that faculty should take the political orientations of their students into account when deciding how to treat them in a teaching environment. So, on an ideal campus, people would feel free to engage in these discussions without fear of political reprisal. For my part, I do my best to telegraph willingness to partake in such conversation.
When it comes to Gur, I’ll do what my administration can’t and thank the young people who took it upon themselves to safeguard the values of equality and freedom that our school claims to prioritize. I can’t imagine the amount of courage needed to confront a room full of people thrice your age, people completely steeped in the propaganda of Israeli militarism and invested in the dehumanization of Palestinians and Arabs and anyone who dares to speak up on their behalf. And not unlike the Israeli government itself, people so assured beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is you who savagely and unthinkingly wants to harm them that they’ll justify preemptive physical violence. This brings us to our next takeaway.
Conflict is not abuse
On my own campus and on those of many of my colleagues across the country, there seems to be a widening schism in the experience of daily life. On the one hand, there is the perspective of the overwhelming majority of the student population and of most of the faculty, which is that Haverford College is by no means perfect but it is also not a hotbed of antisemitism and “Jew-hatred.” On the other, there is the world as viewed through the eyes of less than ten Zionist faculty members, older Zionist alumni who get their information about the goings-on around campus exclusively from those faculty members and from their reverberations on social media, a handful of students and parents, and congressman Randy Fine: Haverford is an unsalvageable den of terrorist-sympathizers. How do we reconcile this vast gap?
Conflict is Not Abuse is the title of the extremely thought-provoking book by playwright and activist Sarah Schulman. It discusses the tendency to conflate “power struggle” with “power over” in the context of both interpersonal relationships and geopolitics. The entire last third of the book is dedicated to Israel/Palestine, in which Schulman explores the ways in which advocating for Palestinian freedom and self-determination is perceived by Zionists as a murderous attack. The book is fascinating and profound and whenever there are flare-ups regarding Palestine on campus, I am always drawn back to it for guidance and reflection.
In documenting reactions in mainstream media to the 2014 siege of Gaza, Schulman discusses the various ways in which “[Palestinian] resistance to abuse was reconstituted as its justification” by the mainstream media and online pundits. Because the book so acutely captures how supremacist logic fuels the development of these experiential gaps, it’s worth including an excerpt:
“[The tactics of Jewish supremacists include] not only grotesque overstatement of harm and projection as justification for cruelty; not only a lack of self-criticism or a refusal to acknowledge one’s role; not only the persistent encouragement of a negative community based on supremacy bonds to blame, scapegoat, shun, and punish. But also the clear evidence that these tactics produce escalation and distorted thinking, which create long-term cumulative consequences of extreme injustice and destruction. Here we see the phenomena of asserting one’s own pain as exclusive and paramount, and as the justification for cruelty towards others…”
It’s hard to imagine a more succinct description of what I’m sure many of us have seen play out on campuses all across the country in the last three years: boundless distortion and criminalization of any phrase, song, chant, piece of writing, zine, or pamphlet that aims to garner solidarity for Palestine and for Palestinians, all in the name of ostensibly honoring Jewish pain. Even a framing, settler-colonialism, which has been used by scholars for decades to describe facts on the ground in Palestine, is prohibited; to think of applying it is to engage in hate.
This, of course pales in comparison to the oppression that Palestinians face in Palestine, but it also mirrors it. The entitlement of Zionists on campus is a reflection of how utterly normalized Jewish supremacy has become in Israel and in any community that endorses or condones Zionism. This is what explains the particular tenor that Zionist complaints carry; there is a certain shock and indignation, the sort of surprise that comes with being so utterly unaccustomed to one’s perspective being questioned.
So what is there to do about this for those who stand in solidarity with Palestine? For one, we have to recognize the recurring patterns of supremacy inherent in these dynamics, and then be unafraid to call them out for what they are. Next, we need to be vigilant in regards to protecting the boundary between speech- even speech that attempts to defend or contextualize violent acts, or loud impassioned speech that comes out of a bullhorn- and actual, hand-to-hand physical violence. Zionists defame our art, our writing, and our speech as physically violent because they know how effective we can be when we engage truthfully, and they also know how effective the tactic of conjuring up imagery in the mind of an administrator of scary, Keffiyeh-clad, predominantly Black and Brown young people can be. We can no longer afford to beat around the bush, so from now on, let us call out what is obvious: Zionists are engaging in Jewish supremacy, and our struggle with them for control of the political narrative is not tantamount to “abuse” or “hatred” or anything of the sort. They are simply losing.
Follow the money
Zionists on campuses across the country haven’t hesitated to collaborate with the Trump regime to stamp out the student movement for Palestine, or with ICE to deport Arabs and Muslims. While there may not be a limit to their maliciousness, the last three years have shown us that there absolutely is a limit to their power and efficacy. Despite not having held anything back and using every tool at their disposal to erase any trace of an organic Palestinian perspective, they have failed. Like in every movement, there are powder-keg moments and energy waxes and wanes, but the bottom line is that through arrests, police brutalization, doxxing, and expulsions, the students have not given in.
I am heartened to see them focusing on the money and the often shadowy board members who hold many of the purse strings and who do not hesitate to make unilateral decisions for an entire campus community. Students at two of our sibling schools, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore, have independently circulated materials about who the various board members actually are on their respective campuses and what connections they might have to corporations aiding and abetting the ongoing genocide. Their calls for general divestment- not only from companies that benefit from Israeli apartheid and genocide– but also from the broader military industrial complex– have only deepened.
In the aftermath of an event like Gur’s, the major purpose of the handwringing and the Zionist Op-Eds on the evils of wearing a mask and the presidential messaging emphasizing the importance of “civility” is to distract and derail those in the movement from pursuing these broader divestment-based goals. So I am thrilled to see that students don’t seem to be falling for it. They’ve kept their eyes on the ball, and in so doing, they’ve given a model to others who might find themselves in a similar position in the future. When the media cycle bears down on you and your small campus, and perhaps even the politicians join in, just remember that you are nothing but a click to them. And so soon, they will move on to the next flash in the pan, and when they do, you will still have your long-term organizing goals to accomplish.
As Ilan Pappe reminds us, we are in the end state of Zionism. The entire world has been galvanized by the livestreamed genocide in Gaza, and there is simply no way to put that genie back in the bottle. Of course, a regime is often at its most dangerous when it most acutely senses its vulnerability. So we can only expect ever more blatant forms of repression as Zionism spirals further towards an inevitable collapse. I, for one, am infinitely grateful to the students and the principled alumni they’ll grow to become, who have guided us through the beginning of this process, always trying their hardest to genuinely center Palestine. Let us all follow in their footsteps.
Tarik Aougab is a professor of mathematics and statistics at Haverford College; he writes this Op-Ed as a private citizen and does not speak for the college. He has been involved in organizing (both in and outside of academic spaces) for Palestinian liberation for the last ten years.
