On anniversary of Hamas attack, both sides rally and protest (original) (raw)

NEW YORK — One year after Hamas militants orchestrated a violent attack in Israel, activists took to college campuses and city streets across the country to mark the anniversary, with some launching pro-Palestinian “week of rage” protests and others hosting remembrances of Israelis who were killed or taken hostage.

For many Jewish college students, it was a day to remember those killed a year ago and to pray for and demand the release of hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas. Virtually every campus Hillel planned a vigil of some kind, and Jewish federations planned hundreds of other community events.For somepro-Palestinian activists, Monday was a fresh opportunity to protest the Israeli incursion into Gaza that followed the Oct. 7 attack. Students for Justice in Palestine planned events across the country — at universities in Maryland, Colorado, California and beyond.

Cities across the country also saw protests and rallies, with a large gathering in New York City where about 1,500 protesters marched to support the Palestinian cause.

The events were emotionally charged, but mostly peaceful.

However, in Michigan, homes owned by the president and the chief investment officer at the University of Michigan were vandalized, the Detroit News reported. President Santa Ono’s home, in suburban Detroit, and the sidewalk in front were spray-painted with the words “intifada” and “coward,” and the investment officer’s home was defaced with similar messages. Separately, the News reported, police were investigating anti-Israeli vandalism at the Jewish Federation of Detroit.

And at the City College of New York’s Advanced Science Research Center in Hamilton Heights, vandals smashed windows and spray-painted “divest now” at the entrance Monday morning. A day earlier, someone spray-painted “Oct. 7 is forever” at Baruch College, another CUNY campus in Manhattan. The NYPD is investigating the incidents, CUNY officials confirmed.

College campuses have been the nexus of activism since the war began, particularly among pro-Palestinian demonstrators, with heated protests erupting last spring across the country, in which students took over quads with encampments, teach-ins and shouted demands for divestment from Israel and a free Palestinian state. Thousands of students were arrested in a wave of crackdowns, with some events turning violent.

The mood varied widely among Monday’s events. The large protest in Manhattan had a high-energy, even joyful, tenor. Near Columbia University, the gathering of Jews was somber.

At Columbia, the epicenter of last spring’s campus protests, members of the Jewish community staged an art installation Monday in the heart of campus that included large sculptures with photos of the Israeli hostages. Organizers hoped visitors would reflect on the Oct. 7 attack, when about 1,200 people were killed and some 250 were taken hostage.

“We want to focus on the stories of these people and remember them and honor them and think of them,” said Elisha Baker, a Jewish student in his junior year at Columbia, who helped organize the installation. The events abroad and at his school have combined to create enormous stress over the last year, he said. “It’s a nightmare. It’s a 365-plus day nightmare.”

Barricades and security guards separated the Jewish students and their supporters from the pro-Palestinian protesters who walked out of class at the urging ofColumbia University Apartheid Divest to protest the war in Gaza. More than 41,000 people have been killed there since the start of the conflict, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

By midday, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters, faces largely obscured by kaffiyehs, were mobilizing — out of classes, onto the steps of Low Memorial Library and then toward downtown Manhattan to join a march through the city. In a fluid mass, the group moved through campus, banging drums and cymbals and shouting, “Free, free Palestine!”

The pro-Israel side, outnumbered, responded by waving Israeli banners and blasting music, trying to drown out the chanting pro-Palestinian protesters.

“Let us mourn in peace!” the Jewish students chanted.

The pro-Israel group soon dissipated, with only a handful left as the pro-Palestinian group snaked around the library, yelling, “From the sea to the river, Palestine will live forever!”

Many of the students then boarded subways downtown to join other protesters to march for the Palestinian cause.

Outside the New York Stock Exchange, Deborah Lee, 60, carried a poster of a woman mourning her child, originally made, she said, to protest the Iraq War.

“It’s just really sad that I had to pull it out again, because it’s clear that this is not just soldiers against soldiers,” she said. In March, she was charged with disorderly conduct after blocking the street in front of the Israeli Mission in New York as part of pro-Palestinian protests, she said. Now she was back again. “I took some time off work because I feel like our place is on the streets.”

The march, organized by thePalestinian-led group Within Our Lifetime, drew about 1,500 protesters, city officials said.

Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of Within Our Lifetime, said the group wanted to avoid violence.

“We’ve had bomb threats, death threats, and Zionist traps or counterprotesters trying to provoke us into violence. But we’re not going to be distracted,” she said Monday. “We’re going to seize this opportunity to make the world remember what is happening in Gaza.”

Ahead of Monday’s planned walkout, Columbia’s leaders warned that the pro-Palestinian event did not appear to be in compliance with the university’s rules for protests. (The art installation had been approved by the university, officials said.)

Apartheid Divest leaders cautioned supporters on social media to remain masked, cover any identifying tattoos or piercings, avoid swiping their ID cards too near the rally time, and take other measures to avoid detection. “Stay safe! Be Brave!” the group said on Instagram. “The fight for liberation will always be risky. We must take the risk.”

Last spring, Columbia’s ongoing pro-Palestinian encampment sparked tent demonstrations across the country and overseas.

Some of this week’s rallying criesfrom protesters centered on the death toll in Gaza that followed the Oct. 7 attack. Others celebrated the attack as the beginning of the end of Israel. The Rutgers-New Brunswick chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine said on Instagram that Oct. 7 would be known as both the beginning of a “genocide” in Gaza and “the first day of Israel’s complete disintegration.”

Also at Rutgers on Monday, Jewish groups joined forces to erect a memorial to those killed and taken hostage. More than 1,400 ribbons were placed in small cups and set in Voorhees Mall, each representing a person murdered, rescued or still being held. One of the goals, said organizer Mitch Wolf: “To show the people at Rutgers the fact of what happened on 10/7 last year, and the atrocities committed by Hamas.”

Noa Reuveni, 25, spent the Oct. 7 anniversary as she has many days in the past year — telling U.S. audiences about her best friend, Ziv Berman, and his twin brother Gali, both 27 and kidnapped in Israel. She was set to speak Monday evening at the University of Michigan.

Reuveni, who is Israeli, said it is easy to reach Jewish students; but she wants to also reach others, to tell them that her message is about humanity, not aimed at any one group.

“But I can’t even engage, they won’t come to hear me,” she said. She added that she would never urge hate against Arabs or Palestinians and yet because of her topic, she requires security on her visits. “I wish I had the opportunity, but we don’t even get to have these conversations.”

At the University of California at Los Angeles, Yehuda Cohen, father of Israeli hostage Nimrod Cohen, stood in front of 1,200 flags that had been planted on a campus lawn, one for each person killed a year ago. He held a sign reading, “My son is held hostage. I want to stop the war in Gaza. Ask me why.” He’s was at UCLA as part of a U.S. tour to advocate for a hostage deal and cease-fire.

Later, about 200 people met at UCLA Hillel to honor the victims of Oct. 7, then marched mostly in silence to Bruin Plaza. As he walked, Evan DiPietro, 29, held up a picture of 24-year-old Daniel Goltman who was killed in the Hamas attack. Looking back at antisemitism over the past year, DiPietro said, “Growing up Jewish, this is the first time in my life I’ve felt afraid to be a Jew.”

Ahead of the anniversary, UCLA police set out strict rules for protests, including limits on where they may be staged and how loud they may be (no louder than a lawn mower). It said no overnight camping was allowed without permission.

On Monday, about 300 people gathered with masks or kiffeyahs covering their faces at UCLA’s Dickson Plaza. A few people held flags and signs and beat on drums.

Outside of the main entrance to Columbia University on Broadway on Monday, a group of pro-Israel demonstrators gathered in a cordoned-off area. They were praying for those killed a year ago and for hostages still held by Hamas, draped in American and Israeli flags. Some signs read: “This Jew will not be silenced”; others featured the faces of missing hostages. The group mixed patriotic American music with songs in Hebrew.

A speaker warned them not to engage with other protesters. “This day is not about them,” he said. “This day is about us.”

Columbia administrators, who had already decided to keep the once-open campus closed to the public, sharply tightened restrictions on campus Sunday night. Interim president Katrina Armstrong announced that fewer gates would be open, more public safety officers would be visible, only people with school IDs would be allowed through the gates, and most buildings on the school’s Morningside campus would be locked overnight Sunday.

On campus Monday, some students hurried to their classes, heads down, but others lingered to take in the scene.

“It’s pretty sad to me,” said Molly Corts, 23, a freshman from Atlanta studying neuroscience who has followed the war closely. “I wish we all just could have a conversation about it,” instead of the two sides shouting at each other. The pro-Palestinian group had been shouting demands that the gates be opened to let more people in, she said. “I’m glad they didn’t.”

Corts appreciated the sudden additional security measures added Sunday night, she said. She was wondering where the protesters were moving, and what would happen next. After seeing the protests in the spring on the news, she was a little hesitant about coming to campus, but the fall has been more peaceful than the protests in the spring.

“I hope we can all come together,” she said. “It’s been a little hostile. I hate not being able to talk about it.”

Laura Meckler reported from Washington. Emmanuel Felton, Michelle Boorstein, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Richard Morgan and Yvonne Condes contributed to this report.

correction

A previous version of this article misidentified Mitch Wolf, a student at Rutgers University. The article has been corrected.