Colleges Have Become a Battleground for Discourse on the Gaza War
Renée Bartlett-Webber | News Editor
As thousands of college students across the U.S. demand a ceasefire in Gaza, many SMC pro-Palestine students fear threats to their academic and personal lives.
Tensions between Israeli and Palestinian supporters have come to a head on college and university campuses across the U.S., including at Santa Monica College (SMC), as the Gaza war has intensified over the past month. Several students at SMC have said that they are afraid of speaking out in support of Palestine due to fear of being doxxed, harassed, and categorized as antisemitic.
President of the SMC Muslim Student Association Yousef Khafaja is Palestinian. His family was from “the lands of ‘48” which was formerly recognized as Palestine before the state of Israel was created in 1948. “The student body in support of Palestine is rather scared of taking action just because of the accusations that have been made of us by the administration,” he said.
Khafaja was referring to an Instagram post published by @SMC_edu on Oct. 20 that said the administration had been “made aware of many concerns of antisemitism within our community at the Inter-Club Council (ICC) meeting.” At this meeting, which took place the day prior, there was a 12-3 vote against the installment of the Students Supporting Israel (SSI) Club. The administration announced that based on legal counsel, “SSI will be given recognized status and full club support.”
The administration’s quick response was partially prompted by @SSI_movement’s Instagram post stating, “the ICC meeting turned into a Jew-hating fest full of #Antisemitism, lies, racism and discrimination by students who support #Hamas actions against Israel.”
The President of the Middle Eastern Club, who requested not to be identified by name, read a statement at SMC’s Associated Students meeting on Oct.23, saying that the accusations of antisemitism at the ICC meeting were baseless. She continued, “False accusations can fuel anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic hate, leading to tragic incidents like the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy,” referring to the murder of Wadea Al Fayoume in Chicago on Oct. 16.
In an interview, the Middle Eastern Club President said, “SMC and SSI’s changing the narrative of us speaking up for our members or justice as being antisemitic, which has been a pattern for a long time.” She said because SMC posted this to a large following, people who were not involved in the conversation wouldn’t know that it wasn’t true. She is hoping to hold the SMC social media team and SSI accountable for false allegations and slander.
“Criticism of the state of Israel and anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. Antisemitism is the hatred of Jews, which nobody at the meeting expressed,” Khafaja said.
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines antisemitism as “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group” and anti-Zionism as “opposition to the establishment or support of the state of Israel.”
A Palestinian SMC student, who asked The Corsair to remain anonymous in fear of risking their ability to return home, said, “I’ve always hidden my identity. When I came here, all of my parents and family told me never to say that I’m from Palestine. Only to say I’m from Jerusalem.” They said that the campus does not feel very safe or supportive of Palestinian people and they have heard comments such as Palestinians “are all terrorists” and “Palestinian children deserve to die.”
All three students interviewed voiced concerns that the SMC administration has ignored their requests for support against harassment and islamophobia on campus, despite various students reaching out for help.
When asked for comment, dean of Student Life Thomas Bui said, “Harassment of any form on campus is not welcome and students have resources and support they can access to help them navigate these experiences and situations,” highlighting the SMC Complaint Process webpage as one of these tools available to students.
According to the Associated Press live updates, more than 10,500 people, including 4,000 children, have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7. Euro Med Human Rights Monitor reported Israel has dropped the equivalent of two atomic bombs (25,000 tons) on the Gaza strip that’s half the size of New York City. Israel declared war in response to Oct. 7’s attack by the militant Palestinian group HAMAS when 1,400 Israelis were killed and 240 taken hostage.
On the day of the Hamas attack, 30 Harvard University students wrote an open letter holding Israel responsible “for all unfolding violence” and stating that “today’s events did not happen in a vacuum.” The New York Times reported that since then, these students have been investigated and their names posted online and on a truck as a digital billboard, calling them “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”
Three days after the attack, New York University Law student president Ryna Workman sent a newsletter to their campus expressing “unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression.” Workman uses they/them pronouns. As a result, a prestigious law firm rescinded their offer of employment and they were removed as president of the bar association, as reported by Democracy Now. They said, “Folks are now afraid to speak up, in fear that they might become the next me.”
Canary Mission, an organization that monitors campuses and documents students and professors who “are promoting hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews,” has added these students to their website, publishing their personal information and photos.
A student who identifies himself as Marjahnee is the leader of the SMC chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a national organization that supports student leaders to “push forward the demands for Palestinian liberation,” as stated on their website. In an interview, he said that Canary Mission has doxxed SMC members of the SJP before, something he does not want to risk happening again. Marjahnee said at the ICC meeting that SJP would not be applying as a club at SMC this year “due to the safety concerns of our members.”
“We are not antisemitic, we are against the political state of Israel, we are against apartheid and genocide,” he added.
On Oct. 25, National SJP hosted a campus walkout in support of Palestine joined by tens of thousands of students across the country. One of the participating schools was the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where upwards of 200 students protested. One of them, UCLA student Mohammed, who declined to give The Corsair a last name for his safety, said, “Identity becomes such a volatile topic because your entire livelihood is put on display in a lot of instances in which you’re doxxed, in which your safety is put at jeopardy.” He said that many Palestinian students have been harassed and threatened because of their identity.
During the walkout, protesters covered their faces with headscarves and surgical masks and spoke to the crowd without providing their names, demanding UCLA to divest in funding weapons manufacturers serving Israel. “The UC takes our money to fund ethnic cleansing, elimination, and displacement of Palestinians,” one unidentified speaker said. Two counter-protesters were also present, one of them held an Israeli flag and another told people on the outskirts of the crowd not to listen to protesters because they were “antisemitic.” A Snopes fact-check reported that UCLA students were falsely accused of chanting “We want Jewish genocide” on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
As a response to the events that transpired at SMC, the institution's president Dr. Kathryn Jeffery announced on Oct. 28 that campus-wide forums “to facilitate a path forward” are currently being planned to take place in the next few weeks.
The Corsair reached out to SSI representatives for comment but did not receive a response before the deadline for publication of this article.
