Students in walkout call for a cease-fire
UC Berkeley crowd chants ‘free Palestine’
Waving placards and filling the air with cheers, hundreds of students walked out of their classes at UC Berkeley on Wednesday to call for a cease-fire in Gaza and an end to military support for Israel.
Amid chants of “Free Palestine” and “Occupation no more,” dozens of speakers exhorted the crowd in English and Arabic to urge the university to divest itself from companies such as Lockheed Martin that manufacture arms they said wind up in Israel. They lamented the thousands of civilians who have died in Israel’s bombing of Gaza and said anyone who backs Israel is supporting genocide.
“I am a great-granddaughter of a (Palestinian) freedom fighter whose fingernails were plucked from his fingers with pliers,” UC Berkeley law student Zara Kaye told the crowd, to cheers of sympathy and support. “Stop funding the murder of innocent Palestinians today.”
The rally was part of a nationwide protest organized for 100 colleges by groups including the Arab Resource and Organizing Center and, locally, campus groups including Bears for Israel and Law Students for Justice in Palestine. Several faculty members also joined the walkout for the afternoon protest, including Hatem Bazian, an ethnic studies professor who urged the crowd to support an end to Israeli control of Palestine.
“We want an immediate cease-fire, recognition of Palestinian rights, an end to occupation and an end of U.S. aid to Israel,” he told the Chronicle.
“Americans have no camel or cow in the fight. They should not be there.”
The protest was the first big rally over the Gaza-Israeli conflict on campus in more than a week, but tensions have been building on campuses throughout the Bay Area since Oct. 7, when the Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel, killed 1,400 Israelis and abducted more than 200 people. Israel has responded by bombing Gaza in attacks the military says target Hamas but which also have killed more than 5,000 civilians, according to the United Nations.
Among the chants pouring from the crowd Wednesday was, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a chant that calls for an end to the state of Israel and reversion to the state of Palestine that existed until Israel’s creation in 1948. Another chant was, “We don’t want your two-state, we want all 48.”
Both chants and the anti-Zionist atmosphere disturbed the dozen or so Jewish counterdemonstrators who stood silently to one side holding Israeli flags.
“They’re calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state, and I personally feel very unsafe on campus,” said one of the counterprotesters, junior Simone Beilin. “I’m scared for my family and friends in Israel, and they’re saying this here? This rally is pro-terrorism.”
Daryanna Lancet, a UC Berkeley graduate, was there with other members of Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist group, in support of the rally, and she said she did not see the chants as calling for violence against Jews.
“There needs to be a ceasefire,” she said. “I’m not supporting the elimination of Israel — I just want no more death. It’s not safe for the Jewish people to have a state that keeps people down in occupation.”
Protesters and advocates for Palestine say they’ve been doxxed and harassed online and in person by pro-Israeli students, and the pro-Israeli students fling back the same accusations. Some say they are afraid on campus, particularly when demonstrations are held, and the campus has hired extra security to keep the peace.
“We are not here to be violent, and we are the ones who feel afraid,” said graduate student Haleema Bharoocha, one of the Wednesday rally’s organizers. “We are here simply to say, ‘Stop the genocide.’ It shouldn’t be a political thing to say, ‘Stop bombing apartment buildings.’
“From a human perspective, this is hurting all of us.”
Wednesday’s rally went peacefully, though there was a brief scuffle when several proPalestinian protesters tried to take an Israeli flag from one student. The protesters said the student was waving the flag in their faces, and the student said the attack was unprovoked. Nobody was injured.