This episode focuses on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict and its ripples throughout the world. First, Reveal host Al Letson has a conversation with members of the Parents Circle, Israeli and Palestinian parents who have lost children to the long-standing conflict and continue to work together for peace. We look at the human toll of the decades-old struggle and what it means to work for peace in a time of war.
Next, reporter Shaina Shealy looks at U.S. weapons transfers to Israel. Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack prompted a rush to send arms to the Israeli military, but some experts say that important safeguards meant to prevent weapons from being used on civilians are being ignored. We examine a policy introduced by the Biden administration earlier this year, which some argue is being bypassed, and a recently proposed weapons package that waives standard oversight provisions.
We end with a story from Reveal’s Najib Aminy about student protests at Columbia University in New York and the heated debate over free speech on college campuses. Soon after the Oct. 7 attack, university officials and student groups issued a series of statements about the Hamas attack and Israel’s response. This led to an escalation of tensions between student protesters and the school’s administration. Columbia and other universities have come under increasing pressure from students, politicians and donors about how they’ve responded to student demonstrations.
Credits
Reporters: Shaina Shealy and Najib Aminy | Lead producers: Michael I Schiller and Najib Aminy | Editors: Taki Telonidis and Cynthia Rodriguez | Fact checkers: Nikki Frick and Rosemarie Ho | Production managers: Steven Rascón and Zulema Cobb | Score and sound design: Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | General counsel: Victoria Baranetsky | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Leston | Special thanks: Avery Trufelman, Noah Lanard at Mother Jones, Ken Klippenstein at The Intercept, Haggai Matar at +972 Magazine, Ramsey Khalifeh at WNYC, Chris Mendell at the Columbia Spectator, Anjali Kamat and WKCR-FM’s Monday Morningside
Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Hellman Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Park Foundation.
Transcript
Reveal transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. Please be aware that the official record for Reveal’s radio stories is the audio.
| Al Letson: | From The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. The war between Israel and Hamas has been raging for more than two months. About 1200 Israelis were killed and 240 people were taken hostage in the October 7th attack by Hamas. Since then, it’s estimated that more than 18,000 Palestinians have died in Israeli attacks on Gaza. Most of the victims on both sides have been civilians. Left behind are families who will carry that loss for the rest of their lives. We’re focusing today’s show on this conflict and we begin with two people who know firsthand what those families are going through right now. |
| Robi Damelin: | The trauma of both nations is going to take years to end. |
| Al Letson: | Robi Damelin is Israeli. Her son, David, was in the Israeli Army Reserves when he was killed by a Palestinian sniper in 2002. |
| Robi Damelin: | He was a student at Tel Aviv University, and he was studying for his Masters in the Philosophy of Education and he was part of the peace movement. And he signed the letter that the Army officers in Reserves signed to say that he would not serve in the occupied territories and he played the French Horn and he loved whiskey like his mother, and we had a very, very close relationship. |
| Al Letson: | Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. His daughter, Abir, was killed by Israeli border police in 2007. She was just 10-years-old. |
| Bassam Aramin: | It’s the most difficult thing it could happen to anyone. An Israeli soldier shot and killed her in the front of her school. She was with her sister and two other girls. Was a very normal day, quiet day. There’s no uprising, no Intifada, no war. It’s very difficult to ask for justice under the occupation, unfortunately. I said from the beginning that I wish Abir will be the last victim between the Israelis and the Palestinians. |
| Al Letson: | Bassam and Robi come from opposite sides of the conflict, but share this tragic bond and they’ve chosen to work together in a unique way. They’re part of a group called the Parents Circle, a grassroots organization of 700 Israeli and Palestinian families who’ve lost children or other direct relatives to the conflict. They share their grief with one another and they share a common goal; to make peace and to end the cycle of violence and revenge. We got together on a video call recently, Bassam, from his home in Jericho in the West Bank, and Robi, from her home in the Jaffa neighborhood of Tel Aviv. We talked about how they found the strength to participate in this fellowship of bereaved parents. For Robi, it began with asking a question. |
| Robi Damelin: | Why did this man kill my son? Why? This is something that I’ve been on this whole long path to try and find out. And when I discovered that he lost, his uncle was killed, violently killed by the Israeli army. So when he was a small child, he saw that. And then after he saw that, he lost two uncles in the second uprising, the Intifada. So he went on a path of revenge and I begin to ask myself all the time, where is all this violence coming from? |
| So if you lived in Gaza, say, every two years there’s a war. You’ve got nowhere to run, right? You don’t have freedom of movement, so where’s your hope? And so what kind of an adult will you become? And then I think of the children who grew up on the border of Gaza in the little towns. [foreign language 00:04:04] constantly being bombarded by rockets and constantly being in fear. What does fear do? That brings hatred, I think. And from that hatred comes the violence and what kind of adults are they going to be? What kind of adults are going to be out of these kids that were attacked on the 7th of October? How will they grow up? How much work needs to be done now for this trauma? The whole nation needs to work together and maybe, just maybe, I don’t know, but maybe this will force us to talk because there is no other way. | |
| Al Letson: | Yeah, it feels like that violence begets violence and it just creates more hurt. How did you decide to step away from that cycle and try to create something new? |
| Bassam Aramin: | You ask why you continue fighting each other for so long, more than a hundred years. It’s amazing. It’s because of very simple reason, because there is something called the Israeli military occupation. Palestinians are under occupation and occupation create resistance. Hamas, they didn’t invent the conflict. The conflict invented Hamas and the other groups. The Israelis have the right to live in security. They deserve it, and the Palestinians deserve to live in free country, exactly like the Israelis. We decide that our lives, our kids is more important. We are not going to continue killing each other forever. It’s not written anywhere. We have the right to exist and we will exist, both of us. So let us look to our kids, our future, our families. Otherwise, we will share the same land that we fight on as two big graves. |
| Al Letson: | Robi, can you tell me exactly what the Parents Circle does? |
| Robi Damelin: | Well, we are 700 families and we are all aligned to one message, nonviolence, reconciliation, and ending the occupation. We don’t really talk about forgiving. We think that forgiving is a very personal thing. As I think with [inaudible 00:06:28] exceptional in that we have explored that path, both of us. We have many, many programs. We have a summer camp every year with Palestinian and Israeli kids and work in schools. A Palestinian and an Israeli will go into a classroom and talk to a 17-year-old kid. It’s probably the first time that these 17-year-old Israeli children have ever met a Palestinian. It’s the first question I ask. How many of you have ever met a Palestinian? |
| This is the first time that they listen to a story of loss, of transformation where they can actually ask the most difficult of questions and consider what it means. That’s an extraordinary thing. So the government, in its great wisdom, decided that they should ban us from schools and we’re actually in legal process to fight this decision. And many headmasters where we’ve been in schools for years, said they’re not going to listen to the Minister of Education. They will continue to invite us. We were the only group of Palestinians and Israelis allowed into the schools to talk about our message, a message of peace. That’s dangerous for people who don’t believe in peace. | |
| Al Letson: | I’m curious about how the Parents Circle is perceived within Palestine and with the Palestinian people. |
| Bassam Aramin: | We part of the Palestinian people, but people obey the highest prize. Most of us spent many years in Israeli jails like myself. I spent seven years at Israeli jails when I was 17-years-old. So in general, the Palestinian people respect us to talk and raise up our voice because we have no fear, because the worst already happened. It’s a matter of responsibility. I want to protect my own kids and everyone want to protect his kids. In my case, I have another five kids. We are struggling together, Israelis and Palestinians. We cannot continue killing each other forever. |
| Al Letson: | Grief and loss teach different people different things, and I think that when your child is taken from you violently, there are a couple different paths you can go and some people get more angry and want to fight harder. It’s the difference between the closed fist and the open palm. And so many people tend to go down the path of the closed fist because they’re hurting. And when I talk to you both as you’re talking, I can feel the loss. You’re still grieving your children, how could you not be? But also, you’ve decided to go the way of the open palm. And I’m just curious, what sets you on that course. |
| Bassam Aramin: | This is why we said that our message is international. It’s not only for the Israelis and the Palestinians. We want to prove that we can use our pain in a different way. For example, imagine if the Jewish continue to be stuck in the huddles of the Holocaust. It’s very painful, it’s scary. Imagine if the African-American and other is still live in the slavery mentality. It’s very painful. So what to do? It’s very easy to take revenge, but you’ll be a killer. You’ll create another victim, another pain to another parents, and you will invite the next victim from your side because the other side will come to take revenge. We need to remember the past, remember the pain, but not to live in it, not to be stuck in it. It’s to push us towards the future. |
| Robi Damelin: | Well, revenge is the most normal path for most people to take. I grew up in South Africa, part of the anti-apartheid movement and was very influenced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And when the soldiers came to tell me that David had been killed, the first thing that I said almost was, you can’t kill anybody in the name of my child. So I didn’t even know that I said that, but that’s what I said. And that was like the beginning of what I was going to do with my life until I found the Parents Circle and until they caught the man that killed David and understanding why he did that. |
| Al Letson: | Your group is advocating for a political solution. Who are you in dialogue with? Is anyone in positions of power listening? |
| Robi Damelin: | The only positions of power on the Israeli side are really not in the government anymore. At this stage, there’s no one, really, no one to talk to. We did once have a lobby in the Parliament for reconciliation, but the way things look now, we have to wait. |
| Al Letson: | Bassam, is there anyone in positions of power on the Palestinian side that you guys are in touch with? |
| Bassam Aramin: | So we meet many Israelis and Palestinians, many Palestinian leaders and politicians will support us, but they have no power. This is the main issue. We believe the political solution must come from the bigger [inaudible 00:12:07], the United States of America. But I want to say to the Americans what Martin Luther King says. He says, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Please, don’t keep silence and don’t take sides, means you can’t be [inaudible 00:12:29] Palestinians together, if you are pro-justice and democracy and freedom to everyone. |
| Al Letson: | Robi, if you could give a message to the American people like Bassam just did, what would you say? |
| Robi Damelin: | Well, I wish that the American people would again come back to the table because I think that’s their strengths. If you’re going to take a side, then leave us alone, but if you’re going to be an honest broker, then please, we would welcome you with open arms. |
| Al Letson: | I just want to say thank you to both of you for coming on and talking to me today. I am humbled by your work and I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. |
| Bassam Aramin: | Thank you very much. |
| Robi Damelin: | Thank you. |
| Al Letson: | Robi Damelin and Bassam Aramin are members of the Parents Circle, an organization of Israeli and Palestinian families who’ve lost loved ones to the conflict. As the war continues and the civilian death toll in Gaza keeps climbing, there’s a rising concern about where many of Israel’s weapons are coming from. |
| Josh Paul: | There’s an extent to which it’s my name on those bombs, and as an American taxpayer, there’s your name on those bombs as well. |
| Al Letson: | The pushback against US weapons transfers, next on Reveal. |
| From The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. By now, most of us are all too familiar with the horrific details of the October 7th attack on Israel. Hamas infiltrators murdered entire families, kidnapped toddlers, stormed a military base. It was the deadliest attack on the country since it was founded in 1948. Israelis were in mourning. In D.C., a State Department official was in shock. | |
| Josh Paul: | Well, my obviously first reaction was one of sheer horror at what was unfolding on the ground and then realizing that given that scale of horror, the horror that was likely to follow. |
| Al Letson: | Josh Paul knew the retribution would be fast and fierce and the violence against civilians would only spread. |
| Josh Paul: | So knowing that this was coming, I almost immediately began to raise concerns. |
| Al Letson: | He knew that there would be a rush to send weapons to Israel and that there are these little known US safeguards in place to protect civilians, but would those safeguards be implemented? Reporter Shaina Shealy has been looking into this examining how the rush to supply Israel with US weapons is playing out. Here’s Shaina. |
| Shaina Shealy: | On October 7th, Josh Paul was Director of the Bureau of Political Military Affairs at the State Department. He’d been there for more than a decade. |
| Josh Paul: | I really enjoy the job. The arms transfer process with Congress is often a frictious one. The executive branch tries to push the envelope and Congress, to its credit, normally pushes back, particularly when there are concerns about human rights. |
| Shaina Shealy: | He loved this push and pull and saw it as crucial to healthy foreign policy, but he also knew his job was not without moral compromise. |
| Josh Paul: | My job was to convince Congress of the merits of US security assistance and of proposed arms transfers. And as part of that, as well, to review and approve major arms transfers. |
| Shaina Shealy: | He was involved in sending weapons to places all over; Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and Israel. |
| Josh Paul: | When you’re talking about arms to Israel, there’s no questions asked. |
| Shaina Shealy: | Over time, Israel has received more US military aid than any country in the world. $158 billion to date according to a March congressional report. So when Hamas attacked, the Israeli government almost immediately starts sending requests for more weapons. And Josh is thinking- |
| Josh Paul: | Look, we’ve been pouring billions of dollars into the Israeli military for generations now, and the theory was that it would provide security for Israel. It has not. So isn’t this the time to stop and think about what we need to be doing differently going forward? |
| Shaina Shealy: | On the afternoon of October 8th, he sits down to write an email to his colleagues, urging them to question the status quo. |
| Josh Paul: | Actually, I have a copy of it. Bear with me. |
| Shaina Shealy: | Yep. |
| Josh Paul: | I wrote, “What is happening now in Israel is a tragedy, not only for the lives it is taking, but also for the future whose possibility it is foreclosing upon for yet another generation. |
| Shaina Shealy: | Josh pushes his colleagues not to act on impulse or bend to political pressure, but to be the big brother who looks to the longterm. |
| Josh Paul: | I know this is an unpopular opinion and too soon, but maybe the best thing for Israel right now is not security assistance in the sort of volume that makes them think they can afford to ignore the Palestinian question. |
| Shaina Shealy: | He hits send on the email and days go by. And were you surprised that no one responded? |
| Josh Paul: | No. I think even within the department where there is often this freedom of debate, criticism of Israel is a third rail, people don’t do it. |
| Shaina Shealy: | But there is an official process that allows for dissent to happen and for hard questions to be asked. |
| John Chappell: | Has this recipient previously committed violations of international human rights law or has there been a change in government that raises concerns about civilian harm risks, or has there been conduct that makes us worry that they might in the future? |
| Shaina Shealy: | That’s John Chappell from the Center for Civilians in Conflict. His organization monitors Civilian Harm abroad and this process he’s describing is called the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy or CAT. |
| John Chappell: | So the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy is a policy that a president will introduce in order to guide their administration’s armed sales decisions. |
| Shaina Shealy: | When President Joe Biden introduced his version last February, human rights organizations like John’s praised it because of this one statement. John’s paraphrasing it here. |
| John Chappell: | The US government is not going to transfer weapons if it’s more likely than not that that weapon will be used in a serious violation of international humanitarian law, among other abuses. |
| Shaina Shealy: | By drawing this clear red line to protect international humanitarian law, John says Biden has gone further than any other president, but there’s a problem. |
| Josh Paul: | The CAT policy is not binding. It’s a policy, and like any policy, it can be set aside by the executive. |
| Shaina Shealy: | And to Josh, that’s what he saw happening as he was being asked to approve arms transfers to Israel. |
| Josh Paul: | When you talk about arms transfers, you’re never talking about do no harm. It’s just an impossibility with weapons, but you’re talking about do as little harm as possible and that’s really the standard that the Conventional Arms Transfer Policy was aiming for, and which I believe we have not met in this case. |
| Shaina Shealy: | The United States is the largest supplier of weapons in the world. So US standards often set the tone for how wars get fought globally. In a written statement, the State Department said that all US arms transfers are reviewed on a case by case basis and that assessments of human rights and civilian protections are being considered consistent with the CAT policy. The Biden administration also points out the challenges the Israeli Army faces because of the way Hamas hides beneath civilian infrastructure. So I asked Josh, what is Israel supposed to do fighting this kind of enemy? |
| Josh Paul: | So I think first of all is what Israel is doing going to lead to the result they want, which is an end of Hamas, an end of any sort of threat emanating from Gaza. And the patent, the obvious answer to that is no. It may lead to five years of a pause of rocket attacks, but it is going to lead to another generation that does not want peace with Israel. |
| Shaina Shealy: | Josh also says that Israel could be using more guided missiles to kill Hamas or even assassinations. |
| Josh Paul: | It has every capability of being more targeted, but its approach is essentially collective punishment. That is a fundamentally inhumane approach and it’s not an effective one. |
| Shaina Shealy: | At the end of the first week of the war, the Israeli military had killed over 2,700 people in Gaza. And Josh is flagging those deaths to his colleagues as he watches the war play out on the news, explosions, striking apartment buildings, hospitals. |
| Josh Paul: | It’s probably over personalizing it, right, but having been a part of the approval process for armed sales to Israel for the last 11 and a half years, there’s an extent to which it’s my name on those bombs, and as an American taxpayer, there’s your name on those bombs as well. |
| Shaina Shealy: | So on October 17th, Josh drafts another letter, and this time he walks it up to his boss. |
| Speaker 7: | The State Department staffer who resigned because of what he- |
| Josh Paul: | My resignation has not, to date, made the impact I would’ve wanted in terms of changing the policy and stopping the provision of lethal answer. That said, I’d like to think it has created space for people to talk about these issues. |
| Shaina Shealy: | But the rush to send weapons to Israel continues. |
| Speaker 8: | The Biden administration is moving forward with a sell of $106 million worth of tank shells to Israel bypassing a congressional review process. |
| Shaina Shealy: | And there’s more. The Biden administration has proposed a $14 billion military aid package that’s currently being debated by the US Senate. It contains a waiver that would shorten the length of time Congress has to scrutinize a weapons transfer during extraordinary circumstances. The package also includes a request to lift restrictions on a US stockpile of weapons already in Israel. For Josh, giving Israel more firepower is a shortsighted plan that will create more instability for Palestinians and Israelis in the long run. |
| Josh Paul: | Our military assistance to Israel has been greatly premised on the notion that if Israel feels more secure because it is strong militarily, then it will feel that it is in a position to make concessions necessary to allow the emergence of a Palestinian state. And that’s very good in theory, but the problem is that in practice what Israel has developed is a sense of impunity, a sense that we are so strong that Israel can expand settlements, can allow settlers to run amuck, can continue the siege of Gaza and not have to worry about the peace process. |
| Shaina Shealy: | Israel and Hamas are in the midst of a war that has turned millions of lives upside down, killing about 20,000 people, including thousands of children. Recently, President Biden said Israel was beginning to lose support around the world due to “indiscriminate bombing”. It’s one of his strongest criticisms of the Israeli offensive to date. |
| Al Letson: | President Biden went on to warn Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to make the same mistakes the US made after 9/11. The so-called War on Terror lasted over 20 years and spread to multiple nations, and it’s worth noting that an estimated 432,000 civilians were killed in the fighting. That story was produced by Shaina Shealy. Shaina’s a senior producer at the public radio show, Snap Judgment. |
| Coming up, the war in Gaza sparks a war of words on college campuses across the US and a crackdown on student protests. | |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | They canceled a number of events for us. They threatened students to face consequences individually. The university did not know how to deal with this. |
| Al Letson: | That’s next on Reveal. |
| Speaker 10: | [inaudible 00:24:54] |
| Al Letson: | From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal. I’m Al Letson. The tree lighting ceremony at Columbia University is a holiday tradition that showcases the school’s acapella groups. |
| Speaker 11: | (singing) |
| Al Letson: | Only, this year, the festivities keep getting interrupted. As each group finishes their song and exits stage left, the spotlight catches a group of student protestors who fill the silence. |
| Speaker 12: | Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free, free, free Palestine. |
| Al Letson: | The group is protesting in support of Palestinians and they’re all holding up signs that read, “Joy is canceled.” Reveal producer Najib Aminy was at the event. |
| Najib Aminy: | This is insane. It’s like you have a holiday song followed by a moment of protest and the two couldn’t be more jarring. |
| Al Letson: | And then, the evening takes another turn. A small group of counter-protestors holding up three Israeli flags show up. Campus safety stands in between the two groups, but after the concert ends and the holiday trees are lit, the two groups face off. |
| Najib Aminy: | So right now, I’m literally in the middle between two dueling protests. |
| Al Letson: | Two months after the Hamas attack on Israel, the escalating crisis in Gaza is sparking a growing war of words here in the US among policymakers, among friends and families, and among students on college campuses like Columbia University where the debate is especially heated. Najib wanted to find out why emotions are boiling over and why the administration’s response has failed to cool them. |
| Najib Aminy: | Okay, where are we? |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | We are in my car about to head back to campus. We’re in the upper west. |
| Najib Aminy: | It looks like you’re blocked in, huh? Mohsen Mahdawi is stuck. We’re in his two-seater convertible and there’s a truck double parked in front of us. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | Sir, is it possible to allow me to leave? Thank you. |
| Najib Aminy: | The horn would’ve avoided all that. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | I’d rather to take the slow way sometimes. |
| Najib Aminy: | Mohsen is a senior at Columbia. At 33, he’s older than most of his peers, but he looks much younger and fits right in. On the morning of October 7th, he was getting ready for a weekend drive out of the city when his phone goes off. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | The moment I opened the messages, I just knew that I’m not going. Something big is happening. |
| Najib Aminy: | He cancels his trip and stays in his apartment checking the news. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | I saw the attack and I had my hand on my heart. It’s like what’s going to happen now? I know the Israeli level of retaliation and revenge is just crazy and I started meditating and praying for peace. |
| Najib Aminy: | Mohsen is Palestinian. He grew up in a refugee camp and has firsthand experience with the Israeli military. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | As a child, you observe the soldiers coming in, blasting into houses. You observe in the middle of the night the shooting that wakes you up and makes you tremble. They traumatize us. |
| Najib Aminy: | Because of the Israeli occupation, Mohsen says he’s attended far more funerals than he’d like to count. He’s lost family, friends, and neighbors, and was even shot himself during an Israeli raid when he was just 15-years-old. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | I’m like, why my foot is squishing and sliding in my shoes? I lift my pants and I see a line of blood going down my leg into my foot, into my shoes, and that’s when I realized that I was shot. |
| Najib Aminy: | And what’s your thought process at that point? |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | I’m like, (censored), I get shot. |
| Najib Aminy: | Advocating for Palestinians has always been a focus for Mohsen. At Columbia, he co-founded the Palestinian Students Union or DAR, which translates to home in Arabic. The group holds a meeting the day after the Hamas attack. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | We jumped directly into it and we said we have to talk about October 7th. |
| Najib Aminy: | University leadership is also talking about the Hamas attack. Beginning on October 7th and over the next few days, deans across the university start sending statements to students expressing their sympathies. Many of these statements go out after Israel has declared war against Hamas and started its campaign of airstrikes and bombings in Gaza. The Israeli offensive kills more than 400 Palestinian civilians on the first day. Still, most of the statements sent out by university administrators only mention Israeli loss of life. Mohsen’s group feels the loss of Palestinian lives is being overlooked and they decide to craft a response. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | We started our statement by acknowledging that a loss of a life is a painful thing and we send our condolences to our colleagues, both Israeli and Palestinians, who lost relatives. |
| Najib Aminy: | How important was the language of that letter and why? |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | The language was very, very important because we wanted to acknowledge there is a loss on both sides and there is a bigger issue that has been going on for 75 years and we see this as a time for us to reflect and to see what are the causes or the roots for this issue. |
| Najib Aminy: | Mohsen’s group isn’t the only one that feels compelled to make a statement. |
| Allie: | We had a zoom call where we started to discuss, okay, the administration isn’t acknowledging Palestinian existence, is decontextualizing the event solely as an act of unprompted terror. |
| Najib Aminy: | Allie is a 21-year-old student at Barnard, one of the colleges at Columbia and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. It calls itself the world’s largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization. Allie grew up in an observant Jewish household, but after trips to Israel, started to question their relationship with the country. |
| Allie: | I think the biggest lie for me was the idea that one, Jewish identity and Zionism are inextricable, and two, that Jews cannot and will not be safe without a state to protect them, but I egregiously differ on how I believe the Jewish community can be safe. |
| Najib Aminy: | Allie asked us to use only their middle name because of threats the group has been receiving ever since it put out a statement about Gaza. It was a joint letter with another group called Students for Justice in Palestine. The letter focuses on the harsh conditions in which Palestinians have been living in and refers to the October 7th attack as a “counteroffensive against Israel’s military”. It doesn’t mention the loss of Israeli civilian lives. The letter is published just as details are emerging about the brutality of Hamas’ initial attack. |
| Allie: | In hindsight, the timing of the letter was not great and we acknowledged that it is a little tone deaf because we did not realize the extent of the Israeli death toll at the time and we probably, had we known, would’ve acknowledged the loss of life and the tragedy. |
| Najib Aminy: | And what happens next? |
| Allie: | Outrage. Total outrage. |
| Najib Aminy: | After the letter goes out, there’s a flurry of activity on campus starting on October 9th with a candlelight vigil in support of Israel. A protest is planned in support of Palestinians for later in the week. The evening before it’s set to take place, the university sends out an email announcing the campus will be closed to the general public that day. The protest happens anyway. Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine organize it. And other groups, like Mohsen’s, show up in support, along with counter protestors. |
| Speaker 16: | Someone holding an Israeli flag- |
| Najib Aminy: | That’s the campus radio station covers the rally and interviews an older man who’s been shouting at pro-Palestinian students. |
| Speaker 17: | I’m here to support the Jewish students here. |
| Speaker 16: | Yeah. |
| Speaker 17: | Okay. I work here. Okay. These people have no business being here now. I’ve emailed the president, the provost. They should be out here shutting down these (censored), okay. |
| Speaker 16: | How are you affiliated with the university? |
| Speaker 17: | I’m an officer of administration. I’m here on my own. I’m not representing the university. I’m Jewish. Okay. I’m a Zionist. Okay. I hope every one of these people die. Okay. |
| Najib Aminy: | A few days after that protest, another flashpoint, an assistant professor from the business school gives an impromptu speech that goes viral. |
| Shai Davidai: | The president of the university allows pro-terrorists to march on campus. We would never allow, never allow the KKK to march on our campus. |
| Najib Aminy: | Now, there’s even more attention placed on Columbia and that’s when the doxing trucks arrive on campus. |
| Speaker 19: | Inside Edition cameras were there as these Columbia students tried to block the names on Golet’s van. |
| Najib Aminy: | It’s a campaign funded by Accuracy In Media, a conservative advocacy group. On the trucks are digital billboards flashing the names and photos of students the group labels Antisemites. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | I mean, the doxing was launched very quickly, so there was attacks on organizations, threats. Actually, campus was very, very unsafe for a lot of students who are Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims. |
| Najib Aminy: | And also, Jews. |
| Natan Rosenbaum: | I think it’s definitely intense. It’s definitely worrying. |
| Najib Aminy: | Natan Rosenbaum is a sophomore majoring in American Studies. After October 7th, he says he bought pepper spray as a precaution because of the heated climate on campus. As we’re talking, he’s watching another pro-Palestinian protest. |
| Natan Rosenbaum: | I think a lot of people in the community have issue with this atmosphere of intimidation on campus in which feelings and words are so important, there seems to be a double standard when certain minority groups say words are important to us. |
| Najib Aminy: | A phrase that students like naan point to as an example, happens to echo as we talk near the library steps. |
| Speaker 12: | From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. |
| Najib Aminy: | Student protesters I’ve spoken to say they’ve used this phrase solely in the context of advocating freedom for all, including Palestinians. But Johnny Rosen, a junior studying financial economics, has a different read. He was traveling in Israel on October 7th. |
| Johnny Rosen: | Just a second ago, this group was chanting from the river to the sea, which calls to end Israel, to kill Israelis. A lot of these people don’t know what they’re chanting, they’re just repeating and it’s sad to see. |
| Najib Aminy: | Do you genuinely feel like they’re using it in that context? |
| Johnny Rosen: | No. I don’t think that all the students who are chanting that are calling for the elimination of Israel, but I still think that saying that phrase is wrong, and I think Jews have a right to feel scared on campus because of that. |
| Najib Aminy: | In the weeks after October 7th, the university creates an antisemitism task force, a special committee on campus safety and a resource group for those students who were doxed. It also unilaterally tightens the rules for on-campus gatherings. It’s now more difficult to book an event and to keep existing ones. On short notice, the university cancels a program with a Palestinian poet and another featuring a human rights lawyer. Even virtual talks are canceled. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | They canceled a number of events for us. They stopped responding. Actually, they threatened students. The university did not know how to deal with this. |
| Najib Aminy: | Still, pro-Israeli groups continue to stage demonstrations and host official events like a town hall with a former Israeli diplomat. A number of student groups call out the university for applying these rules only to events critical of Israel. The administration has since responded saying, “Nothing could be further from the truth.” Despite the clampdown on public events, student groups critical of Israel continue their protests, this time, without campus approval. And in early November, one of them gets ugly after a student walks through a peaceful demonstration yelling, F the Jews. A reporter from the Columbia Spectator, the school newspaper, is there with a recorder. |
| Speaker 22: | What, am I talking to you? All right, so get the (censored) back. |
| Najib Aminy: | Mohsen walks up to the man saying this is not helping the Palestinian cause. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | This is not helping Palestinian. I’m Palestinian. I’m telling you, it’s not helping Palestinian. |
| Speaker 22: | You protest how you protest, I protest how I protest. |
| Speaker 23: | It doesn’t affect you. |
| Najib Aminy: | Immediately after, Mohsen grabs a bullhorn and condemns the man’s tirade to the crowd. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | You don’t represent us because we have Jewish brothers and sisters who stand up with us here today. |
| Najib Aminy: | Mohsen’s speech doesn’t travel far. The next day, the administration suspends Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace for holding demonstrations it says violated the campus event rules. Other groups involved in the protests were not shut down. I put in multiple requests for an interview with Columbia’s administration, but they declined. They sent me a link to a webpage with responses to frequently asked questions and an email. It reads, “We are committed to enforcing the rules and policies that are in place to ensure safety, civility, and respect, a responsibility that we take extremely seriously.” Still, others at Columbia say the administration is not being even-handed. They say the changing of policy, the cancellation of events, the suspension of the two student groups fits into a pattern. |
| Nadia Abu El-Ha…: | You cannot understand this moment without understanding the Palestine exception. |
| Najib Aminy: | Nadia Abu El-Haj is a professor at the Department of Anthropology at Barnard and the co-director of Columbia Center for Palestine Studies. |
| Nadia Abu El-Ha…: | In liberal universities, the one form of speech that administrations are happy to crack down on is pro-Palestinian speech and they have. That’s who they’re shutting down. |
| Najib Aminy: | The term, Palestine exception, was the subject of a report published in 2015 by the Center of Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal, an advocacy group. The report details examples where pro-Palestinian speech and viewpoints were met with calls of antisemitism and terrorism as part of an organized effort to silence criticism of Israel. In the week since October 7th, Palestine Legal says it has received more than 900 requests for legal assistance related to suppression. That includes work-related events and firings. That’s triple the number the group received in all of 2022. Nadia says what makes this moment different is how the Palestine exception is now being combined with the political tactics of the right. |
| Nadia Abu El-Ha…: | One of the things that has accompanied the rise of the radical right in the US is a kind of anti-intellectualism where intellectuals are just labeled as “woke” and that is being used to shut speech on campuses including academic speech. We are in the northeast, the kind of elite of the elite, the liberal institutions that Ron DeSantis and his like think are the problem. And I think there was a kind of sense, oh, that would never happen here, but it is happening here. |
| Najib Aminy: | How universities are responding to the crisis in Gaza and to student activism has become a big political issue, and it’s not happening in a vacuum. In a Senate hearing at the end of October, the head of the FBI said, the Bureau has seen antisemitism reach historic levels. And earlier this month, Republican lawmakers in the House held a hearing where the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania were questioned over their handling of antisemitism. At one point, Representative Elise Stefanik from New York asked a question about whether students who call for the genocide of Jews should be punished. |
| Representative …: | Ms. McGill, at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no? |
| Elizabeth Magil…: | If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes. |
| Representative …: | I am asking specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment? |
| Najib Aminy: | Both Republicans and Democrats expressed outrage at the answers from the university presidents, describing them as tepid and lawyerly. Days later, UPenn’s president stepped down and the president of Harvard came close to losing her job. And criticism of how universities are handling antisemitism on campus isn’t just coming from politicians. |
| Leon Cooperman: | I think these kids at the colleges have (censored) for brains. |
| Nadia Abu El-Ha…: | That’s (censored) crazy. |
| Najib Aminy: | That’s the billionaire investor, Leon Cooperman, a major donor to Columbia in an interview on Fox Business. |
| Leon Cooperman: | Now, the real shame is, I’ve given to Columbia probably about $50 million over many years, and I’m going to suspend my giving. I’ll give my giving to other organizations. |
| Lila Corwin Ber…: | I think that what’s happening is that universities are being pressured by people who have supported them with philanthropic dollars to meet a set of demands or not receive that money. |
| Najib Aminy: | Lila Corwin Berman is a professor of history at Temple University. She’s the author of the American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a Multi-Billion Dollar Institution, and she just co-published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education detailing this precarious moment that universities are facing, what she calls a donor revolt. |
| Lila Corwin Ber…: | The revolt is basically the donor saying in a sense, not only do you need our dollars, but you need us as your ambassadors, as your champions. |
| Najib Aminy: | Now, Lila cautions against the antisemitic trope that so often comes up when talking about Jewish people with money. The conspiracy theory that there’s a secret cabal of wealthy Jewish individuals pulling at the strings of power. |
| Lila Corwin Ber…: | It’s wrong, it’s untrue. It’s not a good explanation, it’s a bad explanation. But the situational reality is just that the facts are on the ground are that Jewish donors have become among the group of mega donors to American higher education. And some of those donors are very scared about what is happening in Israel. |
| Najib Aminy: | She says universities have become more dependent on private donors because public funding has decreased over the years. This means the academic world is more susceptible to the whims of big money benefactors. But she says college presidents do have a choice. |
| Lila Corwin Ber…: | I have yet to see a response where a president has said, that’s fine. You are allowed to take your money and walk. I’m sorry you no longer believe in our mission and we hope to find other people who do. |
| Najib Aminy: | Back at Columbia, anger among the student body is growing over the university’s suspension of two pro-Palestinian groups. In mid-November, more than 40 student organizations come together in solidarity with Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, and form a coalition. They call for the university to pull its investments from Israel and cancel plans to open a research center in Tel Aviv. They also want the fighting to stop in Gaza. |
| Speaker 32: | I want your repeat after me. Say, we demand- |
| Speaker 33: | We demand- |
| Speaker 32: | For an immediate ceasefire in Gaza- |
| Speaker 33: | For immediate ceasefire in Gaza- |
| Speaker 32: | In line with the demands- |
| Najib Aminy: | That coalition has since grown to more than a hundred groups. They call themselves CUAD, Columbia University Apartheid Divest. This past semester has been a course in activism that no one signed up for, especially the protest organizers. Being a student is stressful enough, but the last few weeks on campus have taken a personal toll. For Allie from Jewish Voice for Peace, they’ve had to learn how to respond to being called antisemitic by people of their own faith. |
| Allie: | I’ve been called a disgrace. I’ve been called not a real Jew. I’ve been told that I turned my back on my community. And for me, that really hurts on a very personal level. It’s becoming about disregarding my identity and my right to exist. The only person who can speak on my Jewishness is myself. |
| Najib Aminy: | Mohsen Mahdawi dropped three classes this semester. The focus on what students should and should not be allowed to say on campus has taken over his life. But all of this attention on this war of words feels like a diversion. |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | You shift the eyes from what’s happening in Gaza and in the West Bank to what’s happening at Columbia, and the subject becomes that free speech is the problem, not what’s happening in Palestine and in the West Bank. This is distraction. |
| Najib Aminy: | Do you worry about yourself being a part of that distraction? |
| Mohsen Mahdawi: | Yeah, I do. I worry that I will be fighting for the freedom of speech here rather than dealing with life or loss that’s taking in Palestine. But both injustices are connected and they are related. If you can’t speak about the loss of lives, the loss of lives would continue. |
| Najib Aminy: | And so will Mohsen’s activism. At the end of the semester, his efforts got a boost. For the first time in Columbia’s history, student leaders voted on a non-cooperation resolution with the university. They say the administration’s clamp down is a threat to students’ academic freedom. This is a battle that is far from over. |
| Al Letson: | That story was produced by Najib Aminy. He and Michael I Schiller are the lead producers for today’s show. Taki Telonidis and Cynthia Rodriguez edited the show. Thanks to Avery Trufelman, Noah Lanard at Mother Jones, Ken Klippenstein from The Intercept and Haggai Matar at +972 Magazine. Also to Ramsey Khalifeh at WNYC, Chris Mendel at the Columbia Spectator and WKCR FM’s Monday Morningside. And thanks to Anjali Kamat. Our fact checkers are Nikki Frick and Rosemarie Ho. Missa Perron is our membership manager, Victoria Baranetsky is our general counsel. Our production managers are the Wonder Twins, Steven Rascon and Zulema Cobb. Score and sound design by the dynamic duo, Jay Breezy, Mr. Jim Briggs, and Fernando, my man, yo Arruda. Our CEO is Robert Rosenthal. Our COO is Maria Feldman. Our interim executive producers of Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis. Our theme music is by Comarado Lightning. |
| Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Park Foundation, and the Hellman Foundation. Reveal is a co-production of The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX. I’m Al Letson. And remember, there is always more to the story. |
Gaza: A War of Weapons and Words is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.