Day of Action: “Schools Out For Ceasefire Now”
Yesterday, schools across New York City came together for a “Day of Action demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza & an end to U.S. support for genocide.” The walkout, which included certain NYU groups such as NYU SJP, as well as “CUNY for Palestine,” “NYC Educators for Palestine,” and many more, met at Bryant Park. The several schools and organizations involved “walked out,” and they continued walking until meeting at Bryant Park at approximately 3:00 PM Thursday. A toolkit for the event circulated prior, with scripts for senators and representatives, talking points, as well as a brief summary of the rights of student protestors. The lengthy toolkit additionally urged participants to post to social media at the event and to tag “congress representatives with the hashtag #Schools4Ceasefire and #ShutItDown4Palestine.” It also urged students to draft a resolution “in support of a ceasefire, an end to U.S. funding of genocide, and an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.”
The protest continued from Bryant Park to Midtown Manhattan, where it made its way to the New York Times building. There, protestors spray painted the building windows with, “Free Palestine.” An NYU student, who wished to remain anonymous, reported to The NYU Review that as her father and brother walked through midtown, they saw a vandalized police car, as seen in the video below.
She additionally said that “a smoke bomb went over their head,” and warned fellow students: “things are getting very dangerous. Please be careful out there.”
Many protestors chanted “Long live the intifada!,” a call to violence against Israelis, like that of the Palestinian uprising which began in 1987. Protestor Uness Ahmed told CBS News, “We know what's right. We know what's wrong. And we're in a dark place and, hopefully, we have better light ahead.” Meanwhile, Jewish New Yorker Evan, said he had a cousin who was “murdered in the second Intifada,” and suggested that he believes the protestors do not truly understand what they are chanting.
According to the Israeli Embassy, during the second intifada: “Over 1,000 Israelis were killed and thousands severely injured. Over 2,000 Palestinians were also killed during this period. The disproportionate number of Palestinian casualties was primarily a result of the number of Palestinians involved in violence. The unfortunate deaths of noncombatants were largely due to the practice of Palestinian terrorists using civilians as shields.” According to Al Jazeera, the second intifada “began after then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon sparked the uprising when he stormed al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem with more than 1,000 heavily armed police and soldiers.” Meanwhile, the Israeli embassy holds that it “began in September 2000, with official Palestinian Authority media exhorting the Palestinians to violence.”
At NYU, another student who chose to remain anonymous told us that she feels that “NYU should be fostering a community where everybody feels safe to express their beliefs and protest peacefully as has been going on.” The student then went on to say that “protests biased towards one side are supported more than protests biased towards the other side which I think may not be entirely fair or justified.” A different student made similar remarks, stating that, “Jewish students and people that support Israel, they’ve been the ones that have controlled the narrative on campus, so I would want to see both sides and I’m not seeing that.”
The NYU group, NYU SJP, which stands for NYU Students for Justice in Palestine, posted to their Instagram story, displaying their participation in the walkout and march for Palestine.
According to CBS News, despite vandalism at the event, no arrests were made by the NYPD.