Students Still Wrestle with Gazan Conflict

As the one-year anniversary of the Israel-Palestine conflict passes, protesters continue to speak out.

By: Angel Silva, Managing Editor

A protestor wearing a kippah holds a Palestinian flag high at a pro-Palestine march in Downtown Los Angeles on Saturday. (Victoria Saxxon for The Valley Star)

One year after the start of the conflict in Gaza, Palestine, the conflict remains contentious on college campuses across California and the United States, including at Valley College.

“When it comes to student protests, it’s been going for a while,” said Milan Rafaelov, 23. “I think it really took a turn and skyrocketed into this big national thing right before the summer hit.”

Last Saturday several organizations held a pro-Palestinian rally in Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles. On Monday, pro-Palestininan students at different campuses across Southern California marched in support of Palestine. At the University of Southern California, students from the USC chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) led a walk out protest, gathering to protest around campus on the one-year mark of the start of hostilities. At UCLA, pro-Palestinian students also marched that evening.

The protests at UCLA made national headlines earlier this year when counterprotestors showed up to an encampment on campus by pro-Palestinian protestors, leading to skirmishes and clashes on May 1st. The encampment would later be dismantled by the Los Angeles Police Department the next day.

“I was there the night that they got attacked,” said Rafaelov. “That was very intense and I think really just made people double-down even more in their beliefs and what they felt they were fighting for.”

On LAVC’s campus, the protests have not extended to major campus actions.

“We haven’t personally had protests on our campus, but other campuses in our area have had huge issues. Take CSUN, for example. Even if we haven’t personally faced protests, we all know someone who has,” said Elliot Adlof, 18, and Blake Frumkin, 22, president and vice-president of Valley’s Hillel Club, via email in a joint statement to the Valley Star.

Despite the lack of protests on campus, the conversation has been on students’ minds.

“On this campus I haven’t seen that much in terms of protests, but I have seen more individuals who are more politically active, like I’ll see people wearing keffiyehs occasionally,” said Rafaelov. “I’ll see stickers in different places so I know it’s a conversation happening on campus, I’m just not seeing protesting the way I did at the protests in UCLA.”

However, tensions have emerged on campus across different sides due to this issue.

 “On one hand, we’ve had people absolutely refuse to engage with us for being a Jewish club, going as far as to exclaim ‘Jews? Ew!’ upon learning about our cause,” said Adlof and Frumkin via email.

“I had a student come in after a piece I had written and basically tell me that I was being anti-Semitic - I’m Jewish by the way, so that was a funny thing to say to me - but telling me that my piece was anti-Semitic and that I was this and I was that,” said Rafaelov.

The online discourse on the conflict has mirrored tensions in the real world as well.

“People are also much braver with the anonymity that comes with being behind a screen. With all of these factors combined, it’s nearly impossible to have a civilized conversation with someone you disagree with, which further polarizes the groups. As a result, tensions rise in real life spaces and there’s even more animosity,” said Adlof and Frumkin via email.

“What happened at UCLA, the amount of people that came to the encampment protest in the middle of the night to attack them, they were all talking on Facebook groups,” said Rafaelov. “They were all communicating online - ‘we’re gonna meet up, we’re gonna bring bear spray and metal poles, we’re gonna shoot fireworks’ - and they organized all of that online and then they met up in person.”

According to a Pew Research study done in July, “finding a resolution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians” was a priority for 71 percent of people ages 18-29, with 31 percent of those polled stating that it was a top priority.

“No matter your opinion, it’s important to remember that there are real, innocent human beings on both sides of this. It’s very easy to get so caught up in the adrenaline that you forget that real people are being affected by everything that’s going on,” said Adlof and Frumkin via email. “Please just remember to be kind and try to see where the other person is coming from.”