On November 13, 12 members of the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) at the University of Texas at Austin peacefully protested a public event hosted by UT's Institute for Israel Studies (IIS). Entitled "The Origin of a Species: The Birth of the Israeli Defense Forces' Military Culture," the event framed the IDF as a "daring" and "highly effective" army.
We wanted to read a statement that, timed and read aloud, lasts less than two minutes. We intended to briefly trouble the narrative of an event set to glorify the beginnings of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). We sought to explain what the IDF means for Palestinians.
The creation of the IDF and its militia predecessors meant the ethnic cleansing of over 800,000 indigenous Palestinians from 1947 to 1949. It meant the Deir Yassin Massacre in which over 100 unarmed Palestinians were massacred by Zionist militias that would later be absorbed into the IDF. For one PSC member it meant the murder of his great grandfather, leaving behind a widow and eight young children to live out their lives as refugees. It meant the birth of what, at roughly five million, has become the largest refugee population in the world: that of the Palestinian people.
Yet we could not read our statement. A graduate student attendee physically intimidated us, ripping the Palestinian flag from our hands. When we attempted to speak about ethnic cleansing, he yelled, "I don't care about your problems!" The organizer of the event, a UT Professor - rather than defuse the situation - verbally belittled us. He clapped and heckled us, "Good for you! You're so brilliant." He yelled, "You are students, you know nothing!" He then advanced on one of our members until he was restrained by three attendees.
The following day, the professor disingenuously likened us to terrorists and attempted to link our nonviolent demonstration to the tragic attacks in Paris. He stated that our interruption represented "red flags" for "terrorism." Disclosing personal information of protesters, he called upon the UT and wider community to counter what he labeled a "campaign of terror and intimidation." He posted his statement to the official university page for the Institute for Israel Studies and his personal webpage (that statement has since been removed, but still appears on his personal website).
Over a month later, the University of Texas at Austin has yet to take any action on our behalf. Administrators say they are conducting an investigation. Though we have provided all the necessary evidence -- testimonies, unedited videos and numerous screenshots -- the University has not publicly acknowledged that we were physically harassed. UT has not admitted that a professor abused his powers by likening us to terrorists on a university page, affecting our right to an education free from discrimination. Instead, we have been met with empty, vague or accusatory statements.
We do not have to ask how the university might respond if the situation were reversed. We already know. Punishment against pro-Palestine professors has been swift even in the absence of offense. Steven Salaita, former University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Professor, was wrongfully fired for tweets condemning Israel's Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. Joseph Massad, a Palestinian Professor at Columbia University, had his tenure delayed years because of charges that he was intolerant in the classroom--charges that were never formally filed and which involved, in all but one case, people who were never even his students.
A recent report entitled "The Palestine Exception to Free Speech," released by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal, documents the widespread and growing suppression of Palestine advocacy in the United States, particularly on college campuses. Between January 2014 and June 2015 Palestine Legal responded to nearly 300 incidents of suppression. Eighty-five percent of those incidents targeted students and professors on more than 65 college campuses. This rate of incidence is alarming.
According to the report, the tactics used to suppress such political opinion follow recognizable patterns. Such protected speech, the report notes, is "routinely maligned as uncivil...or supportive of terrorism." In 2014 and the first six months of 2015, Palestine Legal documented over 50 incidents of campus-related "false accusations of support for terrorism."
The strategy to insinuate we are terrorizing campuses is abhorrent but not new. It is a consistent tactic employed to retaliate against students and professors who publicly advocate for justice, equal rights and self-determination for the Palestinian people. Nonviolent direct actions like this one are not terrorism. They are time-honored components of social change.