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About 100 pro-Israel demonstrators gathered outside Ernie Davis Hall Wednesday around noon for a walk to show “solidarity with Israel” in response to the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the lawn of the Shaw Quadrangle.

The group first walked along Waverly Avenue before moving up past the Hall of Languages toward the quad, where it was met by people at the encampment silently holding signs behind fences that the Department of Public Safety set up earlier that day. From the beginning, organizers encouraged the group to remain peaceful and avoid interacting with protesters in the encampment.

“We’re here to be peaceful,” said Mia Gottesmann, a freshman at SU and organizer of the demonstration, before the group began its walk to the quad. “We’re here to show our support, to stand with Israel. Nothing, literally nothing else besides that.”

On Monday, around a dozen Syracuse University and SUNY ESF community members established a Gaza Solidarity Encampment, calling for university divestment from Israel amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The size of the encampment has grown over three days to approximately 70 tents set up as of Wednesday night.

As the pro-Israel group walked through campus, they carried Israeli flags and signs with pictures of kidnapped Israelis and slogans like “Protect Jewish Students,” “Never Again Means Now,” “Our Love is Stronger Than Your Hate” and “Bring Them Home.”

As they reached the opposite side of the quad to the encampment, the demonstrators joined hands in a large circle and began singing, dancing and chanting “Bring them home” and “Am Yisrael Chai.” The group dispersed at about 12:45 p.m., but Mendy Rapoport, a rabbi with Chabad Jewish Student Center, stayed behind with members of the group to perform the Shema prayer.

“I’m very proud to be Jewish today, every day, but even more so today,” Gottesmann said. “To see how every single person here just connected, touched and to get in a group to sing and dance showed (we aren’t) scared to just show face and be together.”

Joe Zhao | Asst. Photo Editor

Participants in the pro-Israel demonstration said they wanted to show solidarity with Jewish people experiencing antisemitism as a result of the ongoing war in Gaza. Gottesmann said she wanted Jewish community members to come together to connect and celebrate their identity.

“(I wanted) to just feel what all the Jewish people are feeling together in unity,” Gottesmann said. “We’re standing together with whatever’s happening on campus to feel more like we are still here and to show that we are not going anywhere.”

Several demonstrators expressed that the campus has felt “isolating” since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Rafaela Torossian, freshman founder and president of SU’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel, said the walk aimed to “unite the community” and show Jewish students that they are not “alone on campus.”

Torossian, who also helped organize the walk, said that this feeling of isolation has only worsened since the start of the encampment on Monday.

“It’s hard to see these encampments on campus that say ‘From the River to the Sea,’” Torossian said. “It means they want to wipe Israel … so seeing that people want to wipe me out on campus signs, that sounds terrifying.”

On the other side of the quad, members of the encampment stood watching, silently holding signs. Adeline Spallina-Jones, a participant at the encampment who is Jewish, said the pro-Israel demonstrators were allowed to be there to exercise their free speech. She said she and other Jewish people at the encampment wanted to stand in solidarity with Palestinians.

“It’s our job to be here,” Spallina-Jones said. “We think that it is incredibly problematic to use our religion, that is based on love and unity, to justify this kind of violence.”

Gottesmann and Spallina-Jones both said they had slight concerns that the opposing side would attempt to instigate conflict, but neither had the intention of sparking that themselves. And Wednesday’s demonstration was peaceful — on opposite sides of the quad, the two groups barely interacted. Spallina-Jones said she felt compelled to support the cause in the encampment as a Jewish person.

“We feel that it is part of our religious duty as Jews to be here, but at the same time they’re allowed to be here as well,” Spallina-Jones said.

In her opening statement at the walk, Gottesmann told demonstrators to not “yell or curse” at people in the encampment, including a graduate student organizer who previously made antisemitic comments. The graduate student is no longer in the GSE, an organizer told The Daily Orange Wednesday morning.

Caleb Slater, a demonstrator and Senate candidate for New York state’s 48th district — which encompasses Syracuse — said the group’s goal was to show through a non-violent demonstration that the Jewish community is not going to let an encampment “harass” or make students “uncomfortable.” He described the past antisemitic behavior by the organizer who has been removed from the encampment as “intolerable” and “outlandish,” citing past tweets they have made.

“What brought me here today is to stand with the students who feel like their education is being harmed and that are feeling harassed or threatened by the actions of the radicals that are perpetuating a genocide of Jewish Americans and Jewish people,” Slater said.

Tal Yechezkell, sophomore Israel co-chair for Syracuse Hillel, said the walk shows how Jewish students on SU’s campus and campuses across the country can unite “quickly and strongly” together.

On April 17, students at Columbia University began their “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the university’s campus in New York City. In response to legal action taken against protestors at Columbia, college students across the country have begun to hold their own encampments.

Yechezkell, who said he has friends on the front lines in Israel and a friend who is currently being held hostage by Hamas, said it has been sad to see what has been going on around campus. The walk was intended to show how they are “strong united” as one Jewish people and Israeli nation, he said.

“I’m not here to hate. We’re here to just show that we want our fathers, our sisters, our brothers, our kids … and our soldiers back home,” Yechezkell said. “That’s what we’re here to do and that’s what I took away from this, how much light we brought to this campus after a few days of darkness.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled Mia Gottesmann’s name as well as the word Israel in the photo caption. The Daily Orange regrets these errors.

Clarification: A previous version of this story had the word “solidarity” in quotations but was removed due to implications regarding the legitimacy of the walk.

Published on May 2, 2024 at 1:10 am

Contact Samantha: saolande@syr.edu