College students are reportedly vowing to continue their anti-Israel protests, despite the Israel and Hamas ceasefire deal.
While the ceasefire and release of hostages has offered a sense of relief among pro-Israel communities across the country, anti-Israel students reportedly vow to continue their demonstrations on college campuses, claiming not all of their demands have been met.
“Nothing fundamentally changes at UCLA or colleges in general,” Dylan Kupsh — a doctoral computer science major at UCLA who has faced student discipline procedures for his alleged actions that the university says violated campus policies — told the Los Angeles Times.
“Our university is still invested in the oppression of Palestine,” Kupsh added. “Students won’t rest until the university divests.”
Other students claim the ceasefire will only infuse new energy into their activism, which many view as unabashed antisemitism and the minimization of the plight of Israeli hostages.
“We can momentarily feel a little bit of happiness, there is at least momentary end to the genocide,” Ryan Witt, president of Students for Justice in Palestine at Cal State Channel Islands, told the newspaper.
“There have been pictures of children in Gaza celebrating. I’m not dismissing that. But also recognizing that we need to keep fighting,” Witt added.
UCLA political science professor Graeme Blair, who described the release of Israeli hostages as a “door to a very dark chamber” that “has been opened and light has begun to peek out,” told Los Angeles Times that the climate for anti-Israel activism on campuses had gotten worse.
The professor also claimed that the U.S. government is aggressively treating pro-Palestinian rhetoric as antisemitic.
“The Trump administration is using every federal lever from the Justice Department to the Education Department to the State Department to crack down on antisemitism,” Blair said. “Universities like UCLA are, on their own and because of Trump pressure, continuing to arrest, discipline and fire people speaking out.”
Notably, the October 7, 2023 massacre of Jews in Israel by Hamas galvanized students into putting on confrontational pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel demonstrations on college campuses across the country.
Moreover, the reaction from pro-Palestine students in the West opened the eyes of many who found themselves shocked to see how widespread antisemitism is on college campuses.
UCLA professor of Jewish history David N. Myers suggested that the yearslong protests on college campuses may have played a role in swaying “American public opinion” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“And that should be a wake-up call to the pro-Israel movement,” Myers said.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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