The building that houses the Israeli Consulate sits on the corner of 42nd Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan’s east side. On the building’s first terrace, a large and lonely Israeli flag limps over the intersection. But on the afternoon of October 9, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, that flag overlooked a mass of waving flags of black, white, green, and red: the second rally for Palestine in the city in as many days.

From the ground, it seemed that the police had prepared for the demonstration they wanted to supervise, and not the one that materialized. Across 42nd Street, a group of Zionist counter protesters was given two perpendicular lengths of the city block, though there were only enough individuals to mass at the corner with Israeli banners. Meanwhile, the many hundreds of people who came out for Palestinian rights were corralled by barricades into the bus lane on the west side of Second Avenue. It was impossible to move or stand comfortably within this wall of humanity, and the police barred anyone, even passersby from approaching 42nd Street, lest the sensibilities of the Zionists get offended. Nevertheless the activists, young and old, stood with fortitude and in good spirits. The chants of “Shame on you!” from across the street were barely audible and swiftly buried by the incessant cries for freedom for the people of Gaza, of the occupied West Bank, of Palestine.

Sights like these are bound to be more common, as more students and youth join the solidarity movement for Palestine, whether or not they have a personal connection to the land, in the spirit of internationalism and progress. This process had been taking place even before the escalating events of October 7.

Two weeks before that Saturday, the Palestine Writes Festival was underway at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. An MDSO member was able to attend this conference on the cultural production of Palestinian writers and artists. Unsurprisingly, the festival was attacked by national Zionist groups like Hillel, painting the event as a hostile anti-Semitic act that threatened Jewish students. The UPenn administration — which rarely addresses criticism of campus events — released a statement condemning anti-Semitism, caving in to the false equivalence between being pro-Palestine and being anti-Semitic. The festival itself had a celebratory atmosphere with food, poetry, handicrafts, and play areas for children. The only “threat” to the campus that weekend was perhaps the pervasive rainfall.

One panel from the festival that seems especially resonant after October 7 was the discussion on the literary legacy of Ghassan Kanafani, by the poet Huzama Habayeb and the editor Louis Allday, moderated by Sara Saleh. For Habayeb, the author of Men in the Sun helped to bring the movement for Palestine “beyond nostalgia.” He wrote fiction that showed how “invisible” individuals still shape historical events, leading toward a collective solution. While Habayeb underscored the ways Kanafani’s work resists easy romanticism, Allday wished to push back against the sanitization of Kanafani after his martyrdom, as befalls all revolutionary figures. That Kanafani’s legacy is restricted to his cultural work is part of such a “liberal reframing,” Allday said. The talk ended on Allday’s affirmation of the right of Palestinians to defend their national rights with armed force. “Armed struggle is the minority. It should be the norm.”

Now that militant groups in Palestine have carried out consequential actions, liberal outlets are working overtime to reinforce the same “reframing.” This framework never acknowledges the oppression of the Israeli state, never puts the Israeli institutions, businesses, and ministries that extract profits from the Occupied Territories on the docket, and leaves only a gesture “against the occupation,” if they ever acknowledge the Palestinians at all.

Just one example comes from Donna E. Shalala, Interim President of The New School. The way her statement of October 9 refers to “the multi-pronged and deadly attack on Israel,” one would think the conflict had only begun on October 7. One would think the guerilla actions of October 7 were completely unprovoked. In a follow-up message, posted the next day, Shalala still refrained from identifying any active role played by Israel leading up to the current situation. Moreover, she spoke of “deep concern and sadness for the innocent citizens of Palestine.” Excuse me? “Innocent” Palestinians, implying that there are guilty Palestinians, outside the “moral” calculus that scrutinizes the Palestinian resistance while remaining blind to the brutality of the IDF and the settlers. As for “citizens of Palestine,” that phrase may have been applicable 100 years ago, in the days of the British Mandate after World War 1, but Palestinians in Israel have been mere passport-holders without enfranchisement since 1980. They used to routinely have their residencies revoked until the Oslo Agreement of 1993. They do not have freedom of movement out of the Gaza Strip and their movement in the West Bank is strictly controlled. “Citizens of Palestine” was flung in with the same casual disregard from the statement of the facts of the Israeli apartheid system, and the cycles of explosive violence it fuels. 

Shalala may not be familiar enough with history to know why “citizens of Palestine” is a muddled thought, but she is sensible to the fact that the American political system is giving Israel the tacit approval for an unprecedented collective punishment of Gaza. This repetitive messaging, like similar statements from other universities, is a concrete example of the efforts by administrators to depoliticize and indoctrinate students with a pro-imperialist mindset, while reinforcing the collective denial of the violence of the Zionist state that grips our national consciousness.

The unequivocal consequence of the events of October 7 is that Palestine will NOT be sidelined in discussions on the future state configuration of the region. Palestine is now in the foreground of the normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The premises of the 2020 Abraham Accords have also been rebuffed, though the Biden administration is reportedly scrambling to reaffirm the agreement. The US and Israeli states believed that their deal-making with the Arab states could carry on without any regard to the Palestinians. They thought the Palestinians were irrelevant. They were wrong.

Student activists of all sorts have already begun working with Pro-Palestine organizations, on and off campus, to organize and consolidate our forces. Revolutionary students can and must take on the role of educators where our schools and public figures have failed, through mass meetings, open forums, on-campus agitation against material support for Israel, and more. We must break the silence on Israeli apartheid, imposed upon us by our imperialist society, and dispel the ignorance surrounding Zionist colonial oppression. These efforts will find a place in an international movement to transform the conditions of the Middle East, so that a brighter future opens for the working masses of the region, regardless of nationality or religion.