A keffiyeh was tied around the rearview mirror of a large red pickup truck, which had two American flags attached to it. On Saturday, October 12, the vehicle, which displayed the slogan “Palestine will be free” in white letters on one of its windows, accompanied the 50 or so demonstrators across the campus of the University of Missouri, in the city of Columbia.
A few cars honked their horns in support while groups on bar terraces of this student city watched and laughed at the procession as it moved along the sidewalks. The students, many waving Palestinian flags, stopped at the town hall, where a minute’s silence had been observed. They shouted slogans condemning the war in the Middle East, including “Remember students in Gaza killed by US bullets”; “Israel, USA, how many kids did you kill today?”; and “Biden and Harris picked their side,” referencing the American president’s support for Israel.
With less than a month to go before the presidential election pitting Kamala Harris against Donald Trump, the Democratic Party’s relentless support for Israel is “disheartening” some of these young people, explained Dina Albash, a 20-year-old biology student who arrived in the Midwest from Baghdad in the late 2000s. According to the young woman, who co-organizes this weekly event with the group Mizzou Students for Justice in Palestine, the number of demonstrators has dropped from several hundred in late 2023 and early 2024 to just a few dozen today.
A little over a year after the start of the war in the Middle East, demonstrations in support of Palestine are no longer as popular on American campuses. Since the start of the 2024 school year, many students have expressed weariness after months of activism, and new university regulations across the country are further restricting rallies advocating for a ceasefire.
Large Middle Eastern diaspora
The University of California has implemented a “zero tolerance” policy for face-covering masks and blockades across its 10 campuses. At the University of Pennsylvania, demonstrations are now banned in classrooms, student residences and most public places on campus. And at New York’s famed Columbia University, whose president, Nemat Shafik, resigned in August following criticism over the management of pro-Palestinian rallies during the 2023-2024 academic year, a fence and security guards now surround the lawn where students gathered in May.
“They want to be able to stop it before it can really start,” said Brendan Roediger, an attorney and law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. At this private institution in Missouri’s second biggest city, the management reserves the right to approve each demonstration in advance, which must be held in a pre-defined “speech zone.”
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