Just one year ago, I was in my small dorm room in Amsterdam when I learned about the attack of Oct. 7, 2023, which catalyzed my political awakening about Israel and Palestine. Admittedly, I have never been great at keeping up with global events. The news about the attack made me realize that I knew practically nothing about Israel’s history or political landscape. While studying abroad in Amsterdam, a city occupied by the Nazi regime in the 1940s, I was feeling more connected with my Jewish identity than I ever had. I expected this connection to draw me closer to Israel, but instead, the news from Oct. 7 made me compare the pain and oppression of the Holocaust to the situation in Palestine.
I did not expect Israel, my so-called homeland, to be the oppressor in the story of this region. However, as I saw videos from Gaza and heard Palestinian voices on social media, the more passionate I became about the Palestinian cause. I confronted the all-too-simple tale of the Israeli state as the supposed cure to antisemitism. My passion was not well received by many of my family members, who urged me to do real research and learn the history that would apparently restore my faith in Israel’s claim to be the refuge for Jews.
I started with research-based Instagram accounts such as @letstalkpalestine and @jewishvoiceforpeace, utilizing their citations to dive deeper. Last spring, I even took Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Jewish Studies Geoffrey Levin’s class, the “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” While researching Palestine’s history, I learned that everyone holds a multitude of stories and traumas in our hearts and minds, but we must always listen to the voices of the oppressed. “Your oppression will not save you,” Ta-Nehisi Coates said in his 2024 book “The Message.” The horrors of the Holocaust and centuries of antisemitism do not excuse the militant violence and apartheid the Israeli government has inflicted onto the Palestinian people.
My research only made it clearer to me that European colonists established the Israeli state as a settler-colonial project that has little to do with Judaism and everything to do with a twisted Western fantasy of fascist nationalism and racist apartheid rule. Funded by American taxpayer money, Israel continues to annex land from the native populations of its neighboring Arab countries. Constantly hungry for power, Israel is more interested in regional domination and a never-ending stream of propaganda than actually protecting Jews.
When I returned to Emory University from Amsterdam in January, I attended every peaceful, nondisruptive pro-Palestinian protest on campus. I felt that I owed the people of Palestine at least that much: To leave those more vulnerable than me to fight alone would be cruel. Protesting sucks. It is screaming into the black hole of a steady stream of passersby, trying to convince myself that this is a good use of my time. I got sunburnt, was late to class, threatened on social media and taunted to my face. I called my mom crying because I couldn’t understand why people did not share my perspective or my anger. I felt so hopeless and alone, bewildered as to why there were not more of us protesting.
Around 9:30 a.m. on April 25, I arrived at the Emory community encampment on the Quadrangle. I hoped that this could finally be the catalyst for the University to listen to us. I was only in the encampment for about an hour before dozens of law enforcement officials marched in and the violence began. I hovered just outside the clouds of pepper balls and contorted bodies, hearing my mom’s voice in my head: “Whatever you do, don’t get arrested.”
I cried harder than I have in my whole life as I watched law enforcement throw my comrades to the ground and drag them across the Quad. I could not comprehend that this was happening at my own school. It registered in those moments of brutality that the University would not listen to us. The Emory administration would never jeopardize its power by straying from its obvious affinity with Israel. Even while students were handcuffed for being on their own Quad, there to protest against the social injustices that our professors teach us about in class, the University would not help us.
About an hour later, I heard chanting of “Let them go! Let them go!” coming from near the main campus entrance. The crowd began to grow, and amid the chaos and terror, I felt something new: hope. I felt the spontaneous display of camaraderie after months of isolation mending my soul. I was proud of my campus.
Throughout the afternoon of April 25, I watched a community blossom around me. People passed around food, water and sunscreen. Students led prayers and group songs. We did not leave the Quad all day. Finally, after struggling to detangle my Jewish identity from Israeli violence for so long in what felt like solitude, I was not alone. As I cried into my pillow that night, I was not alone. As I chanted for justice on the Quad the next day, I was not alone.
For a university that preaches advancing social justice and pushes students to implement coursework outside classrooms, it was ironic that the Emory Police Department destroyed our encampment quickly and violently. I will forever be traumatized by what I experienced that day and only more traumatized that Emory valued the status quo over my safety and rights.
Emory administrators: I learned more about activism and justice in April than I had in my three years prior as a humanities student. However, I also learned that I have the power to force the Emory administration to show their hand. I know that I am not alone in the fight for collective liberation because I have seen that injustice inspires resistance. Radical hope can be exhausting, tedious work, but I am one student of millions who will keep fighting anyway.
Morgan Starnes (25C) is from Oakton, Va.
