On Friday, February 9, Princeton’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organized a student walkout to protest Israel’s campaign in Gaza. The assembly joined in chants and cheered on speeches in support of a “free Palestine” from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea, support of Houthi piracy, and the end of the “settler-colonial” state of Israel.
Demonstrators regrouped on Wednesday, February 14 – after a postponement due to inclement weather – for an hour-long “die-in” in front of Firestone Library. About 40 students lay silently on the ground with signs while distributing flyers protesting Israeli military actions.
These demonstrations are concurrent with Israel’s ongoing offensive within the Gaza Strip, including bombardment and a ground invasion. Prompted by Hamas’ invasion of Israel, massacre of Israeli civilians, and kidnapping of about 250 hostages on October 7, 2023, Israel has requested that Gazan civilians evacuate combat zones while the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attempts to destroy Hamas.
In Firestone Plaza, about 150 students gathered around 2:30 P.M. on February 9 to collectively call for an “Intifada” and an Israeli ceasefire. This marked the fourth campus protest against Israel for policies described as “genocide” and “apartheid” by representatives from numerous progressive student groups. The demonstration was led primarily by graduate students. (A full recording of the protest can be found here.)
Unlike previous protests, attendees did not attempt to obstruct journalists’ cameras, and pro-Israel students did not stage a counter-demonstration. On several occasions, one pro-Israel attendee vocally objected, but the protest continued unabated.
Anti-Israel students gather in Firestone Plaza.
Patrick Jaojoco, a Princeton PhD student in African American Studies and Architecture and secretary for SJP, delivered the opening speech, imploring the University to “end its ongoing illegal occupation of these Native lands” and “its investment in the destruction of life and homes for the settler colonization of Palestine.” Jaojoco went on to compare the US and Israel to programs of “settler colonization,” decrying “the illegal occupying force of America” as an agent of colonialism worldwide.
Jaojoco compared Gaza to the “history of American Indian reservations in the so-called ‘US.’” He then claimed that Zionism and the two-state solution are “just another way to say settler colonialism.” These pronouncements were met with cheers from the crowd.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Zionism refers to the ideological movement supporting Israel’s existence as an independent state and as a homeland for the Jewish people, who have maintained millennia-long connections to the land and hopes to return. The two-state solution is a proposed plan to achieve peace in the region by establishing two independent national states, one for Jews and one for Palestinians. Variations of the proposal have been made since the British Mandate era, most notably in the 1947 Partition Plan accepted by the UN and Israel. Arabs have consistently rejected the plan and launched wars aiming to erase Jewish sovereignty from the Middle East.
Jaojoco also asserted that “Intifada is just another word for liberation.” Intifada, or “uprising” in Arabic, refers to periods of violence against Jews in Israel in the late 1980s and early 2000s during which over 1,000 Jews were murdered.
“It’s not just a call to liberation – it’s a call to harm Jewish people and harm people in Israel,” Yair Gritzman ’27 told The Tory. “It’s people cheering and celebrating the attack of some of my family or my relatives.”
During the walkout, Princeton parent Ari Powell responded to the protestor’s chants, loudly asking: “Do the hostages matter?,” referring to Hamas’ kidnapping of over 200 innocents without distinction of age, sex, nationality, or fighting status. Sireen Sawalha, a local Palestinian teacher, responded from the crowd, “No, they serve in the Israeli army, they don’t matter,” to which Jaojoco replied, “Amen.”
Jaojoco then delivered the remainder of his speech just inches from Powell’s face, prompting Powell to request he back away. Jaojoco remained in place, loudly urging the demonstrators to continue their struggle “so that these Zionists, these colonizers” – pointing directly at Powell – “on this campus and everywhere, know for certain not to f**k with us!”
Demonstrators march through East Pyne to Nassau Hall.
The protest continued with more chants and a march to Nassau Hall, where Public Safety had erected white barrier fences. Chants included “There is only one solution, Intifada, revolution,” “No peace on stolen land,” “Resistance is justified when people are occupied” or “colonized,” and “Israel bombs, Princeton pays, how many kids have you killed today?” Several student speakers echoed the theme that oppression anywhere deserves the attention of everyone, and led chants such as “in our millions, in our billions, we are all Palestinians.”
The crowd also chanted, “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around,” endorsing the Houthis’ acts of piracy and kidnapping of international trade vessels in the Red Sea in ostensible support of the Palestinian cause. The Houthis, an Islamist tribal faction of Yemen, are a federally designated terror group that has seized control of much of the country while acting as an Iranian proxy. The group’s sabotage of global commerce and threat to foreign civilians have prompted a US- and UK-led international campaign against them.
Another student with the Princeton Indigenous Advocacy Coalition condemned the US, the UK, and France alongside Israel. “We must also recognize the solidarity received from countries such as South Africa and Yemen,” she added, then alluded to freeing the Congo and Sudan, which face their own conflict-driven humanitarian crises.
A representative of Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) began to read off statistics about poor living standards in Gaza. Powell attempted to interject, but the crowd drowned him out with repeated shouts of “Shame!” At a later point he continued asking about the civilian hostages taken by Hamas, meeting jeers and shouts of “Shame!”
“I think it’s really disgraceful,” Powell told The Tory after the event. “I didn’t say anything offensive, I didn’t say anything rude… The fact that they just boo out and drown out any dissenting voices is demonstrative of their closed-mindedness, unfortunately.”
Powell was also dismayed by what he perceived as an “authoritarian left” that maintained that “their outcomes should be achieved by any means necessary” while cloaking their “hatred” in language of peace and solidarity. “Even the chants here – it’s ‘Free, free Palestine’ at the cost of basically eliminating all of the Jews in Israel.”
Sireen Sawalha, a local Palestinian teacher, addressed the crowd at length. Presenting her identification documents to the crowd, she spoke at length about the difficulties she faces at borders and West Bank checkpoints. “I can’t dispute what she said and it sucks,” Powell later reflected, “and that’s the result of the actions of the Palestinians.” Powell argued that the legal ambiguity associated with statelessness arises from Palestinian leadership’s repeated rejection of proposals for statehood since the 20th century.
In response to Powell’s demands for an answer to the hostages kidnapped from Israel by Hamas on October 7, Sawalha announced to the crowd, “How about the 10,000 Palestinian[s] in prison?” Sawalha went on to imply that most Israeli Jews do not belong there. “We did not come from Europe, we did not come from anywhere else… That’s my land.”
Gritzman, whose cousins and grandparents live in Israel, objected to this view. “Part of being Jewish is caring about the State of Israel and wanting to return, and that’s a very fundamental part of our religion.”
Ellen Li ’24, an SJP organizer, denounced Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon, where the Islamist Hezbollah has been massing since last year. Li asserted that Israel’s destruction of Gazan infrastructure “sounds like they are wiping out all of Gaza.”
Li went on to contrast “the outrage here in this country, on this campus” following early reports of Hamas’ atrocities with the “silence” at Princeton as the US and Princeton “pay for Israel to kill an average of 100 Palestinian children per day.” The Gaza Health Ministry is the most frequently cited source for casualty data in media reports, but it has also been noted for exaggerating death tolls. While some media outlets and NGOs have defended the Ministry’s reliability, many have questioned its independence from Hamas. In January, Israel estimated it had killed about 10,500 enemy combatants, which was about 44 percent of the total 24,000 war casualties reported by the Gaza Health Ministry.
Li called for continued demonstrations. “We have a duty to stand up to [the] University, because they are our oppressors in this empire, and we say no more.” Public protests will eventually be able to “bring down the empire” because “every rally, every march, is a rehearsal for the revolution.” She capped the rally with several calls to “globalize the Intifada.”
Other students told The Tory that there was a “double standard” for what kinds of calls to action were tolerated by the community. “They’re calling for terrorist attacks against Jews,” said Maya Rubenstein ’25. “If someone said the same thing about a massacre against black people or indigenous people, they’d be canceled.”
After the rally, an attendee asked Sawalha what her calls for “Intifada” had meant. She emphasized the literal definition of the term: “stand up, uprising, revolution” – with the objective of making a two-state solution impossible.
Sireen Sawalha’s family biography describes “the involvement of her brother Iyad in armed resistance in the First and Second Intifada,” specifically his leadership in the Islamic Jihad. During that period, Israeli officials state that Iyad engineered at least two bus bombings which killed 32 Israelis; he was later killed when he opened fire on Israeli forces attempting to arrest him. Sireen’s book “confronts readers with the politics and complexities of armed resistance and the ethical tensions and contradictions that arise” as a result. She has also publicly lamented Iyad’s legacy as a terrorist but has not disputed the charges against him.
Sawalha drew a comparison between Intifada and the American Revolution. “Samuel Adams was tarring and feathering the tax collector, but there [are] other people who stood up and spoke in peaceful protest. So whatever you translate [Intifada as], it could have many meanings.”
Protesters lie down in front of Firestone Library.
On Wednesday, February 15, protestors gathered again in Firestone Plaza for a “die-in” in which they lay on the ground silently with posters. Sara Ryave ’24, a member of the Alliance for Jewish Progressives (AJP), told The Tory that her participation in the protest was “an act of empathy” with Palestinians suffering from the war in Gaza and an attempt to raise awareness of the conflict. “The point is to disrupt what is normal here,” she said. “To get to the library, to study, to go do all the things you do at Princeton, you have to walk around a bunch of bodies.”
A group called Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD) also distributed flyers at the event announcing plans to initiate a divestment campaign by raising its concerns at an open meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) on Monday, February 19.
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