Students at Texas A&M University joined other college students across the country in protesting against the conflict in Gaza on Tuesday.
The afternoon protest in Rudder Plaza was organized by the Texas A&M branch of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (TAMUYDSA). Protestors wearing face scarves and face masks marched around A&M’s campus holding hand-painted anti-Zionist signs while shouting chants against the invasion of Gaza — which began after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas that killed approximately 1,200 Israelis. Since the subsequent Israeli military response, over 30,000 Palestinians are reported to have died in Gaza.
Akkad Ajam, the outreach coordinator for TAMUYDSA, said the protest was part of a series of monthlong events in support of Palestinians.
“We had eight events planned for, as we called it, ‘Palestine Awareness Month,’” he said. “We wanted to do it during Ramadan. … We had a mic night, a visual, a movie night and then [Monday] during the festival we read poetry.”
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The events were also set up as a means to raise money for a family that Ajam said is currently stuck in Rafah in southern Gaza and is trying to escape to Egypt. According to Ajam, this can be a very expensive process.
“Fatma and her family — a mother, father and son — are just trying to evacuate,” he said. “In order to evacuate, you need to pay $5,000 per person. So they need $15,000 and an extra $5,000 for getting through and for starting a new life once in Egypt.”
So far, Ajam said the GoFundMe account has raised nearly $5,000.
The protest on Texas A&M’s campus comes just days after 100 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested at Columbia University in New York. Many have accused the pro-Palestinian student protests of spreading antisemitism and President Joe Biden told reporters shouting questions Monday in Virginia that he condemned the “antisemitic protests” on college campuses.
Ajam said the protest on Texas A&M’s campus was not antisemitic in nature and was only trying to raise awareness about the conflict.
“If you look up the definitions of them, they’re inherently different. I think the Jewish Voices for Peace group proves that it’s not a Semitic issue, it’s a Zionist issue,” he said of the difference between being against Israel’s political policies and being against the Jewish people. “They have different names for a reason because they seek something different. There are rabbis all over the world who are criticizing it and do not believe that it lines up with Judaism in any way.”
On March 27, Gov. Greg Abbott passed an executive order directing all public universities in the state to re-evaluate their free speech policy and to establish punishments for antisemitic rhetoric. Universities were given 90 days to review their policies.
In a statement announcing the order, Abbott said that Texas must ensure that college campuses are safe for all students.
“The State of Texas stands with the Jewish community, and we must escalate our efforts to protect against antisemitism at Texas colleges and universities and across our state,” Abbott said.
Although Ajam said the protesters did have some worries about whether the university would interfere with their protest, he said they faced no resistance from the Texas A&M Division of Risk, Ethics and Compliance.
“We’ve been working with them with the festival, they help us set it up,” he said. “They were very unbiased towards the matter and just wanted to make sure our voices were heard.”
Before the march began, Issam Ismail, a third-year microbiology Ph.D. student, spoke to the protesters. He said that both his parents were originally from Palestine and accused of being inhumane to Palestinian civilians.
“The Israeli government is using starvation as a weapon of war, collectively punishing the entire population of Gaza,” he said. “This is no accident but a direct policy. As Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Minister of Defense, stated on Oct. 9, [2023], ‘I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed.’”
Ismail said the U.S. is equally to blame for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, sighting the recent multibillion dollar military aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that passed the House and passed the Senate late Tuesday.
“The Biden administration is just as complicit as the Israeli government is in the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” he said. “No amount of airdrops or ports building can cover our shame for our ironclad support for what the International Court of Justice has declared as a plausible genocide. Biden knows exactly what has occurred in Gaza. … And yet just two days ago, Congress approved $26 billion to be sent to Israel.”