#encampments

by A.J. Caschetta

Since the primary “advocacy group” behind the post-October 7 protests is the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), it’s not surprising that Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) has been its primary ally on “the inside.” FJP, after all, exists solely to provide public relations services for SJP.

When University of Michigan students attempted to take over a building on the Ann Arbor campus, they were met with force from campus and local police. The university’s FJP chapter described it as “a beautiful display of unity, moral courage and justice.”

Georgetown University’s Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine published an “Open Letter” on May 13, 2024, calling the encampment at George Washington University “a positive, peaceful, respectful protest” and lavishly praising the “students [who] managed to create and sustain an orderly, clean, and lively encampment, with two kitchens, a medical center, and an outdoor classroom where students learned, discussed, sang, prayed, and danced.”

Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) saw something different with her own eyes: “defacement of buildings, destruction of property [and] threats against Jewish students.”

Definitely Not Antisemitic

Describing the encampments as beautiful was often not enough. It was equally important to assert that, contrary to what anyone could plainly see, they were not antisemitic. Outright denials were common, such as the University of Michigan FSJP’s denunciation of “the repressive actions and demonizing language of President Ono ... – in particular, using the mendacious cudgel of anti-semitism.”

But mere denials were not enough for “insiders” defending the encampments at Columbia University and George Washington University, which received the most attention of the 100-plus encampments at schools in the U.S. They found it important to impart a Jewish character to the protests.

George Mason University’s Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine’s praised the encampment at GWU as “an inclusive space of free education, food security, medical care, and creativity. They organized teach-ins, prayed, made art, held a Shabbat service.”

Describing the encampments as beautiful was often not enough. It was equally important to assert that, contrary to what anyone could plainly see, they were not antisemitic.

A Reuters article describing the Columbia encampment as a “living history lesson,” nonchalantly adds that protesters ate “free kidney beans and rice and kosher Passover snacks” and asserts that “Reuters journalists have seen students peacefully chatting, reading, eating and holding both Jewish and Muslim prayer ceremonies.”

When four of the most far-left members of the New York City Council (Tiffany Cabán, Shahana Hanif, Sandy Nurse, and Alexa Avilés) toured the Columbia encampment, they wrote about what it was “really like.” Taking umbrage with descriptions of “a cesspit of antisemitic hatred and a threat to the safety of all Jewish students and faculty,” Cabán et al. countered that, “Far from a danger zone where Jews should fear to tread, the encampment hosted a large kabbalat shabbat service on Friday evening, followed the next night by an equally well-attended Havdalah service.”

Enlisting anti-Zionist Jews in the cause provides a shield against charges of antisemitism. As Clemens Heni puts it, “Jewish anti-Zionists give hatred of Israel a kind of Kosher stamp.” But it a weak shield based on a false premise.

SOCIETY — 134/262 — Encampments

In the Middle Ages, various groups of soldiers, bandits, guards, or lone warriors roamed the lands, often changing their place of residence. They lived in makeshift buildings, shelters, or tents erected around a central fire. Sometimes they stayed in one camp for several days, sometimes only for one night before moving again. Key factors for choosing a suitable campsite included access to water, food, fodder, and wood. Camps were rarely set up in villages or near castles. Only the retinues of lords and nobility stayed there. During wars or while fleeing, they camped under the open sky, as there was no time to build or dismantle a camp. The lordly armies camped at places where the summoned national militia, reinforcements, or allies gradually gathered. The longest encampments (sometimes lasting several months) occurred during the siege of fortresses or on riverbanks, where an enemy army waited on the other side. Tents were intentionally set up close to each other for security (like walls). The largest, in the centre of the camp, was the commander's, and the tents nearby served nobles and officers. Simple shelters for soldiers and horses surrounded these. The army could camp separately in several locations. Larger camps often included a field chapel, a place for treating the wounded, or an improvised brothel. Long-term camping was more challenging due to the need for supplies, which were always provided by administrators of nearby affiliated townships. If the army was on enemy territory, foraging units were sent out to find food and wood. If supplies were insufficient, they had to move or abandon the campaign. It was difficult to maintain adequate hygiene and morale in the camp. Soldiers were threatened by epidemics, mutual quarrels, and fights. Disputes were strictly judged to maintain order.

TRIVIA

— The Hussite settlement that became the town of Tábor grew out of the same kind of temporary encampments that armies and wandering bands used throughout the Middle Ages. In early 1420, a small group of radical Hussite preachers and soldiers left the surrounding countryside seeking a defensible place to establish as their own. It is said a group led by a priest called Vanček and a figure known as Hromada, the young preacher Petr Hromádka from Jistebnice, gathered followers in and took the nearby town of Ústí by surprise during Carnival time. They soon sought a more permanent camp on a nearby rocky hill known as Hradiště, where they founded a new settlement on 21 February 1420. The site was chosen for its natural defensibility, and as more supporters arrived it grew rapidly into a fortified community.

The settlement soon took on the name Tábor, after the biblical Mount Tabor, and became the central stronghold of the radical wing of the Hussite movement — Taborites. It soon became more than a temporary encampment as its inhabitants pooled their goods into a shared treasury, abandoned traditional taxes and interest, and sought to organize themselves as a community of equals in preparation for what they believed were the final days before Christ’s return.

Although later tradition often credited Jan Žižka with the founding of Tábor, historians emphasize that Hromádka and his companions were the original organizers who invited Žižka’s support, who was at Plzeň at the time, after the settlement was established. Tábor quickly became a fortress, and a base of operations for the Taborites.

Organizers of a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at the University of Toronto say the university is ignoring their demands and instead focusing on the logistics of the demonstration.

Erin Mackey, one of the spokespeople for the protesters, says university administrators are giving them "the runaround" by discussing sanitation and other issues related to the encampment but are "not addressing the core issue."

Demonstrators have been calling on the university to disclose ties with the Israeli government and divest from Israeli companies.

Full article

by Dion J. Pierre

“The Chabad Rabbi of UCLA was just physically assaulted live on camera,” said Harvard University student Shabbos Kestenbaum. “The students subsequently began calling him a ‘Zionist pedophile Rabbi,’ telling him to ‘go back to Poland.’ We are in such a dark, dangerous time in our country, with almost no leadership fighting back.”

Others, commenting on the swarming of vice chancellor Beck, suggested that UCLA’s admissions committee potentially selected the students to reward their allegiance to the politics of the far left.

“You’d have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at this UCLA administrator,” said Noah Pollack, a contributor to the Washington Free Beacon. “These are the people he wanted on campus. These are the people his admissions committee selects for. And now he gets to live with them while they threaten and humiliate him.”

Emily Austin, a pro-Israel activist and sports broadcaster, told The Algemeiner in a statement: “These students feel comfortable engaging in what increasingly looks like domestic terrorism because the authorities allow it. They do and say the most abhorrent things knowing there will be no consequences. This is a result of weak leadership, especially in California, where leaders’ failures stretch far beyond the campus.”

The riot at UCLA continues an unprecedented year in higher education in which students emerged in the hundreds and thousands to declare solidarity with Hamas, terrorism, and efforts to destroy Israel, the world’s only Jewish state. Their demonstrations followed Hamas’ atrocities on Oct. 7, when the terrorist organization murdered over 1,200 people, kidnapped more than 250 others, and perpetrated systematic sexual violence during the terrorist group’s invasion of southern Israel.

By: Eric Kaufmann

Published: Jul 17, 2025

Will the Trump administration’s war against antisemitism on Ivy League campuses push Jewish students into the Republican camp, or will the young right’s growing skepticism of Israel leave Jewish students politically isolated?

In my new report, “Jewish Inhibition, Conservative Freedom: New Trends in Expressive Freedom on Elite American Campuses,” I discovered something startling in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE)’s large-scale student surveys. The proportion of Jewish students at Ivy League institutions who said they self-censored their opinions several times a week jumped from 10%-13% during 2021-23 to 35% in 2024. At the same time, conservative Ivy League students experienced a big drop in self-censoring, from 55%-58% during 2021-23 to 31% in 2024. The pattern could be seen across the full range of colleges, but was most pronounced in prestigious universities whose students lean left.

A closer look at the 2024 data shows that the pro-Palestinian tent encampments had a big impact: Before they went up on April 17, 28% of Ivy League Jewish students self-censored. Afterward, 40% did. Across all institutions in the FIRE data, statistical analysis shows that the encampments increased Jewish self-censorship while reducing it for conservatives. Conservative speech has for years been the least free of any major demographic, but Jews have now converged with them. In the Ivy League, Jews now self-censor more than conservatives do.

Why would Jewish elite students feel more inhibited at precisely the time conservative students feel freer? The main reason seems to be that student-led cancel culture pivoted from focusing on race and gender to foregrounding Israel-Palestine. As recently as 2022, FIRE data shows that nearly two-thirds of student-on-student targeting revolved around perceived race or gender transgressions. By 2024, 65% focused on Israel-Palestine, with just 25% concerning race or gender.

This took heat off conservative students and placed it on Jews. I argue that this is because race and gender are central to the identity politics ideology of the campus left while Israel-Palestine is somewhat secondary: Though it can be shoehorned into a racial frame, it primarily concerns the actions of a faraway state. Conservatives are viewed negatively primarily because of the left’s sense that they are moral transgressors on race or gender, not because of their views on Israel. This was especially true under the Biden administration when the FIRE surveys I examined were fielded, with leftist animus over Middle East politics directed principally at the Democratic establishment.

One result of the left’s pivot to Israel-Palestine has been to alienate many Jewish students from the far left, and, to a lesser degree, from the left in general. Prior to 2024, FIRE data shows that Jews leaned left of the average American student, including on elite campuses. But, according to the 2024 data, most Jewish students, even liberals, support Israel while non-Jewish students, apart from conservatives, do not. For instance, American students in 2024 were somewhat more likely to say that Israel rather than Hamas caused the “2023 outbreak of violence in the Middle East.” Among liberal Jewish students, 53% said Hamas started the violence and 20% that Israel did, placing them far closer to conservative Jews, 83% of whom said Hamas started it, than liberal non-Jews, just 14% of whom blamed Hamas.

When the encampments went up on elite campuses, Jewish students abandoned the far left in droves. The share of Jewish Ivy League students who identify as “very liberal” on a 7-point ideology scale declined from 40% before the encampments to 13% after they appeared. The proportion of “strong Democrats” tanked from 37% to 14% while the Republican share rose from 12% to 18%. Ivy League Jews went from being well to the left of the median Ivy League student to leaning right of the average.

But non-Jewish conservative students have not rallied to Israel, and clearly do not feel chilled by the left’s protests against Israel. While conservative students are twice as likely to blame Hamas as Israel for starting hostilities in October 2023, most see both as culpable or have no opinion. Just 38% blame Hamas. This means that liberal Jewish students are considerably more pro-Israel (53% blame Hamas) than conservative non-Jews.

Young conservatives prioritize “America First” and free speech over supporting Israel and combating antisemitism. Recent polling finds that conservatives under 50 have shifted from nearly two-thirds support for Israel to a balanced position. A University of Maryland poll finds that more Republicans under 35 attribute campus protests to Israel’s actions in Gaza than to antisemitism.

So conservative students on elite campuses have a weak sense of linked fate with Jewish students who are feeling hard-pressed by their liberal non-Jewish classmates. The result is an increasingly isolated and politically alienated group of elite Jewish students, who are likely to have an outsize influence on the future of Jewish American political loyalty.

Jewish students are at a crossroads.

Much depends on how the Trump administration’s targeting of elite universities unfolds. If it solidifies the connection between Israel and conservatism on campus, Jewish students could move into the Republican column in larger numbers. If conservative students follow suit by embracing the cause of Israel, this could smooth the path for Jews to move right. Liberal students could then react by policing the right-wing minority more aggressively, reversing conservatives’ recent gains in freedom of expression.

But another scenario is possible, in which the Tucker Carlson isolationist wing of the MAGA movement detaches young Republicans from Israel. Trump could make a deal with Harvard, Columbia, and other universities, weakening the focus on antisemitism. If so, Jewish students—and perhaps American Jews more broadly—could find themselves caught between the antipathy of the left and the apathy of the right in a no-man’s-land of political alienation.

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For those who can, get on down to the unis! Anytime of day or night. Bring a tent, some provisions and wear you kuffiyeh! If you can’t stay the nights, just visit and bring some friends. Demand our unis cut ties with Israeli institutions, stop exchange programs and divest!

Usyd gaza solidarity encampment info available on the studentsforpalestinesydneyuni Instagram account

Three-quarters of Americans have heard about the recent arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrating on college campuses throughout the country. Nearly half of people oppose the protests, while around one in four support them. Few support demonstrators' calls for divestment, and one in three believe college administrators have not responded harshly enough to the protesters.

Americans are more likely to strongly or somewhat oppose (47%) than support (28%) pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses throughout the country in recent weeks, according to a YouGov poll this week of 9,012 U.S. adults. American Muslims support the protests by 75% to 14%; Jewish Americans, however, oppose them by 72% to 18%. Adults under 45 are twice as likely as older adults to be in favor of the protests (40% vs. 19%).

“Encampments are a sign that we have not succeeded in connecting folks to the housing and services that they need. But there’s a human-centered way and a trauma-informed way to approach moving folks out of an encampment and back into housing,” said Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow at the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

According to Visotzky, the alternative and less effective approach “refuses to see the humanity” in encampments and instead discusses them as though they’re piles of trash.