'This didn't start on October 7,' student says of Israel-Hamas war
Atlanta police at Emory University respond to anti-Israel encampment
Officers with the Atlanta Police Department were called to Emory University on Thursday, April 25, 2024, to remove protesters trespassing on campus, school officials said.
ATLANTA – Less than a week after the police response to Emory's anti-Israel encampment set off an uproar, things were calm on the elite university's Atlanta campus on Monday. But passions still ran high among students who continued to chant against Israel and demanded the college president's resignation.
Fox News Digital spoke to several students who were present at Monday's gathering, on everything to why they don't view anti-Zionism as antisemitic, to how they feel about the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, to whether they can support President Biden in November. Dozens of others declined interview requests and opportunities to elaborate on their views.
Anti-Israel voices are often highly sensitive about what they view as the improper conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, while groups like the Anti-Defamation League view anti-Zionism as antisemitic for invoking anti-Jewish tropes.
"Zionism is the movement of creating a Jewish homeland," Ibrahim, a junior at Emory, said. "It's escalated into a very violent, violent movement."
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An anti-police message is seen scrawled on the sidewalk at Emory University on April 29, 2024.
An Emory senior, Emmitt, said Zionism was at the "root of antisemitism."
"They want the genocide to stop, but they don't want any violence inflicted on Jewish people," he said of the movement.
Campus unrest across the country has been prompted by Israel's current war on Hamas in Gaza, which in turn was in direct response to the Oct. 7 attack on the Jewish state. Hamas terrorists killed nearly 1,200 people, committed sexual assaults and took hundreds of hostages.
Asked whether they condemned the Oct. 7 attack, students at the protest who spoke to Fox News Digital tended to equivocate rather than outright condemn it.
"Any sort of attack on civilians is very horrendous and sad, but I think that the issue of October 7 has become such – It's brought up over and over again," Ibrahim said. "But what about October 8? What about October 9? What about October 6? What about every single day since 1948 where Palestinians have been continuously killed and oppressed? Israel got attacked on that day, and obviously that's very sad for the civilians that were involved, but where's the outcry for the Palestinian civilians that have been attacked every single day?"
"All of a sudden, when this happens to White people, it's an international crisis, and there's international outrage, when it's been happening to Palestinians every single day for 75 years," he added. "So I'm not saying that what happened wasn't terrible, but that's happened to Palestinians every single day, and the double standard is very, very clear."
"This didn't start on October 7, and I respect that if there was violence done, I'm sorry for that, but I also want people to understand that this started before even 1948 and that the Palestinian people have been experiencing a genocide for a long time," Emmitt said. "It's not really my place to comment on how people react to a genocide, to an occupation. I don't feel like I have that right."
Another student who attended nearby Morehouse College, Devionne Burnett, and was on Emory's campus Monday, said of Oct. 7, "Honestly, I'm not going to answer that one. I really don't have too much of a strong point on it."
A protester yells as he gets loaded into a police van after being arrested during an anti-Israel protest against the war in Gaza at Emory University on April 25, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia, amid the Israel-Hamas war. (ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP via Getty Images)
Asked what he'd do if he were in Israel's shoes and faced its border situation, Burnett said, "I'm not even capable of answering that question. I haven't thought that far."
He disapproved of Biden's handling of Israel's war on Hamas, although he couldn't say whether it would sway his vote.
Emmitt said he and many of the anti-Israel voices didn't care for either former President Trump or Biden.
"We're not about the two-party system anymore as a generation," he said. "I think it's a broken system. I think it is completely corrupt, and so I don't really have anything positive to say about anybody who's running, you know, and like, if I vote, it's going to be third party, even if it feels like throwing that away."
Asked about Biden's handling of the war, Ibrahim said he detested both major parties because neither was making a true effort at getting a cease-fire. He said he would support Socialism and Liberation party nominee Claudia de la Cruz in the presidential election due to her stance on the war.
A Jewish Emory junior, who asked to keep her name private, claimed Israel's response to the Hamas attack was making matters worse.
"The U.S. and Israel have actually made some of the terrorist situations worse in the Middle East, because they indiscriminately bomb civilian populations, which makes them mad, and that creates even more terrorism," she said. "I think that there is a combination of social and political – I don't think military action is the answer, and I think that all Israel is doing right now, when it's saying it's defending itself, is creating more terrorists and making everyone in the region more unsafe."
She added she couldn't commit to supporting Biden in November if he didn't change course on his Israel policy, even though she'd likely vote straight Democrat down the ballot this fall.
Biden didn't address the Israel-Hamas war, which has become a political headache, at Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner. His administration has continued to give aid to Israel while criticizing its military response and urging restraint. The result has been a dismal approval rating with the public on the Gaza war.
President Joe Biden speaks at the IBEW Construction and Maintenance Conference, Friday, April 19, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
At the rally on Monday, student protesters led pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and anti-police chants – progressive students at the elite college have also voiced objections to "Cop City," the term for a new $109 million Atlanta law enforcement training center that's created fury among the local far left. At one point, the crowd Monday chanted, "No justice, no peace, f--- the racist-a-- police."
They delivered a letter to the administration demanding, among other things, the resignation of Emory President Gregory Fenves, with 104 student worker signers declaring they would either not show up to their campus jobs or punch in and then do nothing. Fenves issued an apology after saying he initially thought the Emory encampments didn't include university students while adding he was focused on keeping the campus safe.
Emory junior Soju Hokari read out the student worker letter to a university representative Monday afternoon, which included referring to the Atlanta Police Department and Georgia State Patrol called in to deal with agitators as "racist." After speaking to another reporter, she declined to speak to Fox News Digital afterward.
Reached for comment, an Emory spokesperson directed Fox News Digital to the university website giving updates about the campus situation.
