Disclaimer: Halil Yenigun’s quotes are his opinion as an individual and do not represent the Abbasi Program as an associate director or as an organization.
Many protests focused on the Israel-Hamas conflict began after Oct. 7, 2023, but a good number of Americans have been paying attention to these issues for decades.
“Historically, Palestine has always been kind of a forbidden issue in the U.S.,” said Nickolas Saba, a Palestinian resident from Los Gatos.
Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip stormed nearby Israeli towns on Oct. 7, 2023, killing dozens of people and abducting multiple victims during a surprise attack, according to a Oct 8., 2023 article from the Associated Press (AP) News.
Hamas is a Islamist militant group that governs Gaza and is considered a terrorist organization by multiple countries, according to a Thursday article from the Council on Foreign Relations.
In response to the attack, Israel launched air strikes into Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared war with Hamas, according to the same article from AP News.
“My initial reaction was just fear of what would come next,” Saba said. “There was no moment where I thought this would be good in any way.”
Jewish Faculty and Staff Association hosted a vigil for Israeli victims and for community members on Tower Lawn days after the attack, according to an Oct. 12, 2023 article previously reported by the Spartan Daily.
Ten days after the attack, students marched through SJSU and held a protest by Victory Salute (Olympic Black Power) statues in response to Israel’s response to Hamas’ attack, according to a Oct. 17, 2023 article previously reported by the Spartan Daily.
Saba said growing up he noticed a lot of American support for Israel and this observation always gave him a bizarre feeling.
“You kind of almost walk through life kind of like a ghost where you feel as though you’re not truly seen as fully human,” Saba said.
He said it was only a couple of years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic when support for the Pro-Palestinian movement increased.
“That was something that I never in my wildest dreams would have guessed to have seen here in the U.S.,” Saba said.
On Oct. 25, 2000 Donna Wallach, a Jewish resident in San José and others congregated at the Plaza de César Chávez for a demonstration advocating against the unjust treatment of the Palestinian people, according to a Oct. 26, 2000 article previously reported by the Spartan Daily.
“The bad responses really started after 2001,” Wallach said. “When September 11 happened in the United States when the Twin Towers came down.”
She said she remembers a man came up to her once screaming at the top of his lungs that she was a terrorist while she was holding a protest sign that said, “Jews against the Israeli occupation.”
“Because of my sign, he should have assumed that I’m Jewish, but he still called me a terrorist,” Wallach said.
Linda Landau, a Jewish and Israeli English senior lecturer at San José State, said the political polarization is making it more difficult to have productive conversations about Israel and Palestine.
In February, Pro-Palestinian supporters gathered at Sweeney Hall to protest against a lecture where CSU Long Beach Professor Jeffrey Blutinger was scheduled to speak about finding a peaceful resolution between Israel and Palestine, according to a Feb. 19 article previously reported by a contributor for the Spartan Daily.
“You're either Pro-Palestinian or Pro-Israeli, but it's not true,” Landau said. “You have to be both if you're a decent human being, but that's not the way it's playing out.”
Halil Ibrahim Yenigun, the associate director for Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University and former SJSU political science lecturer said the topic of Palestine and Israel’s relationship and how it is seen in the U.S. can not be separated from historical movements within the American left.
He said the American left used to have a lot more Israeli support because Israel as a country was established by left-wing activists.
The history of Jewish leftist parties in Palestine can be traced back to East European Jewish communities during the First World War, according to a July 1976 journal article from MERIP Reports.
Yenigun said during the 60s and 70s the American left wing started to embrace Palestinians as a cause because the Palestinian Liberation Organization also had a lot of leftist components.
“If you look at the progressive politics in the U.S., the progressive movement for a long time — truly now — has been advocating for Palestine,” Yenigun said.
Landau said she is shocked by the current conversations around Israel and Palestine because many Israelis want to have a dialogue that includes Palestinians to talk about a just solution.
“It’s not the whole story and all of this is either feeding into the polarization or the polarization is feeding into them,” Landau said. “I don’t know which came first, but it has been going on for at least 20-25 years.”
