Current and former protesters speak to CNN on today’s pro-Palestinian movement

Overnight the protesters occupied a building known as Hamilton Hall, an historic building in Columbia’s storage civil movements. The scenes last night are there on your left. On the right is video from 1968 when anti Vietnam War protesters occupied the same building. Well, the protests have drawn also drawn comparisons the anti apartheid campus protests in the 1980s at UC Berkeley. That movement was ultimately successful in pushing the college to divest some $3 billion from companies in business with South Africa’s apartheid government. I’ve got two Jewish Americans here to discuss what we are seeing play out. Ian Berlin is a current student at Yale. He took place in pro Palestinian protest on his campus just last week. And I’ve got Jonathan Simon. He’s now a professor at UC Berkeley but took part in those and the apartheid Syd Insurance when he was a student back in the 1980s, he was one of the first students to be arrested at those. It’s good to have you both. Thank you and want to get your perspective of what we are seeing play out, not least at Columbia but around the country. First though, Ian, to you want to bring up an op-ed that you wrote for CNN and what everyone you say is getting wrong about the protest. You say people are applying the same tide framework to this movement. What did you mean by that? Absolutely. And thank you for having me. What I mean by that is that I think that it’s really easy to see, you know, pro Palestinian students being arrested at a time where people are concerned about anti-Semitism. And I want to acknowledge that there have been some real troubling instances of anti-Semitism at some of these protests. That said, my experience at Yale, and that’s what I can speak to, has been that I found a community of organizers that are really eager to listen to Jewish voices, to hear what we have to say, to include our perspectives. And that these protests have not been pitting Jewish students against pro Palestinian protesters. And in fact, Jewish students have been some of the core leaders of this movement on campus. And I know that that is a situation reflected at some of these other campuses. Colombia things escalated significantly overnight to both of you. Protesters hung in Intifada banner on Hamilton all after it was occupied. I want to get a sense of how both of you feel when you see that and how you believe these demonstrations can be more inclusive perhaps to students who actually do disagree with policies of Israel. Jonathan Well, I’m because so much of American Jewish identity has been tied up with support for Israel, certainly for my generation of baby boomers. Sort of inevitable that many Jews will feel offended and even frightened by talk of intifada or Palestinian control from the river to the sea. But that doesn’t mean that the intentions of the protesters are lined up with that kind of view. And my experience too, at Berkeley is that while there’s been individual incidents that are troubling the core of the protests, their understanding, their efforts to control their own participants has been anything but. And Anya, let me get your perspective on on this. And I’m also interested about whether you are finding support amongst your family and friends for your involvement here. Absolutely. There has been, it’s a difficult moment for the Jewish community on campus. There’s a lot of disagreement for sure. That said, I think that I’ve been very lucky to have family and friends who are supportive of what’s happening. And even those who have maybe concerns about what’s going on have been willing to listen, to have conversations. And I think that’s really what it comes down to, is that it? You need to have these personal connections, these personal conversations to really understand what’s going on and, you know, to avoid just talking past each other and, you know, falling into these kind of predetermined camp. One of the questions that we should keep front and centre in this because it is ultimately what many who have been demonstrating are asking. It is a demand. Campus protests are ultimately by many who are involved at its core, about divestment goals. Can these protests achieve their divestment goals? And I put that to you, Jonathan, given your experience back in the 80s, and I was at Sussex University at the time myself in the UK, where we saw many, many similar protests against businesses involved with South Africa. So you’ve got experience of how this can be successful. As you witness what we are seeing now and you reflect on the past, what’s your sense, let me say this. Divestment is a particular strategy, I think, for putting a moral or political issue front and center in a society through its students and their activism as a goal in itself. It may or may not be achieved in a particular case. In the South African case, I think there were certain circumstances that made it achievable, partly because of the dependency of the South African economy on big American corporations that were investing in them. But. But the thing that people should pay attention to is that while campus protesters have never been popular, they were unpopular during the Vietnam era. They were unpopular during the apartheid era. They have often been a harbinger of the direction of change in the opinion of society. We saw society turn against the Vietnam War in the 60s. We saw a consensus that South African apartheid had to end in the 1980s, and I think we’re beginning to see a real shift in tolerance for Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians.