哈佛大学一扇窗户被砸碎，爱默生大学爆发“愤怒集会”：亲巴勒斯坦激进主义以更严厉的手段回归
【中美创新时报2024 年 10 月 10 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）秋季学期开始平静之后，亲巴勒斯坦激进团体正在努力对抗旨在让他们安静下来的新大学规则，加倍煽动性言论，并升级他们的策略。《波士顿环球报》记者Mike Damiano 对此作了下述报道。
最近几天，马萨诸塞州和全国各地的校园都遭到了破坏行为的袭击，因为校园团体承诺“升级”并扩大“学生起义”。
言论和策略的升级与 10 月 7 日哈马斯领导的对以色列的袭击一周年有关，该袭击引发了以色列在加沙的报复性战争。暴力事件的连锁反应在上个学年的大部分时间里扰乱了美国校园，大学管理人员一直在努力遏制暴力事件，以免它扰乱第二学年。
周一，在哈佛大学，巴勒斯坦团结委员会——该委员会去年发表的关于 10 月 7 日袭击的煽动性信件使该大学陷入混乱——在一份新声明中表示，“现在是升级的时候了。”几个小时后，一名身份不明的人砸碎了哈佛大学礼堂的一扇窗户，并在约翰·哈佛雕像上泼了红漆。该事件的视频出现在一个与巴勒斯坦团结委员会无关的社交媒体账户上，标题是“把战争带回家”。
周二晚上，在爱默生学院，巴勒斯坦正义学生组织举行了“愤怒集会”。社交媒体帖子显示，一栋建筑被喷涂上“荣耀烈士”的字样。爱默生一所大学的大门上挂着一块牌子，上面写着“所有这些墙都会倒塌”。
据塔夫茨大学发言人称，一个学生团体在周一计划举行的活动中发布了一篇社交媒体帖子，称“有人手持突击步枪，呼吁学生‘加入学生起义！’并‘升级’”，该团体因此被停职。
周一，马萨诸塞大学阿默斯特分校和纽约市立大学的两个校区也发生了破坏事件。在蒙特利尔，示威者在警方包围下砸碎了麦吉尔大学一栋建筑的窗户。在底特律郊外，密歇根大学校长的住宅被喷涂上“懦夫”和“起义”等字样。
这些事件以及一些人认为是反犹太主义的不断升级的言论，让一些犹太学生感到不安。最近的事件也考验着大学领导，他们今年试图压制学生激进主义，一些言论自由倡导者和教职员工表示，这些方式引发了人们对言论自由和校园抗议传统的严重担忧。
哈佛大学政府学教授史蒂文·列维茨基 (Steven Levitsky) 一直严厉批评哈佛大学新颁布的抗议规则，这些规则包括加强对未经批准的抗议活动的监控，以及禁止在未经事先授权的情况下使用粉笔或张贴传单等表达性活动。他还为亲巴勒斯坦活动人士的抗议权利辩护。
但他说，破坏行为完全不同。
“这不是我或任何其他教职员工会捍卫的表达形式，”他说，并补充说没有证据表明巴勒斯坦团结委员会参与了这起事件。 “我对他们的建议是……他们应该是第一批谴责它的人。”巴勒斯坦团结委员会没有回应置评请求。
阿尔曼·迪恩达 (Arman Deendar) 是布朗大学撤资联盟 (Brown Divest Coalition) 的组织者，该联盟是一个亲巴勒斯坦组织，曾游说该大学停止投资某些在以色列开展业务的公司。迪恩达表示，日益激烈的言辞和策略源于挫败感。迪恩达表示，布朗大学和其他地方的大学管理人员“利用官僚机构来对付我们”，并诉诸“警察镇压和警察暴力”来镇压和平抗议活动。
迪恩达表示，布朗大学没有发生过破坏行为。但他们补充说：“抗议策略多种多样，这种抗议是有其存在的空间的。” (迪恩达使用的是中性代词。)
周三，布朗大学理事会 (Corporate of Brown University) 投票否决了校园活动人士提出的撤资提议。
一些犹太学生和团体认为，该运动的言论中充斥着反犹太主义，包括为哈马斯最初的袭击进行辩护（在某些情况下，是支持），以及呼吁驱逐犹太复国主义者或扩大这些团体日益称之为“学生起义”的活动。
“如果说有什么不同的话，那就是这些团体在反犹主义和支持恐怖主义方面变得更加恶劣和直言不讳，”哈佛大学大四学生亚历克斯·伯纳特说。“他们肯定变得更加大胆了。”
在以巴冲突的背景下，起义通常是指 20 世纪 80 年代和 21 世纪初开始的两次反对以色列占领巴勒斯坦领土的起义。第二次起义包括自杀式爆炸和以色列平民的大规模枪击，以及以色列军队对巴勒斯坦人的致命报复。犹太复国主义是一种信仰，即犹太人有权在巴勒斯坦的土地上自决，巴勒斯坦是犹太人和巴勒斯坦人的祖籍。
“我们对来自巴勒斯坦团结委员会和其他组织的日益暴力的言论深感担忧，尤其是他们对以色列的丑陋讽刺，”哈佛大学希勒尔执行董事杰森·鲁宾斯坦说。
亲巴勒斯坦活动人士，包括相当一部分犹太派别，表示将反犹太复国主义与反犹太主义混为一谈是错误的，并表示他们的运动反对加沙战争和以色列压迫巴勒斯坦人的政策。
布朗撤资联盟和布朗犹太人立即停火组织成员拉菲·阿什表示：“这场斗争中有很多犹太学生，我认为当我们将以色列和犹太人混为一谈时，我们的政治和宗教身份往往会被抹去。”
中东不断扩大的战争始于哈马斯武装分子及其同伙在以色列南部城镇肆虐，杀害家中的家庭，烧毁有居民的房屋，屠杀音乐节上 200 多名狂欢者，并将约 250 人作为人质带回加沙，目前仍有数十人被劫持。
作为回应，以色列对加沙发动了残酷的轰炸和入侵，试图消灭哈马斯。战争已造成超过 41,000 名巴勒斯坦人死亡，使约 200 万居民的领土变成废墟，并引发了一场人道主义灾难，疾病蔓延，饥荒风险加剧。
最近，冲突进一步扩大。在哈马斯盟友、伊朗支持的民兵组织真主党在过去一年的大部分时间里向以色列北部发射火箭弹后，以色列升级了这场冲突，轰炸了黎巴嫩社区，造成真主党领导人和总共 2,000 人死亡，其中许多是平民，据黎巴嫩官员称。
去年哈马斯袭击当天，哈佛大学巴勒斯坦团结委员会和其他 30 多个学生团体发表了一封信，称以色列是“所有正在发生的暴力事件的唯一罪魁祸首”。这封信被广泛谴责为为恐怖主义辩护。它使大学陷入了混乱，最终导致哈佛大学校长克劳迪娜·盖伊辞职；国会调查；诉讼；亲巴勒斯坦学生的人肉搜索；根据哈佛大学 6 月份发布的两份报告，反犹太主义和伊斯兰恐惧症死灰复燃；大学领导与在哈佛园扎营的亲巴勒斯坦示威者之间的对峙。
巴勒斯坦团结委员会一直是争议的焦点。今年 2 月，该委员会和其他团体（包括一个由哈佛教职员工组成的团体）在社交媒体上发布了一幅漫画，漫画中一只手上刻有大卫之星和美元符号，手上拿着绳子，勒住一名黑人男子和一名阿拉伯男子的脖子。哈佛神学院访问学者拉比大卫沃尔普说：“这幅漫画卑鄙无耻，无可争议地反犹太。”哈佛大学校长艾伦加伯也对此表示谴责。
今年 4 月，哈佛大学因巴勒斯坦团结委员会在扎营前不久违反校园规则而暂停了该委员会的会员资格。9 月，哈佛大学恢复了该组织的会员资格。
周一是 10 月 7 日袭击事件周年纪念日，巴勒斯坦团结委员会和三个联盟组织在社交媒体上发布了一封信。信的开头写道：“一年前的今天，加沙突破了以色列的封锁，向全世界表明，持续不断的灾难日和种族隔离是无法忍受的。随着加沙不断遭受屠杀，这里或任何地方都不可能恢复正常……现在是升级的时候了。”
为亲巴勒斯坦抗议活动辩护的教授列维茨基称该声明“令人震惊”。
他说，他仔细研究了巴勒斯坦团结委员会去年 10 月 7 日的信，该信有 30 多个学生团体签名，他认为这封信“不那么令人不安”。
但他认为今年的声明在信息和时机上都令人震惊。“我认为这份声明是在庆祝以色列的恐怖袭击…… “在那天发表一份至少是含糊其辞的声明，而且我认为，这是在庆祝袭击事件？太可怕了，”他说。
题图：春季，亲巴勒斯坦营地占领了哈佛校园的一部分达数周之久。John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
附原英文报道：
A window smashed at Harvard, a ‘Rally of Rage’ at Emerson: Pro-Palestinian activism returns with a harsher edge
By Mike Damiano Globe Staff,Updated October 9, 2024
A pro-Palestinian encampment occupied part of Harvard Yard for several weeks in the spring.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
After a calm beginning to the fall semester, pro-Palestinian activist groups are straining against new university rules meant to quiet them, doubling down on incendiary rhetoric, and escalating their tactics.
Campuses in Massachusetts and around the country have been hit with acts of vandalism in recent days as campus groups have promised “escalation” and an expanding “student intifada.”
The ratcheting-up of rhetoric and tactics was tied to the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel that sparked Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza. The ripple effects of the violence unsettled American campuses for much of the last academic year, and university administrators have been trying to contain it before it disrupts a second one.
At Harvard on Monday, the Palestine Solidarity Committee — whose inflammatory letter on the Oct. 7 attacks last year plunged the university into turmoil — said in a new statement, “Now is the time to escalate.” Hours later, an unidentified person smashed a window of Harvard’s University Hall and splashed red paint on the John Harvard statue. A video of the incident, which appeared on a social media account unaffiliated with the Palestine Solidarity Committee, included the caption, “Bring the war home.”
At Emerson College Tuesday night, Students for Justice in Palestine held a “Rally of Rage.” Social media posts showed a building spray-painted with “Glory to the martyrs.” A sign hung on an Emerson gate said, “All these walls will fall.”
At Tufts, according to a university spokesperson, a student group was suspended after it published a social media post “depicting individuals with assault rifles, calling for students to ‘Join the Student Intifada!’ and ‘escalate’ ” at an event planned for Monday.
There were also reports of vandalism Monday at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and two campuses of the City University of New York. In Montreal, demonstrators smashed windows of a McGill University building as police surrounded them. Outside Detroit, the words “coward” and “intifada” were spray-painted on a home owned by the president of the University of Michigan.
The incidents, as well as escalating rhetoric that some see as antisemitic, have put some Jewish students on edge. The recent events are also testing university leaders, who tried to tamp down student activism this year in ways that some free speech advocates and faculty members said raised grave concerns about free expression and the traditions of campus protest.
Steven Levitsky, a Harvard government professor, has been a sharp critic of his university’s new, or newly enforced, protest rules, which include stepped-up monitoring of unsanctioned protests and prohibitions against expressive activities like using sidewalk chalk or posting fliers without prior authorization. He has also defended the right of pro-Palestinian activists to protest.
But vandalism, he said, is categorically different.
“This is no form of expression that I or any other faculty would defend,” he said, adding that there is no evidence the Palestine Solidarity Committee was involved in the incident. “My advice to them . . . is they should be the first people out there condemning it.” The Palestine Solidarity Committee didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Arman Deendar, an organizer with the Brown Divest Coalition, a pro-Palestinian group that has lobbied the university to cease investing in certain companies that do business in Israel, said the intensifying rhetoric and tactics are born of frustration. University administrators at Brown and elsewhere, Deendar said, have “weaponiz[ed] the bureaucracy against us” and resorted to “police repression and police brutality” to crack down on peaceful protests.
There has been no vandalism at Brown, Deendar said. But “there’s a variety of different tactics of protest, and there’s a place for this kind of protest,” they added. (Deendar uses gender-neutral pronouns.)
On Wednesday, the Corporation of Brown University, its governing board, voted to reject the divestment proposal put forward by campus activists.
The antisemitism some Jewish students and groups see in the movement’s rhetoric includes justifications — and, in some cases, endorsements — of the initial Hamas attack, as well as calls to banish Zionists or expand what the groups have increasingly come to call the “student intifada.”
“If anything, these groups have only gotten more egregious and more explicit in their antisemitism and support for terrorism,” said Alex Bernat, a Harvard senior. “They’ve certainly been emboldened.”
In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, intifada is usually a reference to two uprisings against Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories that began in the 1980s and the early 2000s. The second intifada included suicide bombings and mass shootings of Israeli civilians, as well as deadly reprisals against Palestinians by Israeli forces. Zionism is the belief that Jews have a right to self-determination in the land of Palestine, the ancestral homeland of both Jews and Palestinians.
“We are deeply concerned by increasingly violent rhetoric coming from the [Palestine Solidarity Committee] and others, particularly their hideous caricature of Israel,” Jason Rubenstein, the executive director of Harvard Hillel, said.
Pro-Palestinian activists, including a significant Jewish faction, say it’s wrong to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and say their movement opposes the war in Gaza and Israeli policies that oppress Palestinians.
Rafi Ash, a member of the Brown Divest Coalition and Brown Jews for Ceasefire Now, said, “There are so many Jewish students in this fight and I think our political and religious identities are often erased when we conflate Israel and the Jewish people.”
The expanding war in the Middle East began when Hamas militants and collaborators rampaged through southern Israel towns, killing families in their homes, burning houses with inhabitants inside, massacring more than 200 revelers at a music festival, and taking around 250 people back to Gaza as hostages, where dozens still remain.
In response, Israel launched its brutal bombardment and invasion of Gaza, seeking to wipe out Hamas. The war has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, left the territory of around 2 million residents in ruins, and provoked a humanitarian catastrophe, marked by spreading disease and a risk of famine.
Recently, the conflict has widened. After Hezbollah, a Hamas ally and fellow Iran-backed militia, fired rockets into northern Israel during much of the past year, Israel escalated that conflict and bombarded Lebanese neighborhoods, killing Hezbollah’s leadership and a total of 2,000 people, many civilians, according to Lebanese officials.
On the day of the Hamas attack last year, Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee, and more than 30 other student groups, published a letter saying Israel was “the only one to blame” for “all unfolding violence.” That letter was widely condemned as justifying terrorism. It plunged the university into a maelstrom that eventually led to the resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay; congressional investigations; lawsuits; doxxing of pro-Palestinian students; resurgent antisemitism and Islamophobia, according to a pair of Harvard reports published in June; and a standoff between university leaders and pro-Palestinian demonstrators who erected an encampment in Harvard Yard.
The Palestine Solidarity Committee has been at the center of much of the controversy. In February, it and other groups, including one comprising Harvard faculty and staff, posted a cartoon on social media showing a hand inscribed with a Star of David and a dollar sign holding ropes around the necks of a Black man and an Arab man. “The cartoon is despicably, inarguably antisemitic,” said Rabbi David Wolpe, a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School. Harvard president Alan Garber also condemned it.
In April, Harvard suspended the Palestine Solidarity Committee for violations of campus rules shortly before the encampment began. In September, Harvard reinstated the group.
On Monday, the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack, the Palestine Solidarity Committee and three allied groups published a letter on social media. “One year ago today, Gaza broke through Israel’s blockade showing the world that the ongoing Nakba and apartheid cannot stand,” it began. “There can be no normalcy here or anywhere as Gaza suffers massacre after massacre. . . . Now is the time to escalate.”
Levitsky, the professor who has defended pro-Palestinian protest, called the statement “horrible.”
He said he had scrutinized the Palestine Solidarity Committee’s Oct. 7 letter last year, which was signed by more than 30 student groups, and considered it “less troubling.”
But he found this year’s statement egregious both for its message and its timing. “I read this statement as celebrating the terrorist attack in Israel. . . . To issue a statement on that day that is, at minimum, ambiguous and, I think, celebrates the attack? Horrendous,” he said.
