Why Kansas City students are joining nationwide protests supporting Palestine

The Beacon

DonatePOSTED INEDUCATIONWhy Kansas City students are joining nationwide protests supporting PalestineAs tensions grow at colleges and universities around the country, Kansas and Missouri students are standing with others resisting the war in Gaza. Their fight comes with complicated questions.by Suzanne KingMay 1, 2024

Students at a UMKC protest join a national wave of demonstrations supporting Palestine. (Suzanne King/The Beacon)

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Protests, kindled by livestreamed images from Palestine and set ablaze by university crackdowns on demonstrators, rage at colleges and universities across the country.

Students have pitched encampments and occupied campus buildings while calling for an end to violence in Gaza — and demanding their institutions divest of companies they believe support the war there.

“We are standing with the people of Palestine,” Rashed Shawabkeh said this week, waving a large Palestinian flag at a protest outside the Miller Nichols Library at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Despite little support from college or political leaders, student protesters in both red and blue states are becoming the loudest voices calling for an end to the war and an end to U.S. involvement.

The conflict started after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 200. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in the aftermath.

The college campus protests, which started at Ivy League schools before spreading to public and private institutions across the country, have drawn sharp criticism from some politicians — and some other students — who see them as anti-Semitic.

But students who have joined the cause, many risking arrest or college expulsion, say they just want the attacks on Palestinians to end.

Their movement, which has been the subject of congressional hearings and a constant stream of news stories, have driven debate about whether the United States should continue its financial and political support to the far-right Israeli government.

College students should get credit for that national conversation, said Elizabeth Esch, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Kansas.

“They feel it is an emergency,” she said. “They’re saying, ‘We’re joining the rest of the world in saying this is unjust. This destroys any possible future for peace in the region.’ … The scale of this is as big as anything we’ve known in our lifetimes.”

Wednesday morning, pro-Palestine protesters had established an encampment at KU. Pro-Israel supporters gathered nearby holding signs with the names of hostages kidnapped by Hamas.

Why the students’ cause caught fire, how universities are reacting and why the language of the current movement is seen by some as so problematic are all good questions with complicated answers