Jewish students and the protest
Both sides of the divide
Door Cinta Zanidya
By Cinta Zanidya
Cinta Zanidya
Two students in red keffiyehs are standing on the Harmonie square. One has it wrapped around his head to hide his face, pairing it with sunglasses. The other has it draped on his shoulders. ‘Stop filming me’, one of them says, raising his hand to block the view.
‘Why are you asking him to leave? I thought this was a public area, everyone is allowed here’, the person behind the camera replies.
The protesters don’t answer, instead turning to the crowd behind them. ‘Attention! There’s a known Zionist standing here! We don’t want Zionists in our camp!’
Within seconds the protesters start chanting.‘Say it loud, say it clear, Zionists are not welcome here!’
The video was uploaded to X and quickly shared by Jewish activist and former director of the Centre for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI), commenting: ‘This goes beyond all bounds. Look and shudder. This is Groningen 2024, not 1941’. It got thousands of views and hundreds of angry comments, after which it was picked up by mainstream Dutch media to showcase division between students, with a clear suggestion of anti-Semitism.
But is that what was really happening there? Are the two sides really as deeply divided as they appear?
The person being ‘chanted away’ was Nadav from Israel, who studies computer science. It was an unpleasant experience, he says. ‘I felt intimidated because people were shouting at me, calling me names, and giving me the finger.’
They don’t want to talk to me. But they don’t even know me.
The fact that they called him a Zionist was ‘silly’, he says. ‘They insisted that I’m a Zionist, and that’s it! They don’t want to talk to me. But the thing is, they don’t even know me.’
He wanted to talk to the protesters and uploaded the video because he felt it showed how the protesters were treating him as a Jewish student. ‘Yes, it is valid to support Palestine, but there are concerns over anti-Semitism.’
He also believes that the protesters are hijacking the term ‘Judaism’ to advance their own political agendas. ‘I think it’s ridiculous and a cultural appropriation.’
But Luca, a Jewish student with Luxembourg and Swiss heritage, who studies history at UG, also lives in the camp. Even though he was not there when the chanting against Nadav took place, he does know that anti-Semitism is not an issue within the protesters’ camp. ‘I am a literal Jew with a star of David tattooed on my hand and I have been at the encampment these past two nights and people there have treated me with nothing but respect’, he says.
Luca identifies as an ‘anti-Zionist’. This self-proclamation got him excluded from the Jewish community in Groningen. ‘I was kicked out of the community’s WhatsApp group, right after it was discovered that I had signed a petition from Groningen for Palestine calling for an immediate ceasefire.’ A decision made without any prior discussion, he says.
But what does ‘Zionism’ really mean?
The simple definition can be laid out as ‘the pursuit of an independent Jewish state’, as stated on the Anne Frank Foundation website. ‘To many religious Jews, Israel is “the promised land”. But many non-religious Jews, too, value the fact that there is a country where Jews can live in freedom and safety.’
I am a Jew with a star of David tattoo and I slept in the camp
The problem is that the word ‘Zionist’ is often used as a swear word. ‘Many Palestinians and supporters of the Palestinian cause no longer distinguish between the words “Jew”, “Israeli” and “Zionist”’, the Anne Frank Foundation explainer reads.
And that is exactly what is going on here. ‘I am not a religious Zionist’, Nadav stresses. Meaning: he does not feel Israel has a God-given right to the land, even though he is a practicing Jew. However, he does feel Zionism has practical benefits. ‘I’m just a Jew who is happy that there’s a country for us given the Holocaust so if anything like that ever happens again it’s good to know that I have a safe haven to go to.’
Luca identifies as anti-Zionist. However, to him that does not mean that he is against the idea of a ‘national home’ for Jewish people either. He does oppose the way in which Israel executes its policies. ‘If Zionism involves creating a state that requires its existence in being majority Jewish, to be one ethnicity, that requires systematic dispossession of people’s land, seizure of property, illegal arrest, and repressive kind of tactics to even function and exist, then I am against that.’
That is what the protesters in the camp are referring to when they chant ‘Judaism up, up! Zionism down, down!’
Luca doesn’t see the chanting as a form of cultural appropriation. ‘I’m sick of having to prove my Jewishness! Israel’s claims to have the right to speak on behalf of all Jewish people are deeply annoying to me.’
Not only does a huge chunk of the world’s Jews live outside of Israel, but through the actions of the Israeli government, ‘they are putting the rest of the global Jewish community under threat’, Luca says.
I’d like to show them that even Israelis have a lot of criticisms towards the government
He is deeply critical towards the way the Israeli government has been conducting the war on Palestine too, calling it colonial. ‘What they’re doing is unleashing a level of violence and death upon people that is unprecedented. They are incredibly exploitative and exclusionary.’
But here lies a sense of common ground between the two students, as Nadav too is critical of his government’s actions. He left Israel seven years ago, partly because of his dissatisfaction with the government. ‘I don’t want to live in constant conflict’, he says. ‘I despise the current Israeli government. They’re extreme right and the country has become way more religious.’
So what is happening then? If there is criticism towards the Israeli government on both sides, and if neither side feels Jews should be ‘driven out’, what’s the problem?
Nadav says he’s disappointed in the protesters because they are not open to any ‘cordial’ conversation with anyone that may express criticism towards the demonstration. ‘What they’re doing here is purely selfish and narcissistic, they’re not changing anything. I’d like to show them that even Israelis have a lot of criticisms towards the government.’
Luca says Nadav’s dismissal from the camp was rooted in anger and a sense of urgency that the protesters feel for the situation in Gaza. ‘If we did anything to unnecessarily antagonise those students by making them feel excluded, then we apologise for that. But there’s a genocide going on. So of course, discourse is productive. But what is more important, currently, is action and concrete demands.’
Nadav remains doubtful though. ‘If there is someone who is apologising then it’s already better’, he says.
However, he is still pessimistic about building amicable relations with the protesters. ‘I am always open for discussion, but based on the way they have been treating me, I don’t think that the feeling is mutual.’