Students Teen Vogue spoke to for this article reported experiencing or witnessing harassment on campus against anti-Zionist activists who are themselves Jewish. Emmanuel Sippy, a 20-year-old Princeton University junior who led his school’s Ceasefire Sabbath, told Teen Vogue about an encounter he had while attending a pro-Palestinian rally near the campus in New Jersey. As first reported by the university newspaper, The Daily Princetonian, video of the Oct. 28 event shows university staff attempting to snatch Sippy’s cell phone, and in doing so, cut his hair into pieces. It seemed to be pulling on some parts.
A Princeton University spokesperson wrote in an email to the Daily Princetonian: “The university takes this matter seriously and has begun a review of the situation. We have reached out to the students involved to provide support and resources.”
The Jewish Progressive Union, a campus organization led by Mr. Shippey, has also been targeted by a group sponsored by the Jewish Leadership Project called PRI Track. A spokesperson for Princeton University declined to comment further on these matters to Teen Vogue.
Princeton University is one of many campuses that has seen unrest stemming from these protests, and pro-Israel organizers have also experienced harassment. For example, a pro-Israel Jewish student at Columbia University was recently tailed and yelled at to “go back to Poland and Belarus,” according to a report in the Columbia Spectator.
In a statement responding to recent anti-Semitic incidents, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest Coalition, a coalition of student organizations that supports campus encampments, condemned all forms of hatred and bigotry, saying, “We will remain vigilant against non-students who seek to destroy unity.” Our students include Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, Black, and pro-Palestinian classmates and colleagues, representing the diversity of our country. ”
University of California Santa Barbara
Jewish voice for peace
Shabbat for Truce organizers, like Sabrina Ellis, a third-year student at the University of Los Angeles, say they feel they have found solidarity with fellow anti-Zionist Jews. She and other Jewish young people interviewed by Teen Vogue for this article argue that even if there is no explicit hostility, anti-Zionist students are in the mainstream who claim that most are Zionists. He said he feels excluded in Jewish spaces. “We cannot agree to disagree about genocide,” Ellis says.
