are made fairly clear in a series of articles that were run from January 14‐15, 2009, dealing with a surge in Israeli‐Palestinian advocacy activity in response to the then‐ recent incursion into the Gaza strip by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces). While comprising the events of only a single date, these articles are pivotal to understanding the larger community’s perspective on the Palestinian/Israeli debate on campus and how its continued vitality relates to them.
On the night of January 14, 2009, opposition rallies were held at the Michigan
Union and the diag. In the preceding weeks, thousands of Palestinians and several Israelis had been killed in a bloody series of engagements after the IDF had initiated its invasion of the Gaza Strip. Additionally, tens of thousands of Palestinians had been left homeless. After being away from school for two weeks as the University transitioned from one semester to the next, student activists felt a strong need to quickly mobilize and show support for their respective sides after getting back to campus.
At the Union, Palestinian supporters gathered to protest the Israeli invasion
of the Gaza and demanded both an immediate cessation of U.S. aid to Israel and a general boycott of all goods produced in the country. However, several of the protestors lent a controversial charge to the event when they showed up waving Hamas flags, offending many random passers‐bye. Ben Kaminsky, the chair of Israel IDEA (, who was quoted on the subject. “You have people waving Hamas flags. Hamas is a terrorist organization. It’s absolutely outrageous that these things can go on,”(Aber). Back on the Diag, pro‐Israel constituents were showing their support for
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First-Year Writing 2010