ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A University of Michigan club fair quickly descended into chaos Wednesday afternoon as police shut down an anti-Israel protest after a day of disturbances by student activists.
The protesters, who gathered to demand that the school divest from all companies that support Israel, identified themselves as members of the Tahrir Coalition, an acronym for “Transparency, Accountability, Humanity, Reparations, Invest, Resist.”
The school's club fair was almost immediately disrupted by a sit-in by several dozen anti-Israel demonstrators, who chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan implying that the state of Israel must be eliminated.
A group of pro-Israel counter-demonstrators soon gathered, carrying American and Israeli flags.
Itz Pierce, program director for the campus Jewish Resource Center, stood with counter-protesters in the oppressive summer heat, delivering bottles of water to them.
“I came out to make sure they were safe. I wanted to come out to show my support for my guys and make sure they felt like they had a familiar face. Because it's not been violent, but it's been very scary,” Pierce told The Washington Post.
Anti-Israel protesters, who did not have a permit to demonstrate, distributed fliers demanding the university divest from “Israeli apartheid and genocide,” establish a “people's audit,” boycott Israeli academic institutions and abolish campus security.
Unfortunately for the anti-police activists, police arrived and used a megaphone to demand that the protesters disperse.
When the protesters failed to comply, police officers charged into the crowd, arrested at least one student protester and drove the mob away from the space in front of the library.
After being forcibly removed, the protesters marched across campus, eventually reaching a table at the Army Reserve Officers Training Center, where they began yelling at student representatives from the organization.
The unrest, which occurred during the first week of the fall semester at the University of Michigan, is just the latest in a long saga of campus unrest that has gripped the university since the Israel-Hamas war.
Last spring, anti-Israel activists under the banner of the Shut It Down party seized control of the student government at the University of Michigan. Since then, they have demanded that the university divest from companies that support Israel and have withheld funding from campus clubs.
In a March press release, The University Board has announced They will not succumb to political pressure to divest.
As a result, clubs are struggling to function and university officials are looking for temporary ways to fund student organizations. The New York Times Reported.
As tensions rise between protesters and club members, The Washington Post spoke with leaders of Jewish student organizations on UM's campus, like Rabbi Alter Goldstein, who fortunately runs an on-campus Chabad house without relying on university funding.
“It's unfortunate, and of course there are different ways to be vocal, but again, I think this can be resolved more through dialogue than trying to close the door. I don't think telling people they shouldn't have resources or anything like that is productive for anybody,” Goldstein told the Post.
The issue of Israel and Palestine may become a defining feature of the 2024 election, after more than 100,000 Michigan Democratic primary voters voted “independent” in protest of President Joe Biden's support for Israel in the state's presidential primary in February.
