PROTEST YALA Protests, JSA Counters By Roxanne Tingir Hoya Staff Writer
Dan Gelfand/The Hoya YALA members impersonating guards accost students at a mock checkpoint in Red Square Tuesday as part of a protest of Israeli checkpoints and U.S. involvement in Israel.
Young Arab Leadership Alliance protested Israeli checkpoints and American involvement in Israel by creating a mock checkpoint, shouting their opposition and distributing informational flyers at a demonstration in Red Square Tuesday afternoon.
“Our intention was to create dialogue and create the side of the issue you don’t see,” YALA executive board member Kate McDonald (COL ’04) said. “You hear about terrorism but you don’t hear a lot about occupation. We attempted to educate Americans on their actual involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
YALA members dressed in military fatigues acting as Israeli soldiers manned the checkpoint in the Red Square archway. Students either walked unaffected through the `Israeli’ side of the checkpoint nearest to White Gravenor or traveled through the `Palestinian’ side and were asked for identification.
YALA members portraying Palestinians and dressed in black were stopped, questioned and verbally harassed, with the mock Israeli soldiers sometimes insinuating physical harm.
“Anyone who was touched was part of the role play and a member of YALA,” YALA President Yasmin Moll (SFS ’03) said.
The Department of Public Safety arrived on the scene and DPS Chief William Tucker told YALA leadership to discontinue asking people to go to one side or another.
“They [YALA] could not block the passageway – people must be allowed to freely move in any direction they want,” Tucker said. “The leaders agreed to stop and told the students running the checkpoints to discontinue that practice.”
Students like Mary Nagle (COL ’05) learned from the
was questionable,” GIA President Joshua Levin-Epstein (SFS ’03) said. “It was guerilla theater rather than reasoned, intellectual dialogue and debate.”
Other students and campus organizations said they felt insulted by the demonstration in light of the recent terrorist attacks as well.
Jewish Student Association President David Gold (MSB ’04), who has served in the Israeli army, said, “The Jewish community in general feels very attacked. The truth is [that] part of being Jewish is being pro-Israeli.”
“Especially in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, we feel we should become closer and more of a community and instead they [YALA] try to segregate and point fingers at us,” Gold said
YALA, however, said it does not take religion into account.
“Nowhere in the world is the Torah or the Bible a basis for political policy,” YALA executive board member Samer Oweida (SFS ’04) said. “We [YALA] are a political, not religious, organization.”
The history of disagreement between GIA and YALA has frequently focused on free speech on campus and the dissemination of anti-Israel fliers.
YALA held a meeting Wednesday evening in an Intercultural Center classroom to inform interested students of the Palestinian cause.
Approximately a dozen Jewish students showed up and participated in a discussion forum with YALA activists.
