“Wall of Resistance.” Credit: Palestinian Solidarity Committee
On Wednesday March 29th, around twenty students gathered in the lower floor Common Room of Adam House’s Claverly Hall. As people file into the small space, one student seated in front of a decadent fireplace invites them to join the conversation to share their thoughts. The meeting, referred to as Office Hours, is led by Harvard’s Palestinian Solidarity Committee (PSC), an on-campus student organization in support of the Palestinian Independence movement. Office Hours invites students who participated in the Israel Trek, which occurred over this past Spring Break—as well as anyone who is interested)—to speak about their experiences, particularly concerning the Israel-Palestine conflict.
This Office Hours yielded an exceptionally high turnout, attracting many more people than current PSC members expected, as one member explained in an interview with the Independent. Office Hours events also took place before the Trek, offering trekkers (people who participated in Israel Trek this year) a second perspective on a series of pre-trip speaker events organized by Israel Trek, yet fewer people showed up then. The unusually high turnout last Wednesday spoke to a broader social climate on campus that appears to be suffocating dialogue. In a Boston Globe article published on January 30th this year, interviews with 15 Harvard students and faculty members revealed a similar sentiment from people of both sides of the debate—that “their voices are being quieted.”
Israel Trek is a yearly 10-day spring break trip to Israel (and the West Bank) led by Israeli students. Unlike Hillel’s Birthright trip, Israel Trek is meant for non-Jewish students, per Hillel’s website. Trekkers visited famous religious, archeological, and modern sites in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and other locations in Israel. Trekkers spent a day with a local tour guide in the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank, and visited the Al-Amari refugee camp. Students were also exposed to talks from various Israeli and Arab politicians and business leaders.
When the Independent reached out to trekkers, only two responded for an interview. One of the trekkers who did respond requested to stay anonymous, citing fears of negative attention.
Yet the trip drew many positive reviews from trekkers; similar to previous years, students reported transformative experiences. An anonymous student said, “[The Trek leaders] clearly put a lot of work into it. The history moments are great. The party moments are great. It was just a good time.” Despite the good times in Israel, conversation on campus around the Trek can be a lot more tense. “Actually, I feel like if you tell people that [you had a good time] now they get upset with you.” remarked the anonymous trekker.
From March 26th to April 1st of this year, PSC also ran its largest production of the year, “Israeli Apartheid Week,” a week-long series of events and panels aimed to raise awareness and “highlight the Palestinian culture, creativity, and solidarity network” according to the PSC’s website. Part of this year’s program included a Palestine and Queer Liberation discussion, a student activism panel, and a South African Palestinian Solidarity panel with cofounder of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) Omar Barghouti. The central piece of their week-long event was the Wall of Resistance, a large art installation in the Science Center Plaza that has garnered many conflicting responses, including allegations of anti-semintism. In response, Harvard Hillel published a physical display near the wall this year titled “What the Wall Means to Me,” where Jewish Harvard students shared their troubles with the PSC installation and with what one student referred to as “holocaust imagery.”
In 2019, PSC began its Boycott Israel Trek campaign, which has since been a cornerstone of its vocal campus activism. PSC believes that Israel Trek is fundamentally biased towards what PSC leaders call “Zionist propaganda.” Anti-trek activists have linked alleged bias to the trip’s funding, which comes from anonymous Hillel donors and provides a nearly free trip to the approximately 100 students who go every year. They also blame the trip’s leadership, who due to Israel’s mandatory service laws, are mostly ex-IDF soldiers. Even with the recent attempts to see more of Palestine in recent years, Palestinians on campus have held strong to the BDS call in asking students not to participate on the Trek.
Proponents of the Trek endorse the epistemic virtue of seeing things for oneself, yet opponents argue that change and activism ought to happen from home and not by centering around an individual’s ability and privilege to travel. Perhaps for this reason, many on campus are critical of the students who go to the Trek to get a free spring break trip, unbothered by the region’s political crisis. Yet, according to the several students, this is not the reason for why many of the participants decided to go.
“A lot of students were there being purposefully very critical, asking very, very tough questions. Questions that, frankly, maybe no one would have asked,” remarked Ibrahim Mammadov ’23, one of the trekkers who was present at Office Hours. Mammadov came to Office Hours when a friend of his suggested it to him after hearing that Mammadov had been on the trip.
“There’s very few people for whom politicians and government agents will come out and speak. Harvard students, for some people, might be the only people who will warrant this output of time.”
Questions have also been brought up about the trip’s itinerary. While the trip has deepened its reach into Palestine this year to include more Palestinian speakers and more time in the West Bank, the trip only spends one day in Palestine and nine in Israel. PSC organizers maintain that the trip should do more to expose Palestinian voices. Nadine Bahour ’22, the ex-president of the Harvard PSC from Ramallah who is now working with the organization post-graduation, spoke with the Independent and explained that citizens of other cities such as Hebron are far worse off, yet receive little tourism and are not in the Trek’s itinerary. Ramallah, which is usually off-limits for Israelis, required trip leaders to get special permission to visit.
“The message from the Palestinian tour guide, and [Fatah spokesperson Osama al-Qawasmi]…was very clear: you coming here is beneficial to us, because this is the only opportunity we get to spread that message, we don’t get it with you guys sitting on campus,” said Mammadov.
Regardless of one’s answer whether to go or not, Bahour was adamant about the importance of educating oneself before visiting Palestine. “If you’re going on a blank slate of ‘I’m just gonna go, I’m gonna take in what I’m gonna learn, then you’re not gonna take in that much… because when you’re driving down the road and if you don’t know if this is a partitioned road or not, if the other side of this is a checkpoint or not, then you’re not going to be able to get an understanding.”
In some cases, Trek opposition seems to have led to undesired attention. One trekker, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke of the culture on campus surrounding the Trek. “People would get really angry and start yelling at me, and I’d have to leave,” they recalled.
Scrutiny against the Israel Trek has not always come from Palestinian activists. A 2014 article from The Times of Israel decries its support of the Israel Trek in light of criticism from the Israeli community. A photograph was taken that year in front of the grave of Yasser Arafat, the ex-president of the Palestinian state.
In a statement provided directly to the Independent, Israel Trek leaders addressed the polemics against the trip. “On one side, Trek has been accused of denying Israel’s crimes. On the other, Trek has been criticized for giving a platform to speakers who reject the Jewish people’s basic right to self-determination and safety. Instead of fighting extremes on both sides, Trek tries to create a platform for depth and nuance.”
The Trek leadership also made a broader call for dialogue on campus. “We send an open invitation to both the PSC and to members of the Arab community who believe in the importance of on-campus dialogue between students to learn about each other’s perspectives and hopefully work together toward a better day in our region.”
So far, however, the PSC has declined Israel Trek leadership’s invitation. Bahour, who led Wednesday’s Office Hours, clarified that the PSC’s decision not to dialogue with Israel trek leaders was contingent on several key factors. First, a preliminary agreement on what is going on in Palestine.
“Israel Trek leaders refuse to admit that the reality on the ground is ethnic cleansing, is apartheid, and is directly killing people,” said Bahour, insisting that these are internationally recognized terms. “Apartheid” was used to describe the conflict in Palestine in April 2021 by the human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW).
“These are some very basic understandings that need to be agreed on before any sort of conversation happens,” said Bahour.
“The power dynamic that exists on the ground I think is mimicked also on Harvard’s campus, which makes the concept of ‘Let’s just sit down and have a conversation’ not quite so simple.”
Bahour drew parallels between her experience at Harvard and the power dynamics she faced in Palestine. “I think when you have someone who served in the [IDF] military that was the oppressor when I was back home and I was standing on the checkpoint, that means that when they come here we are not just two students.”
Bahour also worries about the safety of PSC members, especially those who routinely travel back to Palestine. Several Harvard students have already been cataloged by the Canary Mission, an anonymous group that collects profiles of alleged anti-Israel activists and exposes them to the public. These profiles have been used to question people upon entry to Israel. The platform, which has drawn heavy criticism from Palestinian groups for its personal targeting, is a testament to the potential safety concerns in campus activism.
Nevertheless, the PSC’s characterization of the Trek leadership as the ‘oppressor’ was met with contention in the room from student trekkers who were not ready to cast such a light on their trip leaders. “We have to be as critical of them as we are of the other side. Otherwise, you are stifling the freedom of information,” said Mammadov.
Mammadov learned that a lot of Israelis were critical of Israel’s military activity in the West Bank, an important slice of the narrative he said he would not have gotten had he not been on the Trek. “These IDF soldiers are just people like us, they’re not anything special. And that’s an important piece of perspective that you don’t get on campus,” he stated.
To Mammadov, as to many of the other students who shared their voice at Office Hours, the labeling of oppressor and victim was an affront to a more nuanced and fair perspective. Although students went to the Trek with varying degrees of engagement with regional politics, many trekkers reported coming back with a more nuanced and informed opinion. Bahour and fellow PSC organizers urged trekkers to build on the knowledge they gained from the Trek to consider the ways in which Harvard is ‘complicit in the struggles Palestinians face.’
Back in Claverley, the hopeful spirit that had been began to falter when a common call to resolve PSC and Israel Trek affairs through conversation failed to convince PSC leaders. As students return from the Trek in a turbulent environment, the question lingers on how to break the silence that hangs over the campus.
Adam Pearl ’25 (apearl@college.harvard.edu) writes News for the Independent.