As students were leaving their classes Thursday, they heard chants and saw signs supporting Palestinian liberation and the students arrested at Columbia University on April 18.
Some of these chants included: “Free, free, free Palestine. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
While the group started with a dozen people, that soon doubled as the protest went on through the afternoon. One of the protestors, who asked to remain anonymous due to the controversial nature of the subject, even remarked on how this was one of the largest groups they had seen thus far.
When asked about why the demonstration was happening today, Nick Koenig, a graduate student and instructor for UI, elaborated.
“I think it’s really linked to the growing visualization of the genocide of Palestine going back 75 years,” Koenig said. “We are seeing the growing call of college campuses, especially in the U.S., to start divesting trusts to get away from fossil fuel extractions.”
The group called for a divestment in funds made to certain companies that UI has invested in. This would mean that UI would sell these investments to no longer be associated with these companies.
“I went into the archives and dug in more at the University about what divestment looked like,” Koenig said. “We are calling for a divestment from the University’s consolidated investment trust which is currently invested in a myriad of international companies that support and enable or are currently doing fossil fuel extraction. I hope that’s what the investment campaign can really speak to. That’s why I’m here.”
The group was also protesting Idaho taxes being used to support Israel through the war as well as speaking out against religious groups on campus who have been advocating for the support of Israel. It should be noted that this is an opinionated stance based on their research.
A student and one of the demonstrators with tally marks on their body and face took to the microphone.
“For every single tally mark on my body, every single one, twenty children are dead in Gaza,” they said. “This is not a war. This is a genocide. We will not be silenced, and we will not give up. We will continue to speak out and continue to fight as long as this genocide continues. We stand with Palestine.”
Representatives from clubs sponsoring the protest also spoke up.
“An entire culture and nation are being wiped away,” Segi Arogundade, a journalism and political science student and a representative from the Black Student Union, said.
The audience was urged throughout the protest to sign multiple petitions concerning Palestine and divestments.
When students who joined the protest were asked how they heard about it, they responded that they found the events through social media.
“I wanted to stay informed and know if there was anything that I could do from this terrible genocide and I learned that we are investing in,” Kaitlin Peterson, a sophomore at UI said. “I emailed our school to see our investment profile. We invested in companies that are actively helping the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
The protest went on for a couple of hours.
“We may be only few, but we can still make change and we can still have an impact,” a demonstrator who asked to stay anonymous said.
This protest marked the end of a week-long string of events called “Free Palestine Week of Action,” led by student groups such as Amnesty International and the Black Student Union.
Andrea Roberts can be reached at [email protected].
UI Jewish Anti-Semitism Pushback Group
Nick Koenig is a complete disgrace to the university. He has full knowledge that there is no genocide and or famine going on in Gaza. He has been shown evidence after evidence over and over again from direct international policy reports. Even with this, he and his jihadi buddies, still scream blood libles about Jews and call for the genocide of them. On the anniversary of October 7th, Nick and his buddies, participated in an event organized by SJP, a group that is literally funded by Qatar, in an event called The Week of Rage. TWoR was specifically designed to prevent Jews from mourning their friends family members and community from mourning they're dead. Numerous ill-informed students started screaming there had been over 200,000 children killed even though Hamas, has admitted that they have lied about 75% of the death counts along with even Hamasa's ministry of health fighter and civilian death count numbers are well below 200,000 people. I have no problem with political parties such as the DSA, however the University of Idaho DSA glorifies terrorism. On their flyers that they repeatedly pass out, they included the logo of the plfp. The plfp is a designated terrorist group that was famous for castrating their Jewish hostages. Nick and his gang of fools, are so uninformed and educated about anything going on in the region to the point where they tried to get the University of Idaho Student Senate Council to divest from them. The university has a partnership with their sister University, the University of Idaho. Not a single one of them knew that Haifa university has a 40% Palestinian enrollment! And the partnership between Haifa and the University allows these Palestinian students to come and study here. Nick and his very uneducated buddies, created a flyer for this event. It was cartoon an image of a bomb with, not an Israeli flag star, but an actual Jewish star! There is no possible way they can be this ignorant and not know what they're doing. The University of Idaho yDSA club has repeatedly used images from news reports of violence against Jews. This club has even harassed Christians and Jewish students on campus. I have talked to multiple Jewish students on campus and all of them have said that Nick is a horrible human being who doesn't realize he's a terrible human being. They have told me that he repeatedly latches on to a cause, gets everyone riled up about it, and then moves on to the next one because it's fun for him. At the Student Senate meeting he got up to speak before them. When he was doing this, the look on his face was pure excitement and you could tell he was having fun with this. Nothing about this conflict is fun. People are dying on both sides and for a human being to be giddy about their ignorance, I don't even know what to say except for, ignorance like Nick's and his and his buddies is anti-Semitism. The facts have been completely presented to them. Did you know that Nick and his friends were raising money indirectly for terrorists? They were repeatedly told by the Jewish community here and others that PCRF, or The Palestinian Children's Relief Fund was a shell company of a shell company ran by Qatar and Hamas. This has been documented multiple times by UN Watch and other NGO's. Yet they're too willfully ignorant to admit that they even made a mistake. They're still raising money for this terrorist group. Nick and his friends also did a protest at WSU. I had multiple Jewish students text me saying, "There's a ton of security here but I don't even feel safe in my own school. I wonder if they would spit on me if I told them I had Israeli friends and family members? Actually I know they probably would because they've called me baby killer before." The individual that put all the marks on her body in the article is a fool by the name of Zeph. Whereas Nick might be an anti-semite through willful ignorance, Zeph is an anti-semite by choice. She has repeatedly screamed blood libel and anti-semitic phrases that the IHRA, The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, has deemed as anti-Semitism. Zeph has repeatedly screamed at Jewish students telling them that they know more than they do and or that this non-jewish person without any Jewish friends or family members, honestly thinks that they can tell a fellow Jewish student that they don't know what they're talking about and Zeph does. She/they have gone out of their way to literally scream at Jews. I honestly hope a future employer sees this and prevents these Jew haters from ever having employment. The reason why I'm writing this now, is that two Jewish peace activists, were gunned down in the streets of DC. In Boulder Colorado, gasoline was thrown on a holocaust survivor and five other women at a peace march that was asking for the release of hostages and an end to the war. Governor Shapiro in Pennsylvania had his house set on fire. In all three incidences the perpetrators screamed, "FREE PALESTINE!" Nick and his bunch of motley fools and the rest of the ignorant uneducated students that are screaming blood liable in the streets, and just replacing the derogatory use of the word Jew with Zionist. All of these terrible jew-hating UI students have screamed at other Jewish students on campus calling them white supremacists because they honestly are so ignorant they think that is what Zionism means. When all Zionism means is that Jews have a right to self-determination in their indigenous Homeland the other populations of cultures there. These University of Idaho fools have screened things like apartheid and had no idea that over 20% of Israel's population are Arabs with full rights. The majority of them are doctors lawyers and one a few of them were a supreme Court judge. One of these judges prosecuted a prime minister and a president of Israel and put them in jail. I fail to see how that is apartheid. Instead I see this as willful ignorance, blaming Jews for everything. Students have heard Nick and his friends say things like, we don't have gay or trans rights because of Israel. We don't have democracy in the United States or healthcare because of Israel. I want you to think for a moment if we just replace the word Israel with Jew, this is what they're saying. They're screaming anti-semitic slogans at the top of their lungs and none of the administration at the University of Idaho is doing anything about them. I have heard that they've been so bad that even law enforcement is monitoring their activities. This comment was made from a Jewish collective that is pushing back against the anti-Semitism on University of Idaho and wsu's campus. We are tired of the hate. We are tired of the hate that Nick and his buddies are organizing over and over again even though we have contacted them multiple times and showed them that the things they're saying are anti-semitic and hearsay not based in facts. The University of Idaho needs to investigate their hate speech.
john moore
It is sad to see U of I students used as pawns by masked bandits fronting for Hamas. This group denies the existence of Israel and willingly hides behind the bodies of it's own people. I'll shed no tears for them.