‘Nobody is free until everyone is free’: Pitt students, teachers, and community members attend Palestine protest in Schenley Plaza

Around 70 Pitt students and members of the community gathered in Schenley Plaza on Tuesday evening, waving Palestinian flags and chanting, “No, Gabel, you can’t hide / You’re committing genocide.”

The event, which was organized by Students for Justice in Palestine, protested the ongoing violence in Gaza and Israel and demanded university divestment and a formal statement condemning the violence against Palestinians. Several pro-Israel counterprotesters were also in attendance. 

The event’s slogan was “300+ days of genocide, 300+ days of resistance,” in recognition of the time that has passed since the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israeli citizens. Since that day, more than half of the Israeli citizens taken hostage were killed in captivity, and over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed as a result of the IDF response. Most of the Palestinans killed were civilians, despite the Israeli government’s repeated assertions that they are targeting Hamas leaders.

Karim Safieddine, a sociology doctoral student, said he felt he had a moral obligation to attend the protest. 

“After 10 months of the most brutal murders of the highest degree in the past few decades, I have no choice but to be here,” Safieddine said. “We weren’t able to save more than 10,000 babies killed in the past ten months, but we still have the ability to save thousands more.”

Omid Shekari, an assistant studio arts professor at Pitt, said he was there to show “solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle against the genocide that is happening in Israel.”

As an immigrant from Iran, Shekari said he sympathizes with the Palestinian people. 

“I grew up in a country that is under authoritarianism, and we had different forms of oppression. On one level, I feel that I’m sharing this oppression with my Palestinian comrades, friends, people,” Shekari said. 

Shekari is part of a group of faculty, staff and student researchers that he says met with Ariel Armony, the Vice Chancellor for Global Affairs and the director of the University Center for International Studies, to ask the university to condemn the violence against Palestinians.

“We asked that because he wrote a statement for Ukrainian academics. A week or two after Russia bombed Ukraine and Ukrainian universities [were] hit, Ariel Armony released a statement [that] stood in solidarity with the academics in Ukraine, but also condemned Russia for this attack, which is fair,” Shekari said. “We wanted the exact statement for the Palestinians, for the academics in Gaza.”

Shekari thought the meeting was successful, but said the administration later refused to provide a statement. 

“[Armony] promised us to [provide the same statement], but after meeting with the chancellor and the higher powers, he told us that it is impossible.”

According to Shekari, the group also tried to meet with people higher up in the university administration. 

“Unfortunately, the university is not willing to meet with us,” Shekari said. “We specifically asked Chancellor Gabel or the board of trustees at Pitt to meet with us, but none of them wanted to do that. We met with some vice chancellors and the Dean of Students a few times, and they told us that they don’t have any power for decision-making.”

With the lack of a concrete response from the university, Shekari said the differences in comment on Ukraine and Palestine are indicative of an institutional issue.

“This is exactly the white supremacy of this institution, because the same thing is happening in Ukraine, and because people are considered white in Ukraine, the university easily released a statement for them, but it seems that the Palestinian lives are not that important for this university,” Shekari said. “The Pitt administration is showing that they are reproducing this racism and hierarchy that has existed for centuries.”

The university declined to comment in response.

A member of the SJP board, who was granted anonymity for safety reasons, said she thinks the media plays a role in minimizing the conflict. 

“Anytime there is a brutal military occupation of anywhere — take Ukraine, for instance — it’s internationally condemned, right? But of course, because by the media, Palestinians have been so dehumanized, people don’t view it in the same way,” the board member said. “Palestinians are human beings, and they deserve to live and self-determine on their land just as much as any other people.”

The demands of groups like SJP and Pitt Divest from Apartheid remain the same. In a June press release, Pitt Divest from Apartheid called for–among other things–the university to disclose all investments, divest university finances from companies “that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine” and terminate all research partnerships with “complicit companies.”

Shekari believes divestment is still a viable direction for the university to take.

“By divesting from weapon manufacturing companies, cutting ties with the universities in the state of Israel, we can put pressure. We can show that we are on the right side of the history, we are against the genocide, and we don’t want to profit from killing other people,” Shekari said. 

As the 2024 election draws nearer, Safieddine said he sees the conflict in Palestine as an opportunity for change. 

“There is a lot of heat being directed at different presidential candidates who are noticing that the current social groups in the U.S. and the various interest groups from below in the U.S. are becoming increasingly concerned about the situation [in Palestine] and feel that they have responsibility,” Safieddine said. 

Ilay Dvir, a sophomore computer science student and president of the Students Supporting Israel branch in Pittsburgh, attended the event as a counterprotestor. Dvir said he approved of the U.S. involvement in Palestine and disapproved of the campus protests.

“I think the U.S. has been doing a great job. I believe they need to control the college campuses a little bit more, in my opinion,” Dvir said.

To counterprotest, Dvir used a megaphone as protest organizers were speaking, using the siren and saying the speakers “should know what they are saying when they chant slogans in Arabic.”  Dvir said he hopes SJP will be barred from further demonstrations.

“Hopefully we can get SJP banned on campus, since they’ve broken so many rules and not listened to cops repeatedly,” Dvir said.

Safieddine views college as a place designed to encourage people to think about the world in a broader context.

“College campuses are a place in which people are attempting to revisit their relationship to the land, their relationship to other people, their relationship to the ways on which the United States has governed its power and violence across the world,” Safieddine said. “As long as campuses remain such a space, they have to be spaces in which people can really rethink the tragic realities of U.S. foreign policy today.”

Safieddine “remains hopeful” because of the impact the younger generation has had on the pro-Palestine movement.

“It’s very clear that we are looking at a new generation of human beings who truly believe that they can make an impact in this world,” Safieddine said. 

Shekari said the movement’s support expands beyond the conflict in Palestine.

“Nobody is free until everyone is free. This is for Palestine, but if tomorrow it happens to another group, we will stand for them.”

A previous version of this story misquoted Ilay Dvir,  claiming he said rally speakers “should be speaking in Arabic.” Dvir said rally speakers “should know what they are saying when they chant slogans in Arabic.” The article has been updated to reflect this change. The Pitt News regrets this error.