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Protest signs are strung along the side of a building in Boylston Place, Boston, an alley running along part of Emerson College's campus, during a pro-Palestine encampment on Tuesday, April 23, 2024.
This weekend, the Franklin Historical Museum has focused its programming on the early 20th century Armenian Genocide, not only because it was an immense and important event, a genocide that provided a roadmap for later atrocities by Nazi Germany, but also because the diaspora it created greatly enlarged the Armenian community of Franklin and of Massachusetts as a whole. Indeed, the town’s low-profile resident, Camp Haiastan, has been a beacon of cultural survival for those of Armenian heritage in the region and along much of the East Coast for nearly 70 years.
In a similar way, today, events in Israel and Gaza are having echoes close to home with college students at some Boston institutions demonstrating and occupying campus areas in support of Palestine and in opposition to Israel and ‘Zionists’ – a code-word in many cases for all Jewish people. Even students at Dean College openly talk about taking radical steps like creating their own encampment on campus and about the necessity of supporting Palestinians and not Israelis.
The region even has its 'star' radical. According to published reports, Khymani James. a Boston Latin School graduate, who has been a prominent leader of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University, in a video recording has stated that “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”
Social media, too, has increasingly been infused with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic language. James himself has stated he would “fight to kill Zionists.” Closer to Franklin, Andrew Laberge a Housing Authority Member in Plainville, MA, a Democratic State Committee Man, and Chair of the Plainville Democratic Town Committee gave a “like” to a post by Middle East Eye calling Israel’s action in Gaza a genocide and demanding that Harvard university divest from Israel.
Doubtless there are other examples within the region.
Looked at in more concrete terms, the Anti-Defamation League’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, issued earlier this month, recorded a total of 623 antisemitic incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism in the New England Region (covering Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont) in 2023, a 205 percent increase from 2022 and the highest number of antisemitic incidents ever recorded in the region. The regional increase in antisemitic incidents reported to ADL outpaced the 140 percent increase reported across the country. Nationally, ADL recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents in 2023, the highest total since ADL started tracking such data in 1979. The ADL Audit of Antisemitic Incidents also recorded a dramatic spike of 351 antisemitic acts across the region after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Of the 623 incidents counted in 2023, 44 percent (351) occurred in the final 3 months of the year, post October 7.
Gov. Maura Healey gave a mostly muted response Tuesday to press questions about the proliferation of pro-Palestinian encampments, saying "there has to be" space for both protest and Jewish student safety alike.” And she has also framed the whole situation as a product of hate and racism.
And while authorities ae taking a much harder line with these protests than they have in the past, removing protesters at Emerson and Northeastern, it seems likely passions on both sides of the issue will continue to grow, posing a challenge to citizens and intuitions alike.
