Students walking past Hayden Lawn on Wednesday afternoon were subject to interrogations as the Students for Justice in Palestine held a demonstration replicating the West Bank barrier in Israel.
Acting as Israeli guards and Palestinian citizens at a checkpoint station, volunteers made it difficult to pass from one side of the wall to the other.
“It’s easy to read things online. It’s easy to read things in newspapers. But it’s not easy to understand it,” said Oday Shahin, head of public relations for Students for Justice in Palestine’s ASU chapter. “We want to bring the reality of the checkpoints and the oppression of the Palestinian people on Hayden Lawn.”
The West Bank barrier replica stood more than 26 feet tall and was covered with information about the wall’s construction, stories of children killed by bombings and other accounts from those affected by the region’s conflict.
A volunteer acting as an Israeli guard stood in front of the wall with a megaphone, chiding onlookers for staring at “his wall” and forcing students into interrogations.
“People need to know the context, that’s why we’re here,” said Shahin as a guard forced yet another student to his knees while screaming at him.
“Someone stopped me and said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, are you pro- or anti-Israeli?’” said Shahin, a computer information systems junior. “I said, ‘Well, I’m going to tell you what’s happening here and you decide.’”
Bryce Schotz, a finance and marketing sophomore, said he found the event offensive because the group was negatively portraying Jewish people.
“They have people dressed up in yarmulkes, in ‘Israeli Defense’ T-shirts and portray them as evil, bad people,” Schotz said. “Once they put a yarmulke on, that’s a religious battle.”
Mark Montesano, Students for Justice in Palestine’s faculty sponsor, said the group is doing a good job informing people, including himself.
“I bring my classes to the mosque and they help to facilitate conversations … between Muslim students and my students about Islam and other things,” Montesano said. “They’re really teaching me more.”
Students for Justice in Palestine obtained the wall from its fellow chapter at the University of California, Irvine. Group members began assembling the wall Wednesday morning at 5 a.m., finishing five hours later.
As Shahin explained how the wall in the West Bank changes Palestinians’ everyday routines to a group of students, the man with the megaphone directed his guards to seize someone walking by.
“Him!” he yelled as other guards surrounded the student portraying a Palestinian citizen, forcing him to the ground and ripping his backpack from his back.
“I didn’t do anything!” the student pleaded. “I’m just going to class!”
The guards didn’t relent, forcing his hands behind his back and dragging him to an area where others had been detained.
The Students for Justine in Palestine shouldn’t be on campus, Schotz said, though he said he understands the group’s right to freedom of speech.
“Instead of demonstrating their causes, they’re putting down other people,” he said. “It’s really sad.”
Shahin insisted the group is portraying the struggle fairly, and that the situations are accurate reenactments of checkpoints at the West Bank wall.
“[We’re] showing students that this is what Palestinians go through,” Shahin said. “We’re here to show the wall — this is what it mimics.”
Reach the reporter at joseph.schmidt@asu.edu
