Editor’s Note: the author of this work has requested that their identity be concealed for the purpose of openly sharing their first-hand accounts of the police’s brutalization of pro-Palestinian protesters. The author does not wish for their accounts to be retroactively traced back to their identity and misconstrued with other activities that did not involve them and warrant law enforcement. Al-Talib Newsmagazine abides by this request and aspires to uplift voices that would otherwise feel uncomfortable in sharing their side of the story.
May 2nd, 1:00 AM— Police mobilize to tear down our Anti-Genocide Palestine Solidarity Encampment and brutalize hundreds of students, arresting over 200. Students and supporters ages 17 and older, preparing both mentally and physically to be arrested. “If the police pull on the wall, push, if they push, pull . . . if there’s tear gas, use the cones to catch it and put it out with water— don’t touch it or it’ll burn your skin . . . If they hold you to the ground, say clearly you’re not resisting so they don’t suffocate you.” Red flares set off in the sky every couple of minutes, trying to scare us away and drown out the cries of the people of Gaza.
“They’re coming”. We hold down the wall to the best of our ability. To our left, the wall is torn down. You see nothing but smoke and students falling all over each other as police ready their weapons, shooting rubber bullets into the crowd, piercing the head of a student, just missing those behind him. His sight blurry and his hearing gone for a moment from the impact. They spread out slowly and are behind our wall. They start pulling and pushing– not long after tearing to pieces the wood that separated us and them. The wall we tirelessly built to protect ourselves where they wouldn’t.
We see them for the first time. It sets in who they are. Before that, you could pretend it was an animal or anything but a human that could do this. They move forward intimidatingly, their batons ready, looking for any reason to beat you. Taser in belt. Their stares are blank. Never have I looked into more soulless eyes. The students link arms, forming a chain. No weapons, no defense, while middle-aged men stare past us with disgust as if we were the criminals. “Do you have kids? How would you like it if your kids were bombed?! I’m talking to you,” a protester shouts. No reply, no change in expression in response.
The police stand their ground. We stand ours. They strategize where to move in from, ripping keffiyehs and flags from students with such force you would think they were weapons. A police officer knocks off the helmet of a student to my left, a helmet the student wore as protection from him. Chants begin again to fill the silence, “Peaceful Protest . . . We’re Just Students . . . Please Don’t Shoot Us”. Their blank stares don’t break as kids, maybe their son’s or daughter’s age, beg to be recognized as humans and not terrorists, begging to not be hit, to not be shot. You look around and realize a majority of people here are just kids. You forget while you prepare all night as if you’re in literal battle. You look around, and the one girl from MSA has her hands zip-tied behind her back. The friends you met during orientation are facilitating rides to evacuate people– bear-maced the night before. Your friend in front of you holding down a wall to protect this camp that, by extension, represents his people. By Allah’s strength, they became strong because they felt the weight of their people on their backs.
You look the police in the eye. You see what they’re doing. And although you already knew before, you know for certain now they came to finish off the job of the Zionists that attacked you not twenty-four hours before. While they watched. You grow up your whole life, fed the narrative that these people will protect you. But they are only your assailants in uniform. Only instead of bear mace, it’s tear gas, flare guns instead of fireworks, and batons to substitute the jagged metal rods and hunks of wood from the night before.
Tuesday night, we heard sirens within the first hour of the attack, and though we knew deep down they weren’t there for us, you look for any sliver of hope it will end. It instead continued for six hours– six hours of students holding the wall, being maced, their eyes flushed, and returning for it to happen all over again. A Freshman girl stabbed without medical assistance, one of her first few memories of the school she most likely idealized getting into. A boy with his head cut open to the point where he said his goodbyes to his family, not seeing any way out. Your friends on the ground throbbing in pain, the most vulnerable you’ve ever seen them. And the most useless you’ve ever felt for not knowing what to do.
A sense of guilt eats away at us because we felt trapped for a night or two, while the people of Palestine have been trapped for 75 years. Except instead of fireworks that make your heart jump for a moment, it’s thousand-pound bombs crushing them to death– their skin inflamed, and insides filled with smoke. Babies surviving these bombings unable to even verbalize the pain they feel. We slept in tents cold for a couple nights while they have done so for over 200 days– newlyweds shivering by the beachside with their newborn. We were verbally, psychologically, and physically abused by counter-protestors for a week, while the people of Gaza live under a state run by the very same people.
We bear the guilt instead of the institutions and people that, in name alone, call themselves saviors of the world. And though they were above us in power that night, God was above them. While the hurt remains imprinted on us, our spirit grows stronger and our community with it. And though the suffering is debilitating, it is melting the hearts of people. And making truth clear in the face of their falsehood. A sacrifice, though hard to navigate, is a sacrifice each of us is willing to make. And by the will of Allah, the more they suppress us, the stronger we’ll return– only a fraction as strong as the people of Palestine.
“And say, ‘Truth has come, and falsehood has departed. Indeed is falsehood, [by nature], ever bound to depart.’ “(Qur’an, 17:81)