Defend the Palestinians! Defeat the Witch Hunters!

McCarthyite Film Ban at Hunter College
Struck Down By Student-Faculty Protest

The following Revolution leaflet was distributed early last semester.

JANUARY 30 – As the genocidal U.S./Israel war on Gaza rages on, with the official death toll nearing 27,000, campus administrators have joined government authorities in the drive to stifle expressions of solidarity with the besieged Palestinian people. For months Gaza has been subject to terror bombing, brutal ground assaults, deliberate starvation, the targeting of hospitals and journalists, and the violent uprooting of the vast majority of its 2.3 million people. The mass murder armed and funded by U.S. imperialism – headed by the Democrats’ “Genocide Joe” Biden, soon to face off against all-purpose bigot Donald Trump – is awakening large numbers of youth to the nature of the capitalist society we live in.

As the new semester begins at the City University of New York, pro-Palestinian activists seek to redouble their efforts. A crucial part of the struggle is building cross-campus solidarity against the ramped-up repression – part and parcel of the U.S./Israel war – that brings to mind the McCarthyite bans and witch hunts of the Cold War period. At Hunter College, CUNY Internationalist activists were centrally involved in last semester’s fight to defeat the college president’s attempt to stop the screening of a film critical of Israel.

We link the struggle to defeat the U.S. rulers’ “war censorship drive” to our call for workers action to stop the arms shipments, as part of the fight to bring out the power of the international working class to defend Gaza and to defeat the genocidal U.S./Israel war against the Palestinian people.

Campus Repression on U.S. War’s “Home Front”

School administrations across the country have shown yet again that U.S. imperialism’s wars abroad mean increased repression on the “home front.” In early November, NYC’s Department of Ed issued a gag order on teachers discussing Gaza. The Biden administration’s own Department of Education soon announced that it would launch investigations of schools, promoting the vile lie that opposition to Zionism (the official ideology of the state of Israel, based on oppression of the Palestinian people) is equivalent to anti-Semitism.

In early December, self-styled “ultra-MAGA” Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik, from upstate New York, led a Joe McCarthy-style congressional inquisition against the presidents of MIT, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Her witch hunt was immediately echoed by Democratic NY governor Kathy Hochul, who threatened “aggressive enforcement action,” including a probe of CUNY, with the pretext of the false and slanderous claim that protesters against the genocidal war on Gaza have supposedly fueled a wave of anti-Semitism on college campuses. In reality, those who back Israel’s war and identify it with Jewish people in general are fueling anti-Semitism – as does Stefanik, notorious for using the anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant “great replacement” conspiracy theory in her campaign ads.

Beginning in October, many private universities suspended Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters, including Brandeis, Rutgers and George Washington University. At Columbia, both SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) were suspended. The Barnard administration removed a faculty statement titled “Solidarity with Palestine” from a departmental website.

At CUNY, administrators ran rampant, with the chancellor smearing and targeting pro-Palestinian demonstrators with the claim that they supposedly “glorify” violence. At least three CUNY colleges prevented rallies in defense of the Palestinian people, while the Baruch administration cancelled a History Department teach-in on Gaza. At Hunter, “Public Safety” officers harassed a number of students and told the Muslim Student Association to take down a Palestinian flag and several posters. Meanwhile a “defamation truck” (aka “doxxing truck”) parked outside Hunter and other campuses, vilely slandering faculty members as “anti-Semites” for signing a statement titled “We Reject the Palestine Exception to Free Speech at CUNY.”

Now on January 19, Columbia students protesting the war on Gaza were attacked by two former members of the Israeli military, who sprayed them with a dangerous chemical, causing multiple hospitalizations for nausea, burning eyes and headaches. Solidarity against this vicious attack is crucial for us all.

Hunter President Cancels Israelism Screening

As repression escalated in the fall, the CUNY Internationalist Clubs built a speak-out protest on November 7 outside Hunter College, titled “Stop McCarthyite Witch Hunts at CUNY and Other Campuses!” Club activists publicizing the event soon experienced new examples of why the protest was needed. At CCNY, security officers took down the speak-out fliers and demanded the ID of an activist who was posting them. At Baruch, after being harassed by pro-Israel students, two Internationalists had the fliers ripped out of their hands by an older man who yelled to get off “his” campus.

Undeterred, over 100 students and faculty attended the November 7 Hunter speak-out and marched around the Hunter West building chanting “Defend Gaza Against Israeli Terror,” “Joe Biden Is a War Criminal” and “Arab, Jewish, Black and White – Workers of the World Unite,” in defiance of the witch hunters. (See “Hunter Speak-Out Defies Intimidation Campaign,” igclassstruggle.blogspot.com.)

One week after the speak-out, on November 14 Hunter College’s interim president Ann Kirschner unilaterally canceled the long-programmed screening by the Film and Media Department and Arabic Program of a film titled Israelism, on the pretext that her censorship was supposedly a response to “the danger of antisemitic and divisive rhetoric.” The screening of this award-winning 2023 documentary, scheduled for that same evening in Hunter’s Lang Recital Hall, had been organized by renowned Hunter film maker Tami Gold. The film follows two young American Jews raised in Zionist families, and the experiences visiting Israel that led to their own realizations about how it has dispossessed, oppressed and brutalized the Palestinians.

Upon receiving the news that Hunter’s president had canceled the film screening, a number of faculty union activists organized a meeting for that evening, which drew 60 students and faculty members from various departments and campus clubs, incensed at this blatant censorship. Though some Public Safety and high-level college officials stood outside the door as people gathered, the apparent attempt to intimidate attendees did not work. Professor Jen Gaboury, chair of the Hunter chapter of the Professional Staff Congress (CUNY faculty/staff union), read a statement by the chapter’s executive committee characterizing the film cancellation as an “egregious and illegitimate violation of … academic freedom.” The statement emphasized: “This action taken by Acting President Ann Kirschner of Hunter College is unacceptable.”

Greeting the campus union chapter’s stance, students and faculty at the meeting decided to circulate a petition demanding that the president allow the film to be shown. After some debate, it was emphasized that rather than an end in itself, the petition would be used as part of the drive to reverse the film ban. Most students, faculty and staff were still unaware of what the college president had done, and an in-person petition was a way to inform, talk with and organize them against this censorship, always emphasizing the link between campus repression and the war against Gaza.

The next day, ten students from the Hunter Internationalist Club attended a meeting of Hunter’s academic Senate – formally the principal governance body of the college – holding placards denouncing McCarthyite censorship and defending the right to protest in defense of the Palestinian people. When acting president Kirschner began to address the meeting over video call, the Internationalist activists stood and chanted, “Let the film be shown!”

Jen Gaboury of the PSC put forward the Hunter union chapter’s executive committee statement against the film cancellation, in the form of a resolution for the Senate to vote on. An intense debate followed, with an amendment then added to the resolution, demanding that the administration provide a large, suitable space for Israelism to be shown by the end of November. By a vote of 32 to 7 (with 16 abstentions), the amended resolution passed. Several faculty members spoke to us after the meeting to express the view that having vocal student activists present was crucial to the outcome.

Word about Hunter’s censorship of the film and the resulting outcry reached local and national publications, including the New York Times (“Hunter College Pulls Screening of Film Critical of Israel,” 16 November 2023), Inside Higher Ed and PEN America, as well as Hunter student publication The Athenian, which published a vivid account. The extent of coverage underscored that the struggle against the Hunter president’s outrageous ban was a significant front in a national (and international) fight for the very right to tell the truth about and organize against the oppression of the Palestinian people.

At Hunter, student activists intensively collected signatures, explaining that a battle over free speech – under sustained attack in the effort to stop protest against the U.S./Israel war on Gaza – was taking place at their school. Of the hundreds of students we spoke to, most were appalled to learn of the film ban and readily signed the petition. On the morning of November 27, over 1,000 signatures, overwhelmingly collected by Internationalist Club activists, were submitted to the president’s office, demanding that the film be shown.

Israelism Finally Shown (With Limitations)

Finally, as a result of the campaign of protest waged by students and faculty, Hunter issued an announcement that the screening of Israelism would be held, on December 5 in the Lang Recital Hall. Yet even while backing down on her de facto film ban, Hunter’s acting president sought to control and circumscribe the showing.

For starters, the administration insisted that a rabbi moderate the event, drawing sharp protest from the original organizers, who protested having a religious figure with no expertise on the topic being imposed to run it. Kirschner then unilaterally excluded the Arabic Program, one of two co-sponsors of the cancelled screening, from co-sponsoring the December 5 event. In solidarity with their Arabic Program colleagues, the Film and Media Department withdrew its sponsorship. When another academic Senate meeting was subsequently held, Internationalist activists held up signs to protest the grotesque exclusion of the Arabic Program and highlight the call to defend the Palestinian people.

As the December 5 Israelism screening approached, Hunter authorities increased their efforts to control and circumscribe the event. It wasn’t until December 4, less than 24 hours before the screening, that an invitation to it was sent to Hunter students. The email contained no information on what the film was about, nor did it mention the president, even though it was now effectively her event. In order to be let into the hall, students and faculty had to RSVP and then show their IDs at the door. Yet the RSVP form was only open for a few hours, leaving many unable to attend.

Despite this, the space was filled to its 149-seat capacity. Throughout the event, campus security attempted to intimidate students and faculty. The head of Public Safety stationed himself right behind an Internationalist Club activist for the entirety of the screening and an officer wearing a jacket with a skull and crossbones patch stood at the main exit.

As the credits rolled, faculty and Internationalist Club activists stood up and handed out a flier linked to a chronology that faculty members had prepared, titled “Timeline of Events Leading Up to the Hunter Administration’s Co-option of the Israelism Screening.” When the discussion began, the audience was informed that no questions could be asked directly; instead, they had to be written on index cards that would be given to the moderator, Rabbi Andy Bachman. This new act of censorship gave the moderator, hand-picked by Hunter’s president, control over what questions were asked.

It soon became apparent that he had been chosen to run the event in order to give him multiple opportunities to push a pro-Israel agenda. seeking to counteract the message of the film, and to virtually drown out the film’s protagonist, who was sitting next to him on the stage. Ignoring or selectively “rephrasing” almost all questions from the large stack of cards in his hand, the “moderator” repeatedly interrupted the film maker and the star of the film, anti-Zionist activist Simone Zimmerman, when they tried to answer.

The audience started to become agitated, and Professor Sarah Chinn of the English Department spoke up from one of the front rows, demanding that Bachman read people’s questions. A number of students then took the opportunity to speak. At the end of the discussion, Hunter adjunct and union activist Sándor John spoke, connecting the urgent defense of the Palestinian people to the fight against McCarthyism. He announced that students and faculty were planning a Palestinian film showing on campus before the end of the semester.

Activists Organize Palestinian Film Screening

In the aftermath of the Hunter president’s push to prevent and then co-opt the screening of Israelism, many of the students involved in the organizing efforts felt strongly that a second film screening should be held focusing on the experience of Palestinians living under the Zionist onslaught. This was also important in order to drive home the point that we refuse to let the college administration decide what can and cannot be shown, heard, discussed, etc. Internationalists and others stressed that it was crucial that this take place before the end of the Fall semester to demonstrate that defenders of Palestinian rights will not be silenced by McCarthyite methods of intimidation.

After intensive efforts, the Palestinian film screening was held on December 13, sponsored by an “Ad Hoc Committee for Academic Freedom and Against Censorship” and endorsed by the Bengali Student Association, Internationalist Club, Pakistani Student Organization, Palestine Solidarity Alliance and Revolution Film Club. Though we had only one day to promote the event, over 50 students and faculty members attended to watch two films by Palestinian filmmakers: Where Should the Birds Fly? (2013), a documentary centering on Israel’s 2008-09 war on Gaza, and Fateneh (2019), a short, powerful animated film about a Gazan woman seeking treatment for breast cancer.

Seats were quickly filled, with students and faculty crowding on the floor to attend. In the intense and passionate discussion period following these two very moving films, many attendees made important comments. Among CUNY Internationalists’ remarks, we described the Trotskyist program for international workers action against the U.S./Israel war on Gaza, and for a binational Arab/Hebrew Palestinian workers state as part of a socialist federation of the Middle East. Our comrades also emphasized that the role of “Genocide Joe” Biden and the whole Democratic Party highlights the urgency for all opponents of oppression to break with this and all capitalist parties and politicians. We fight for a revolutionary workers party built on the program of international socialist revolution.

For Workers Action Against Israeli Terror

As increasing numbers of student youth are being politicized by the horrific images of unending Israeli terror against Gaza (as well as escalating attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank), revolutionary Marxists stress the importance of going beyond university bounds and orienting to the power of the working class, here and internationally.

In 2008, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union shut down all 29 West Coast ports, against the U.S. war on Iraq and Afghanistan. On January 13 of this year, longshore workers refused to cross a 3,000-strong picket against a military ship at the docks in Oakland, California. A recent resolution passed by the Painters and Iron Workers union locals in Portland, Oregon indicates the potential of workers action, stating in part:

“Working-class opposition to this U.S./Israel war goes hand in hand with the Labor motto, ‘An injury to one is an injury to all.’ … We salute dock and transport workers in Barcelona, Belgium, Italy, and elsewhere who have stated their refusal to handle arms shipments for this war; and … support and encourage efforts for such workers’ actions here in the U.S. to stop the arms shipments.”

The same Democratic-led imperialist government that backs, arms and funds genocide in Gaza is, together with its NATO allies, waging the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, a way station toward war against China. In other words, as we emphasize in the current issue of Revolution, newspaper of the CUNY Internationalist Clubs and Revolutionary Internationalist Youth. U.S. imperialism is driving toward World War III – and only socialist revolution can stop it.

  There can be little doubt that repression against pro-Palestinian activists will continue to escalate, including on campuses this semester. After all, in the hallowed halls of capitalism’s Congress, the House of Representatives voted by a large majority on December 5 to officialize the bald-faced lie that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” Among them was witch-hunting Rep. Stefanik, purveyor of the anti-Semitic “replacement theory” spouted by white supremacists in Charlottesville in 2017 and the racist gunmen who murdered 10 black people in Buffalo in 2022.

The forces seeking to censor and stop pro-Palestinian protest are dangerous and powerful – but the multiracial working class has a greater power: to shut down and overturn the whole machinery of capitalist oppression. It is to this class power that radical-minded students must turn in the struggles to come.■

To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com

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