OXFORD, Miss.—A styrofoam cup full of ice water flew out of the hands of a counter protester and across the partly cloudy sky toward a group of pro-Palestine protesters at the University of Mississippi on Thursday, marking the beginning of a tense hour on the Quad.
Some among a mostly white, mostly male group of counter protesters engaged in racist, sexist displays and hurled epithets. One man danced like a simian while making monkey-like sounds in the direction of a Black woman who supported Palestine while his compatriots chanted, “Lock her up!”
The counter protesters outnumbered the more diverse group of roughly three dozen pro-Palestine protesters by about 10 to 1 on the Oxford, Miss., campus at the height of the event.
As the pro-Palestine group called for the U.S. to stop funding Israel’s war on Gaza, the counter-group sang the national anthem and shouted chants at them, such as “F–k Joe Biden,” “Who’s your daddy?,” “Take a shower” and “Shave your legs.”
Multiple law-enforcement agencies were on the ground, keeping their backs against the protective barricades surrounding the pro-Palestine protesters.
‘Warms My Heart. I Love Mississippi!’
University of Mississippi sophomore Ryan Hoffman prefaced his statement against the pro-Palestine group by identifying himself as Jewish. “People tend to forget that when you reckon with democracy, you’re met with a tenfold response,” Hoffman told the Mississippi Free Press on Thursday while fellow counter protesters chanted “Take your masks off” at the pro-Palestine group, some of whom were wearing masks.
Hoffman defended Israel’s military action on Gaza, which has claimed over 34,000 Palestinian lives since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel that claimed 1,200 lives. Dozens of Israeli hostages that Hamas kidnapped remain in Gaza.
“You don’t know if a guy walking down the street is an innocent civilian or if he is a member of Hamas,” Hoffman said. “You have to bomb an entire area, and that area might include a place where women and children are. It’s just like when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima, there were women and children there. That is the horror of war.”
Ole Miss senior Lauren Flood only came to observe, but said she stands with Palestine. “I understand having opposing opinions, but anyone who can come and chant the school chant in the face of women and children being killed and starved and seeing hospitals being bombed—it’s very disheartening and eerie,” she told the Mississippi Free Press.
Some of the things Flood heard from counter protestors disturbed her. “I didn’t speak to these boys, but they were talking about following some of the protesters and wanting to harm them,” she said. “I’m still shaken a little at how violent some of the comments were. There was a sexual-assault comment by one of them directed toward the women in the protest with head coverings.”
Despite videos showing many of the counter protesters’ racist and misogynistic antics, the counter protests drew praise from several of the state’s mostly white male leaders—including Gov. Tate Reeves (whose own college career included participation in a fraternity known for racist antics), Secretary of State Michael Watson and State Auditor Shad White.
“Warms my heart. I love Mississippi!” Reeves wrote on Thursday, sharing a video of the counter protesters.
‘Our Challenging History’
The University of Mississippi has a long, sordid past when it comes to race. After the University of Mississippi admitted its first Black student, James Meredith, in 1962, deadly, racist riots erupted on campus culminating in President John F. Kennedy calling in the National Guard to quell the furor. Federal Marshals escorted Meredith to his classes as white students hurled racist epithets, even exploding M-80s at him.
The day before the riot at UM, the state’s segregationist governor, Ross Barnett, had given a rousing speech to a crowd of 41,000 people waving Confederate flags at a UM game against Kentucky. “I love Mississippi. I love her people, our customs. I love and I respect our heritage,” the segregationist Dixiecrat declared, drawing a chorus of rebel yells in reply.
In 1983, months after the Ku Klux Klan marched on campus, Black students huddled in a Black fraternity house to hide while about 1,000 white students singing “Dixie” and screaming the n-word roamed the campus—angry over rumors that Black students intended to burn copies of the yearbook that prominently featured photos of the klansmen.
Race continues to play a large role at the University of Mississippi today. In the 2020 UM Emails series, the Mississippi Free Press reported extensively on how university officials frequently catered to the whims and demands of racist donors behind the scenes—including one who compared Black women to apes and shared photos mocking Black students as “hookers” with a former dean.
Meanwhile, in Mississippi and nationwide, white conservative leaders like Mississippi State Auditor Shad White have targeted education on systemic racism and initiatives aimed at promoting diversity, inclusion and equity. An attempt to ban DEI in Mississippi universities died in the Legislature without a vote this year.
In a statement Friday evening on the pro-Palestine protests and counter protests, UM Chancellor Glenn Boyce said he and other university leaders were “aware that some statements made were offensive, hurtful, and unacceptable, including actions that conveyed hostility and racist overtones.” He said the university had opened a conduct investigation into one student and were “working to determine whether more cases are warranted,” but could not name the student currently under investigation due to privacy laws.
Boyce acknowledged UM’s racist past.
“While we are a modern university with a vibrant community of more than 25,000 people, it is important to acknowledge our challenging history, and incidents like this can set us back,” he said. “It is one reason we do not take this lightly and cannot let unacceptable behavior of a few speak for our institution or define us. We are a community of scholars committed to creating an academic experience that respects the dignity of each individual. … To be clear, people who say horrible things to people because of who they are will not find shelter or comfort on this campus.”
‘Stop the Genocide’
At the protest on Thursday, students held a sign that said “End the Genocide”—referring to Israel’s ongoing bloody military actions targeting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, a blockaded spit of land only a few dozen square kilometers larger than Mississippi’s capital city.
Since the beginning of the retributive war after Hamas’ murderous terrorist attacks against innocent civilians on Oct. 7 of last year, Israel’s government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has subjected the 2.3 million residents of Gaza—one of the most densely populated urban areas on Earth—to the deadliest bombing campaign in modern history. The campaign has continued even as Hamas continued holding dozens of hostages in Gaza, some of which have been killed amid the bombardment.
While many, including the Israeli government, have challenged the use of the the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza, top human rights and international law experts have said Israel’s actions meet the definition. In March, United Nations human-rights expert Francesca Albanese told the U.N. Human Rights Council that Israel’s actions meet the definition of genocide. Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention says genocide is “a crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.”
“Specifically, Israel has committed three acts of genocide with the requisite intent: causing seriously serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group,” Albanese said. She added that “the genocide in Gaza is the most extreme stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure of the native Palestinians.”
Israel’s government rejected the report, calling Albanese’s statements an attempt to “turn the Convention itself into a tool of terrorists.”
Israel’s campaign has, as of this month, killed at least 34,568 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including at least 13,000 children. In addition, an estimated 19,000 additional Palestinian children have been left as orphans in the war. More than 77,000 Palestinians have been wounded—including countless gruesome and permanent injuries: The Washington Post reports that an estimated 10 children lose a limb each day.
These death tolls are undercountings—a significant number of Palestinian dead missing in the rubble and wreckage of the territory still remain uncounted. Just last week, civil authorities uncovered a mass grave of nearly 400 Palestinian bodies in Gaza, with some of the dead patients clad in surgical gowns.
For those who survive, the extent of need and suffering is catastrophic. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an international measure of the extent of famine worldwide, found that virtually all residents of the Gaza Strip are approaching famine conditions, with more than 600,000 Palestinians actively experiencing the most critical phase of food insecurity.
By December, the World Health Organization had reported over 200 attacks on health-care settings, hospitals and clinics across Gaza. By the end of 2023, Israel had “damaged or destroyed” more than 355,000 homes in Gaza, almost 70% of all housing stock in the area. Refugee camps that residents have thus fled to have also been the target of numerous Israeli strikes, killing women and children sheltering from the earlier destruction of their homes.
The total war against the entire population of Gaza is visible from the solar system. “Gaza is now a different color from space. It’s a different texture,” Corey Scher of the CUNY Graduate Center told the Associated Press.
Israel has inflated the numbers of Hamas militants killed in Israel’s unprecedented bombing of Gaza and questioned the civilian death toll presented by the Gaza Health Ministry. But the ministry’s numbers have historically proven largely accurate under international scrutiny.
The Israeli government’s actions do not earn universal approval in the country. In March, an Israeli poll found that only 28% of Israelis approve of Netanyahu’s job performance.
‘Thank God For Dixie’
In Oxford on Thursday, pro-Palestine protesters chanted “Free Palestine” and “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest” as counter protesters threw food items, water bottles, and styrofoam cups. Jaylin Smith, a graduate student at the university, was the media contact for the group calling themselves UM For Palestine.
“At a university which promotes diversity, equity and inclusivity, I’m standing for my right to free speech and getting things thrown at me, and officers are putting their hands on me to move me back,” Smith said.
“Somebody’s gotta stand up, and it’s not always gonna be our Palestinian students,” Smith continued. “It takes our white, our Black, our Brown, our Asian students to stand up for everybody. Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.”
When one member of the protest group sprayed nearby counter protesters with water, law enforcement moved quickly to disperse the protest an hour earlier than scheduled. University police, Oxford police and the First Amendment Support Team escorted the protesters to the Applied Sciences building to wait and regroup until counter protesters left, but many on both sides remained outside in front of the Paris-Yates Chapel where another shouting match arose.
Counter protesters shouted “Your nose is huge” at protesters and chanted, “Lizzo! Lizzo! Lizzo!” at Jaylin Smith, referring to the popular singer. “F–k you fatass, f–k you b-tch,” one male counter protester shouted at her.
Law enforcement once again urged everyone to move along, but less than five minutes later, the last skirmish began on Rebel Drive where counter protesters shouted, “Thank God for Dixie” as police escorted the pro-Palestine protesters toward dorms and parking lots as they chanted, “F–k this genocide.”
‘It’s An Entire Nation Out There That Is Responsible’
Aside from the colossal civilian death toll, Israel’s war has also targeted the living culture of Palestine. South Africa’s case against the Israeli genocide lays out the extent of the cultural devastation: “(Israel) has targeted Gaza City’s Central Archive building, containing thousands of historical documents and national records dating back over 100 years, and forming an essential archive of Palestinian history … has left Gaza City’s main public library in ruins … (and) damaged or destroyed countless bookshops, publishing houses, libraries, and hundreds of educational facilities.”
Israel’s attacks have killed numerous civilian elders, writers, musicians and poets. No schools currently operate in Gaza, and all universities in the region have been destroyed. Reporters Without Borders reported last month that at least 103 journalists have been killed in Gaza in a matter of months. Jodie Ginsberg, president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, summarized the killings—both targeted and indiscriminate: “The Israel-Gaza war has been the deadliest conflict for journalists that C.P.J. has ever recorded.”
On Oct. 12, 2023, Israeli President Isaac Herzog highlighted what he described as Israel’s deliberate practice of collective punishment. “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true … and we will fight until we break their backbone.”
Shortly after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant laid out the intent to dehumanize, starve and annihilate the population of Gaza: “(We are) imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cast the Israeli retaliation as “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness, between humanity and the law of the jungle.”
As an institution, the State of Israel has drawn plans—downplayed as mere “concept papers”—to permanently eradicate the Palestinian presence in Gaza, with its Intelligence Ministry drafting a plan to transfer all 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
“The issue of the ‘day after’ has not been discussed in any official forum in Israel, which is focused at this time on destroying the governing and military capabilities of Hamas,” the Associated Press reported the Israeli prime minister’s office saying after news of the “concept papers” broke in October 2023.
Students at college campuses across the country—from Columbia University to the University of California, Los Angeles to the University of Mississippi—have demanded the cessation of U.S. support for Israel’s military.
The United States has long funded Israel’s military and has continued to through Netanyahu’s post-October 2023 attacks in Gaza that human-rights experts say are clear genocide. In March, the U.S. allowed the transfer of $2.5 billion of weapons, including numerous bombs that The Washington Post reports are specifically linked to “mass-casualty events” of civilians in Gaza.
U.S. patronage of Israel is the state’s single most important strategic partnership. In the past, among its allies, the intervention of the U.S. has been most effective at curbing the actions of the Israeli state.
Presently, the World Health Organization estimates that 1.2 million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, a city in Gaza’s south. Now, Israel plans for an assault on Rafah, where UNICEF estimates 600,000 sheltering children are virtually all “injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized or living with disabilities.”
The Israeli campaign against Gaza has supercharged college protests across the country.
UM NAACP Condemns ‘Reprehensible Actions’
In the first Instagram post from UM For Palestine on Wednesday, the protest group said they were “working to achieve full UM divestment and academic boycott from Israel as well as education and awareness on Palestine and the current genocide.” The next post was a flier for the May 2 protest, followed the same day with a statement to the University of Mississippi on the protest:
“Our vocal protest outside the library was a peaceful demonstration of our dismay with the behavior of the university,” UM For Palestine said. “We were confronted by counter protesters who engaged in blind reactionarism that had little to do with the genocide we were protesting as well as our demands. We condemn the hateful actions and rhetoric of the counter protesters who threw food and made violent threats toward our protesters.
“We expected our First Amendment rights to be better protected and were deeply ashamed that they were not.”
In its own statement on Thursday, the UM NAACP said it “vehemently condemns the reprehensible actions exhibited by the counter protesters toward the students who were peacefully demonstrating against the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
“UM NAACP reaffirms our unwavering support for our Palestinian brothers and sisters, as well as those who courageously advocate for the rights of the oppressed. We call on the university administration and local authorities to take swift and decisive action to ensure the safety and well-being of all students and community members, and to hold those responsible for today’s reprehensible actions accountable for their behavior.”
After the tumultuous protests in Oxford on Thursday, University of Mississippi Director of News and Media Relations Jacob Batte released a statement about the university’s commitment to supporting the First Amendment rights of university students, faculty and employees.
“While today’s demonstration was passionate and several protesters and counter protesters received warnings from law enforcement over their actions, there were no arrests, no injuries reported, and the demonstration ended peacefully.”
Ashton Pittman contributed to this report.
