Columbia University Magazine: How It Helped Dismantle Israeli Narrative Among American Students

The rise of student protests at American universities, sparked by Columbia University students in solidarity with Gaza and against the Israeli Occupation, urging their institutions to divest from Israeli projects, is a testament to an educational movement inspired by the Palestinian cause.

Numerous magazines and websites launched by university students, particularly those of Palestinian or Arab descent, have played crucial roles in spreading awareness among students about the Palestinian cause.

These efforts have also contributed to dismantling the brainwashing effects of Jewish narratives prevalent due to traditional Zionist storytelling about victimhood and anti-Semitism.

American and European students and citizens have actively used their social media accounts and other platforms to educate about the history of Palestine, debunk false Zionist narratives, and emphasize that the Nakba was the starting point of the issue, with displacement, violence, and land theft as its root causes.

The education of students has gradually spread to the broader American and European public, leading to instances where students openly explain the Palestinian cause in public places such as public transportation, streets, and stores; this has been effective in challenging traditional Israeli narratives.

Unconventional Education 

It was a striking paradox that frustrated the Zionist lobby and university presidents to see their students reading different books than those traditionally taught, which aimed at "brainwashing them" in favor of "Jewish Zionist narratives."

Students began publishing reports, studies, and references in their university magazines that presented entirely different perspectives on the Palestinian issue and the suffering of the Nakba.

American students started reading works by Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian novelist and fighter; Bassel al-Araj, an intellectual and activist from the West Bank; and Leila Khaled, a Palestinian political figure in the popular resistance.

They were also drawn to the writings of Malcolm X and Assata Shakur, sharing excerpts and summaries in their publications.

Malcolm X, an African American human rights advocate, called for resistance against injustice and occupation, corrected the course of the Islamic movement in America, and was assassinated for his efforts.

Assata Shakur, whose real name is Joanne Chesimard, is a symbol of African American struggle, a member of the Black Panther Party, accused of various crimes between 1971 and 1973 and labeled a "terrorist" for her advocacy for people's rights.

Some professors participated in educating students about the realities of the Palestinian cause, with some sacrificing their jobs to stand before students and explain the truth about the Nakba, the injustice suffered by the Palestinian people, and the historical facts that Zionists attempted to obscure in Western universities.

It became an irony that Palestine is liberating the world, after the world delayed in liberating Palestine, sweeping away all the false Zionist narratives that have been perpetuated for decades and instilled in the minds of students and Americans.

Ending the Brainwashing 

Students did not just end their own brainwashing by undertaking the largest educational effort to read books, research about the Palestinian cause, and publish them on university websites or their accounts; they also moved on to educate the American public.

Large groups of students insisted on carrying the message and educating the people of Europe as well about what is happening in Palestine, explaining the details of the issue and the facts related to it in trains, subways, student halls, and public gatherings, with remarkable determination.

Some did not just explain but also distributed informational leaflets about the Palestinian cause and the Nakba, some of which were copied from what was published in the Columbia Law Review and other student sites.

This educational campaign, directly and indirectly, raised awareness among the American and European people about the realities of the Palestinian cause, with some even participating in protests against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

They said they did not know anything about the Nakba and the Zionist oppression of Palestinians.

End of University Suppression

In November 2023, Palestinian lawyer Rabea Eghbariah, who completed his PhD at Harvard Law School, attempted to publish an article in the Harvard Law Review about the Nakba from a legal perspective. The article was rejected despite being fully reviewed, edited, and verified.

In May 2024, Eghbariah tried again to publish the same article in the Columbia Law Review, encouraged by the shift in American universities against the aggression in Gaza. This time, the article was published.

On June 3, 2024, the article was published, but within hours, the Columbia University administration requested the Columbia Law Review’s editorial board to remove it. The student editors refused to comply with the administration's request to halt the publication of Eghbariah's academic article, Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept, leading the university administration to shut down the website on June 3.

Student editors told the Associated Press on June 5 that they were pressured by the magazine's board to stop publishing the article, which seemed to accuse “Israel” of genocide in Gaza and supporting apartheid. When editors refused to yield, the board, composed of faculty and alumni of Columbia Law School, completely shut down the website.

Many editors of the Columbia Law Review described the board's intervention as an unprecedented violation of editorial independence. After much contention, the university administration relented and allowed the article to be published.

This incident marked a significant struggle between students and university administration, demonstrating the power of students to compel the university to publish the article or face a complete shutdown of the site. It also highlighted how the issue of Gaza and Palestine succeeded in liberating the world from the suppression of the Zionist narrative that dominated universities and prevented the publication of perspectives contrary to Israeli lies, thus ending cultural and professional discrimination against American students.

This was the first time the Columbia Law Review and the Harvard Law Review published an article by a Palestinian legal scholar on the Palestinian Nakba accurately, without Zionist distortion.

The article published in the Columbia Law Review played a significant role in the battle for education and ending the brainwashing of American students about the Nakba, highlighting that the crimes of occupation and genocide are not new or confined to Gaza but date back to the Nakba of 1948 and have continued since then.

The world's newspapers began questioning why elite American universities feared the publication of this Palestinian researcher's article.

On June 9, 2024, The Guardian highlighted aspects of this educational battle and the attempts by Zionist lobbyists and university leaders to prevent the publication of Rabea Eghbariah's article because it addressed the legal status of what historically is known as the Palestinian Nakba.

What angered supporters of Israeli Occupation at Columbia University was that Eghbariah's article explained the Nakba story to students through the university magazine, illustrating how the displacement process from Palestine in 1948 occurred from a legal perspective condemning the Israeli Occupation.

In his article, he stated that the law lacks the language that they urgently need to accurately express the overall Palestinian situation.

Hostile Environment

After students' persistence led to the university administration agreeing to publish the article and reopening the Columbia Law Review's website, Eghbariah's story made major newspaper headlines, educating Americans further about the Nakba crisis."

A widely circulated PDF of the article gained far more readership than usual for legal studies, increasing Americans' awareness of the legal aspects of the Nakba that condemn “Israel.”

Rabea Eghbariah described the crisis of publishing the article and the Columbia University board's submission as an example of Palestine being an exception in terms of freedom of expression and academic freedom, speaking to The Intercept on June 6.

“The attempt to silence my legal scholarship on the Nakba by shutting down the entire Columbia Law Review website is not only reflective of a pervasive and anti-intellectual Palestine exception to academic freedom but is also a testament to a culture of Nakba denialism,” Eghbariah said in a statement to CNN.

He stressed that the Columbia Law Review magazine management's censorship was a shameful attempt to silence groundbreaking legal studies that highlight the catastrophe (Nakba) caused by Zionism.

"I don't suspect that they would have asserted this kind of control had the piece been about Tibet, Kashmir, Puerto Rico, or other contested political sites," Columbia Law School professor Katherine Frank told The Intercept.

Close to 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes at the hands of armed Jewish groups seeking to establish the state of “Israel” during the Nakba. Over 15,000 Palestinians were killed during the Zionist occupation of Palestine, and 531 towns and villages were destroyed during the Nakba, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.