At 4:53 on the afternoon of November 9, an email was sent to all Haverford students with the subject line, “Silenced Jewish Voices,” from Allyson Landau, a senior student at Haverford College. The email contained a “plea” for students to listen to “a voice you did not hear at plenary.”
At Haverford’s Fall Plenary on November 5th, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) members made a speech during the time allotted for community comment regarding the pro-Palestinian movement, and reiterating the demands made by SJP for both Haverford and Bryn Mawr’s administrations to be more vocal and active in their support for the Palestinian students on campus, and to take steps in divesting from Israeli institutions and companies with which both colleges have ties.
In her email, Landau writes, “We were intentionally and wrongly denied an opportunity to respond at Plenary, [and] we offer this letter in dissent. We object to SJP and Students’ Council hijacking Plenary to push their one-sided anti-Israel agenda.” The email also asserted that “the overwhelming majority of Jews agree on Israel’s right to exist,” citing a study from the Pew Research Center.
Landau also refers to the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as a call for the genocide of the Israeli people, and argues in bolded text, “This is what Hamas and others mean by ‘From the river to the sea.'” It is unclear who these “others” are, but it is implied that SJP is included in that group. She referenced marginalized groups, “This slogan is loaded hateful and unacceptable (just as other obvious forms of hate speech aimed at the Black, Asian and Hispanic communities)…”
However, student organizers with SJP have emphasized many times that this is emphatically not what is meant by the phrase, and say that it instead calls for Palestinian self-determination, and a hope that one day Palestinians could be released from Israeli oppression, and live in peace with Israel’s people.
The email continues, “Does the SJP expect us to believe that repeating this statement over and over again at Plenary does not announce to the Jewish members of our community, ‘you have no place here?’ Certainly this is how it was meant, and this is how we hear it.”
Landau calls for SJP to denounce the October 7 attack and “unequivocally condemn … this modern-day Holocaust,” and lastly invites students to a November 15 event, Voices of Jewish History: “We invite students to attend in good faith in hopes to foster a meaningful conversation, to hear what we were not permitted to say at Plenary and to hear from Jews for whom the conflict is tangible, not theoretical.”
The email was sent halfway through a vigil* and poetry reading being held by SJP on the steps of Founders Hall. One organizer addressed the email directly after reading it: “SJP is not calling for a genocide … I don’t know how Haverford even allowed such an email to be sent.”
[*After publication note: Landau stated that she had no control over when the email would go out, and that she did not know it would be sent during the vigil.]
Another anonymous student emphasized: “We will keep repeating it and repeating it and repeating it: anti-Zionism and anti-semitism are not the same … opposing the bombing of a pediatric hospital … is not anti-semitism. This is a political issue, not a religious issue.”
Later on that night, at 6:37, Dean McKnight sent an email to call students, clarifying certain points of contention. He outlined the process of moderation that a student email goes through before it is sent to the campus as a whole, and emphasized this statement in bolded type: “I made the decision to release tonight’s message to the community because the perspectives being offered were in direct response to other campus activities and messages.” Yet he asserts that “we will not allow hc_allstudents to be used this way in the future.” Lastly, the email promises future communication about the topic, and future events to facilitate discussion in a more appropriate manner.
Student Council’s Response
When asked to comment on the situation, Students’ Council Co-Presidents sent the Bi-Co News this statement:
“We have since reached out to the group of students who sent the email and are hopeful to continue in dialogue to further understand the concerns brought by the students regarding Plenary being inaccessible. With that said, we want to clarify that community comments were open to everyone as we created the time to intentionally encourage dialogue from all students. As such, we introduced community comment in our email sent out to the student body on October 26th, as follows:
‘Subject: Fall 2023 Packet [Please Open!] — It would be wrong for us to announce Plenary without giving room for the concerns of the community, as such we want to make sure that Plenary serves as a time for students to voice their concerns to the student body and the Haverford community at large. For this reason, at the beginning of Plenary, we will include an open mic for anyone who would like to come forward and speak to the community.’
We then announced it again on November 5, the morning of plenary, as follows:
‘Subject: Plenary Today! @ 1:45pm — There will also be a time for community comment if you are interested in making any announcement or expressing any concern to the community please reply to this email so our secretaries can have a record of the minutes!’
After that, we announced it at Plenary just in case folks had missed our emails. As follows from the Plenary minutes:
‘We have asked those who would like to give community comment to sign up in advance, however, if you have not done so and would still like to give community comment, please come forward to the main table now and talk with the Co-Vice Presidents.’
At this point we had two students come up who hadn’t reached out through email and we added them to the minutes. We even had one student run up while community comments were happening and they were also given the chance to speak.
None of the students who sent out the email tonight asked us to speak during community comment either before or during community comment. Otherwise, we absolutely would have given them the opportunity to speak because the open mic was intended for all students to share.
We shared this with the student and also want to reiterate the Students’ Council is here to receive feedback to make community comment as accessible as possible. We also welcome all students to reach out to us directly or attend our ExecBoard meetings which have a time for community comment every week.”
Landau’s Response
Landau responded to a request for comment within an hour of being asked, though noted that she wasn’t sure how much she would want to say, as she was already receiving a great deal of backlash. Whereas in her email, Landau made forceful statements containing phrases such as “intentionally denied,” and asserts that “This (the wiping out of the Israeli people) is what Hamas and others mean by “From the river to the sea,” when speaking to the Bi-Co News she was far more diplomatic with her language.
When asked to respond to the Students’ Council Co-Presidents’ statement, Landau said, “Well we [the Jewish students Landau represents in her email, and herself] had discussed making a statement before Plenary, but only if an opposing statement was made first … [after hearing SJP speak] we tried to sign up late, [and] we messaged Jorge (one Students’ Council Co-President), but he didn’t get the message, and I mean, it didn’t happen, which was understandable, he was running Plenary.” She continued, “It felt like people were talking over the time limit about one point of view, [and] it felt like a lot of people were clapping without understanding why.”
In Prior Conversation
At Landau’s teach-in on November 3rd in Hilles Hall, she invited Kinaan Abdalhamid, a Palestinian student at Haverford College who has lived in the West Bank for the majority of his life, to the stage, to provide his own perspective on the issue. Abdalhamid, an active member of SJP, stated repeatedly in his statements that if Landau or any Jewish person across the Bi-Co was experiencing antisemitism, he wanted to be told, asserting that SJP does not stand for antisemitism.
Further, Abdalhamid vocally condemned the Hamas attack, agreeing that the murder of civilians anywhere was unjustified. Yet, Landau does seem to take a positive view of her discussions with Abdalhamid: “Kinaan and I have been in contact to talk more, [and] we have good conversations even though we obviously have different views, which is something I was hoping to spark with my email.”
However, Landau’s email seemed to disregard these sentiments. When asked to comment on this disparity, Landau said, “A lot of the anti-semitism felt is indirect.” She mentioned posters put up by Chabad House being torn down by unidentified individuals, and overhearing a Jewish slur used by a student in conversation.
When asked directly, in reference to her differing views on the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” Landau fully explained both perspectives on the phrase, and saying that she and SJP simply don’t agree on its significance. She sees it as representing the necessity for dismantling “an entire country, a Jewish country.”
Further Responses
The backlash to the email Landau mentioned is certainly rampant, not only in conversation at the remaining events of that day, organized by SJP for the nation-wide event, “Shut It Down for Palestine!”. It was also present in social media posts by many students across the Bi-Co. One student posted to her Instagram story: “No group that spoke ‘misused’ the time or ‘hijacked’ plenary. The community comments were not meant to relate to a resolution…[Student Council] certainly did not fail its core mission. There were so many things wrong with the recent hc-all email but this is just plain misinformation.”
A Jewish student leader from SJP, who goes by MK, said, “The email [from Landau] was written by Chabad.” She stated that they received information from members of student organizing, which leads them to believe this. It was later found that there was influence from Chabad members and leaders, but was not exclusively or fully written by Chabad.
Another student posted on the same platform, “We all saw you walk out of Plenary during SJP’s speech. And yet, you claim that SJP is avoiding dialogue?”
