Over a hundred people flooded into Stokes Hall on Haverford’s campus on Sunday April 14, attending the screening of the documentary “Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre”. The screening was part of an ongoing series held by the Haverford Center for Peace and Global Citizenship (CPGC), designed to reflect upon the October 7 Hamas attack and the continuing Israel-Hamas war. Events included this screening, a lecture by Jennifer Bing, director of the Palestinian Activism Program for the American Friends Service Committee, and a conversation between Sa’Ed Atshan, Arnon Degani, and Jill Stauffer on how the humanities are related to “the crisis in Gaza and Israel.”
Prior to the screening, the Bi-Co News spoke with Eric Hartman, Executive Director of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship about the CPGC’s intent with their programming. “Throughout what we’re doing, we’re attempting to bring opportunities for people to see dignity across perceived differences and also to be in dialogue with one another, and at several of the events we’ve done … we’ve seen that. We’ve seen that at the scale of 60 people or 12 people, so that’s why we want to continue stepping in, because the broader forces in the world, and in particular in the United States, white supremacist forces are targeting Jewish and Muslim and Brown and Israeli people with the same form of hate, so it’s really important that we try to bring dialogue [to the community] …” Hartman said.
Photos by Harrison West
At about 2:30 PM student members of the Bi-Co and the wider community began to set up a “Bring Them Home” display in the area between Stokes and Chase Hall. The Bring Them Home Movement became popular in the aftermath of the October 7 attack, in which, as reported by the Israeli military, 253 people were taken hostage by Hamas. Over 130 of these people are still captive in Gaza. Dozens of them are presumed dead.
In a large patch of wood chips, students erected posts with signs attached, displaying the photo and name of each hostage. Some signs had the word “murder” splashed across the photo in red lettering, indicating that the person was presumed to have been killed. As per Eric Hartman, the Executive Director of the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship, “campus and community members who helped propose and organize the film showing received permission before the event, as part of the CPGC’s support of the event, to include the display.”
Around 4:15 PM, pro-Palestine protestors filed into the area. Some held signs listing the names of the over 30,000 people who have been reported to have died in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Other signs had images and names of Gazans, the words “murdered by Israel” framed by a graphic of dripping blood. Many students held signs with statements related to their own Judaism, such as “my Judaism is not defined by Zionism.”
Photos by Harrison West
The arrival of the protestors seemed to heighten the emotions surrounding event. One woman, a Haverford class of ‘87 alum, former resident of Israel and current nearby community member, referred to the protest as a “demonstration of hatred.” The Haverford alum explained that the display was about memorializing the hostages and said “for the life of me I cannot understand why Haverford students are here protesting that.”
Shortly before 5, screening attendees began to make their way into stokes for the CPGC screening, some heading into the auditorium and some heading into overflow rooms that had to be set up. More people had signed up for the screening than could be accommodated in the auditorium. Across the auditorium, overflow rooms and online viewers, over 400 people were in attendance at this event, including members of the Bi-Co community as well as a large number of people from outside the Bi-Co community. Attendees were escorted inside by campus safety and Haverford Police. On their way in, multiple screening attendees made comments at the protestors, with one woman saying “take your masks off, you’re all cowards” and another man heatedly yelling at the demonstrators.
Photos via Harrison West
The screening began with short introductions of the documentary from Eric Hartman, Naomi Komatsu ‘24 and one of the directors of the film, Duki Dror. The documentary itself commenced with a fast paced montage of scenes from the festival, ranging from professionally shot footage to phone footage, before switching to show the aftermath of the October 7 attack. The rest of the 51 minute film consisted of phone footage intercut with interviews with survivors of the attack. In contrast to another documentary on the topic, “Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre”, Supernova blurred much of the physical violence and injuries shown in the footage. The director, in a Q&A after the screening, explained that he wanted to keep the documentary watchable in order to show it to a wide audience. A survivor of the attack was also present at the screening and spoke in the Q&A.
Conversations on campus in the wake of this event have been tense; Student Council co-Presidents Jorge Paz Reyes and Maria Reyes Pacheco ‘24 voiced their concerns particularly regarding what seems to them a double standard perpetuated by the CPGC and co-sponsoring departments: “I have no problem with the screening of the film,” Paz Reyes said. “I do have an issue with the CPGC, the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship, [supporting] the putting up of banners and posters.” While pro-Palestinian student groups have had similar posters taken down by the college, he argued, the CPGC allowed the Bring Them Home installation to be put up on campus.
“I think … they should play a mediating role. I think they’re making our job as Student Council more difficult because those posters are, due to the content, very provocative and a center [at Haverford] supporting [the installation of these posters] shows that they’re aligned with that. So they’re losing their credibility as an unbiased mediator and actor on campus.”
Paz Reyes added that it would have been differently taken if it had been only students putting up posters, which would then have been taken down per the poster policy. Then, he said, the cycle would have continued, and there would have been no apparent double standard. “The CPGC interfering and saying actually, we’re co-sponsoring, that’s why they’re staying up … that’s the issue.” Reyes Pacheco asserted, “It makes us question, is freedom of speech actually available to everyone on this campus? Because that’s what we were promised, but that’s not what it looks like. And again, I will say policies intentionally protect some people and then are used against others.”
Emmeline Riendeau ‘24, one of the students silently protesting the screening, mentioned that “the way that Campus Safety was escorting [event attendees into the building] vilified student protestors. We are standing there quietly, and the guys that are getting up in people’s faces are being walked into the building.”
“Policies intentionally protect some people and then are used against others.”
Haverford Student Council co-president maria reyes pacheco
In an interview after the event conducted via email, Hartman answered questions regarding these concerns brought up by students. In the interest of mitigating any misconstruing of his words, he asked that his comments be published in full. He wrote,
“The Center for Peace and Global Citizenship has hosted scholars critical of the state of Israel, organized a multigenerational and multi-faith ceasefire lobbying visit to Senator Fetterman’s Office, and hosted the National Director of the Palestine Activism Program, who was part of the group that delayed Biden’s motorcade on the way to the State of the Union. Across an ongoing series, we have centered Palestinian, Jewish anti-Zionist, and Arab scholars. On Sunday evening we hosted a film that centered the lives of victims of Hamas’ terrorist attack on October 7. It was accompanied by comments from the director and a survivor, as well as a pop-up art display that lasted for three hours.”
Hartman continued, in response to hearing about student protesters being harassed by outside community members, saying:
“Once we agreed to screen the film, faculty we were working with noted there was a lot of off-campus interest. We frequently encourage off-campus participation at our events. Because of the sensitivity of this topic, we required registrations. The response was overwhelming, with 200 registrations coming in over 48 hours. As a precaution, we prohibited signs, banners, or flags, and asked all visitors to refrain from engaging any counter-protestors. Unfortunately, not all of the community guests adhered to those guidelines perfectly. I was already inside at the point of confrontation, but as I understand it, at least two individuals yelled at our students. Thankfully, CPGC Faculty Director and Spanish Professor Ariana Huberman stepped in immediately between the disruptive visitors and our student. I am deeply sorry that students were subjected to anything like verbal abuse. That was not at all the intent of any part of the event. It was precisely contrary to the expressed wishes of the organizers.”
As a general reflection on the event, Hartman wrote, “One of the greatest offenses to shared human dignity and the possibility of dialogue on this campus is that there are many stakeholders who find one (and perversely, only one) of these images deeply offensive,” including photograph of both the installation in honor of Israeli hostages and of pro-Palestine student protesters taken at the event in his email. “What I see in both of these images are people drawing attention to lives lost in terror and war. We want both to end.”
