by Nick Smith
Dozens of protests and campus occupations erupted at the end of the 2023-24 spring semester and many are still ongoing in solidarity with the Palestinian people as Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza. Columbia University’s students acted as the epicenter of this movement with its students demanding divestment from companies that profit off of the war in Palestine. These demands from protestors are modeled after the Anti-Apartheid movement of the 1980s and the protest tactics resemble the sit-ins of the Anti-Vietnam protests of the 60s.
Scott Camil is a member of Jewish Voices for Peace and a Vietnam War veteran who testified in the Winter Soldier investigation while participating in anti-Vietnam War action. Camil was also a part of the Gainesville Eight — a group of anti-war veterans who were tried and acquitted for charges of conspiracy to disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention — landing himself on President Nixon’s “enemy list” as J. Edgar Hoover penned letters requesting that Camil be “neutralized at earliest possible time.”
As a Jewish man who faced anti-Semitism as a child, Camil was not always supportive of the Palestinian people, stating that when people would ask him why he supported Israel he would respond with “Well, I’m Jewish and I know Israel wouldn’t do that.” His view of Israel’s conduct changed in 1989 when he embarked on a fact-finding trip for Veterans for Peace and witnessed the treatment of Palestinians in Jerusalem, Gaza, and Ramallah. Camil specifies the oppression, stating “Israel has apartheid policy. Apartheid is racist. Racism is wrong.”
The apartheid of which Camil speaks can be exemplified by Israel’s policy of “Hafrada,” which seeks to physically separate the Palestinians from the Israelis. This policy was first coined by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s and continued through the 2000s, most notably in the form of the Israeli-Palestinian barrier. Heavy restrictions have been placed on the movement of Palestinians throughout the West Bank as well as between the West Bank and surrounding areas, often making securing healthcare and necessary resources difficult for Palestinians.
Scott Camil returned from Israel as a supporter of the Palestinians which upset his family, but as a person who had fought unwaveringly for justice in Vietnam, Camil could not ignore the violation of Palestinian rights, stating “It’s okay to hold against people their bad behavior. It’s not okay to hold against people things that they’re not responsible for. … What if I was born a Palestinian? Then people would hate me just because I’m a Palestinian.”
While protesting the Vietnam War, Camil recognized that his veteran status amplified his arguments, eliminating the possibility of being slandered as somebody who hated his country and would not fight for it. Similarly, he contends that Jewish Americans are in a position to speak out against Israel’s actions without accusations of anti-Semitism. As a member of Jewish Voices for Peace, Scott Camil hopes to disprove the idea that the current anti-war movement is anti-Semitic, citing the massive amount of Jewish people joining in protest. On the contrary, Camil believes that anti-Semitism is being weaponized, stating “When people say they are against Israel, they are not against Israelis, they are not against Jewish people, they are against Israel’s foreign policy.”
As the current student protestors face expulsion, arrest, and many other repercussions for their anti-war action, Scott Camil wants to remind protestors that during the anti-war war movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s, “the government indicted 107 anti-war activists and got no convictions.” Ultimately, Camil wants to deliver this message to the protestors: “I salute them for their courage. I salute them for doing the right thing. I salute them for standing up for human rights.”
Another prominent voice in Gainesville’s anti-war movement is Dr. Paul Ortiz. A veteran who served with the 82nd Airborne Division and the 7th Special Forces group, Ortiz is currently the director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida. Since his service, Ortiz has written several books, winning the Josephine Miles Literary Award. Ortiz is also an active member of the Gainesville chapter of Veterans for Peace, giving him a unique voice as a veteran opposed to the United States’ military assistance to Israel.
Ortiz contributes much of Israel’s aggression to the United States. To the assertion that supplying arms to Israel is the act of an ally, Ortiz responds, “If you’re friends with a nation and your main advice to them is to be more armed and erect walls … I wouldn’t consider you a friend.” Ortiz draws on his experience with the special forces in Central America to conclude that teaching a people to conduct military incursions inevitably results in violence for those people. Thus, Ortiz would have preferred President Jimmy Carter’s approach as laid out in “Peace Not Apartheid.” In his book, Carter places a heavy emphasis on creating and honoring permanent borders between Israel and Palestine, paired with reciprocal security.
Ortiz also finds it important to acknowledge the United States’ strong core of anti-Semitism. At the time that many Europeans immigrated to America, anti-Semitism was a prominent ideology all across Europe. One example of how this anti-Semitism followed Europeans into this country is Henry Ford. Ford founded the “Dearborn Independent” at the height of his power, an openly anti-Semitic newspaper that had a readership of almost 900,000 in the United States. Ford was even mentioned in Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” as he wrote, “one great man, Ford, to their exasperation, still holds out independently.” Because of this history, Ortiz understands why some supporters of Israel are quick to dismiss pro-Palestinian arguments as anti-Semitic and he believes that the best avenue to solve this is to better educate all sides so that they can better sympathize with and navigate these worries.
Much like Camil, Ortiz’s view on the Israel-Palestine conflict is derived from personal experience. Though he had been aware of the conflicts in the region, the conflict became personal when Ortiz’s father faced deployment to Lebanon. Ortiz’s father was a veteran who had experience servicing diesel engines on ships such as the USS Missouri, so when the United States was contemplating shelling Beirut, he had to tell Ortiz about the possibility of deployment. Ortiz explains that this experience, among many, has brought him to believe that both the U.S. and Israel “should come to realize that military solutions to geopolitical problems just don’t work.”
Ortiz sees today’s student movement as particularly special because, unlike the onset of other American anti-war movements, polls indicate that a majority of Americans favor a cease-fire just as the protestors do. Thus, in Ortiz’s view, instead of a movement aimed at shifting public opinion, this movement should aim to win over policy-makers. Further, Ortiz believes that the call for university divestment should be aimed at the companies that make up the military-industrial complex. Pairing this divestment with political engagement and active voting seems to Ortiz to be the most effective way to reach our politicians. D
Nick Smith is an editor at the St. Bernard, Santa Fe College’s independent newspaper.