‘I want your side of the story’ | SU Pro-Palestinian protesters refuse to answer NewsChannel 9’s questions

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) — Protests calling for the divestment of college and university funds from the war in Gaza, have broken out at colleges and universities across the country.

As gatherings grow larger by the day, an encampment still stands at Syracuse University. Protests have not been violent at the school. 

On Wednesday, a group of pro-Israeli students held a counter-demonstration in response. They walked around the campus, in support of Israel, stopping near the encampment. Both groups held signs.

NewsChannel 9 went to the university on Thursday to talk with demonstrators on both sides.

Dozens of tents line Shaw Quad across from Hendricks Chapel. Protesters are calling on the university to stop supporting companies they say are profiting off the war in Gaza. But when we went to talk with the protesters, they didn’t want to talk with us – only referring us to an online statement that called for an “immediate end to the genocide of Palestinians.” 

“If you’d like our perspective, you can go and look at that statement, we have a statement,” one of the media liaisons for Palestine Solidarity Collective told NewsChannel 9’s Rachel Polansky.

“Why not just say it? Why not give us a statement now?” Rachel asked.

Jewish students on campus were more than willing to talk with us on camera – telling us they felt unsafe and uncomfortable. 

“I’m in a historically Jewish sorority. The second the encampment came on campus, we were told don’t wear your [Greek] letters. Don’t tell people you’re in the sorority,” Rafaela Torossian, a freshman at Syracuse University said. “To be told we have to hide our identity from that group because it’s affiliated with Judaism.

 “I go here, I attend school here, I should be able to walk to your encampment and feel fine. I don’t feel fine,” Julia Weinreich, another SU freshman told NewsChannel 9.

 NewsChannel 9 brought some of those concerns to the protesters at the encampment.

“I talked with three students on the pro-Israeli side. I want to get your side of the story in this story. If you are not willing to do an interview with me, I’m going to have to do the story without your perspective in it,” Polansky told the media liaisons for the Palestine Solidarity Collective.   

“We hear you and I appreciate that. I’m being recorded right now. We are here on behalf of our collective as media liaisons. Our collective has spoken that they are not comfortable with us making interviews today and so we are going to respect our collective,” they repeated. 

NewsChannel 9 also spotted four signs at the encampment site reading “From the river to the sea.”  The Anti-Defamation League calls that an antisemitic slogan – calling for a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea – a territory that includes Israel – and would mean the dismantling of the Jewish state. 

Polansky also tried to ask the protesters about those signs.

” ‘From the river to the sea’; I’m seeing a lot of these signs,” Polansky said picking up one of the signs lying in the grass. “That’s an antisemitic sign, according to the ADL.” 

“Please don’t touch our things. I am not going to engage in falsities right now. We are going to step away,” the media liaisons said. 

The protesters refused to answer any of News Channel 9’s questions, directing us again to their online statement that reiterates their demands from the university and calls for a ceasefire in Gaza. 

That statement can be read below.