Demonstrators demand resignation of Dean Beetsma because of apology for Palestinian student speech
Over 100 students demonstrated for Palestine at Roeterseiland on Monday evening. They also demanded the departure of economics dean Roel Beetsma. He is alleged to have done too little to protect a Palestinian student who gave a disputed speech during a recent graduation ceremony.
CSR president Noah Pellikaan is astonished. “The call to come and demonstrate on the Rooster Island campus was distributed only yesterday,” says Pellikaan, who is also president of the Activist Party, the organizer of this demonstration. And now there are over 100 demonstrators at the doors of REC-E, significantly more than at previous demonstrations at the UvA on the Israel-Palestine conflict.
This is partly because circumstances have changed. Recently, De Telegraaf ran a story about a Palestinian UvA student who took advantage of the situation during his graduation ceremony to refer to the war in Palestine in his speech. For example, he spoke of a “genocide in Palestine.” He said (in English), according to a recording of the speech, among other things, “From the river to the sea, from the past to the present, the Palestinians resist in their own special way. Some by art, still others by dancing (...).”
Name disclosed
A Jewish family in the hall took offense at this, after which they left. In the process, according to them, someone in the room allegedly shouted “Fucking Jews.” The UvA then offered them the option of continuing the ceremony in another hall. The protesters are angry that the UvA has since apologized for this course of events. The protesters maintain that there was no question of a “hostile” speech, saying that the student spoke only about his hugely eventful childhood in Palestine in his speech.
Because the Times of Israel made public the first and last name of the Palestinian student in question, the protesters once again feel that the UvA, and FEB dean Roel Beetsma in particular, have thrown their (now-graduated) student in front of the bus by not protecting him and “directly adopting the narrative of the media.”
“When you consider that a student of this faculty is being doxxed (publishing his personal data, ed.) by the international media, and then you as a faculty react like that, it's shocking,” said attendee Carlos van Eck, who is affiliated with the Activist Party. And “very dangerous,” say UvA psychology students Elani and Nicky. “There are potentially people who want to attack him.”
Closed discussion
Parallel to the demonstration outside, discussions took place in building REC-E between Dean Beetsma, the other faculty board members, and the student council of Economics and Business Administration. Here Beetsma is said to have explained to the student council how his apology, in consultation with the Executive Board, came about.
These discussions are normally public, say current FEB student council president Yashi Tripathi, former president Yoeri Hijdra, and CSR president Noah Pellikaan, all of whom were present at the talk. But Beetsma contradicted this by e-mail when asked about the issue: “The meetings are closed, just like most other meetings we hold.”
Earlier in the afternoon, therefore, he immediately showed a Folia reporter the door, making a tense impression. “I have literally never seen him so stressed,” Hijdra said after the meeting. “He was under a lot of pressure.”
That's not surprising. Outside, protesters passionately chanted “Fuck off, Roel” and “Roel resign.” Remarkably, a few make an attempt in Dutch—"Weg met Roel!”—but receive no response from the crowd. After all, the lion's share of the demonstrators present do not speak Dutch.
Controversial slogan
Take German cultural science student Max (he withheld his last name), who has only been in the Netherlands for two months, he says. He knows little about the Palestinian student's speech and its aftermath. He is mainly at this demonstration because of “the genocide in Palestine.”
In this, he is certainly not the only one. Other demonstrators, in addition to supporting the Palestinian student who gave the disputed speech, also want to show their support for the Palestinian people. The controversial slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is by no means being avoided. Shortly after six o'clock, this disputed phrase was heard several times.
A majority of the House of Representatives now considers that phrase a call to violence because it would propagate the destruction of Israel. But the Amsterdam Court of Appeal and the Public Prosecution Service saw it differently two years ago when an activist used it at a demonstration. They ruled that it was “not punishable or anti-Semitic.”
Earlier, the UvA said it “completely understands” if Jewish students feel unsafe because of the controversial phrase. “We deeply regret that,” it added.
