Pro Hamas Movement Dwindles
Protestors, students and none, ran what looked like military drills on campus
Report | 3350 Words | 15 Minute Read
Around forty pro Hamas demonstrators at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Edinburg, Thursday, May 16, gathered. Myself and a few others went out to show the flag, in solidarity with Israel. An untold number of university and state police officers were evidently on campus, although many were not visible. The event was a protest demanding in effect, an anti-Jewish boycott at UTRGV, in vain hope of throwing a lifeline to the condemned Neo-Nazi organization that once ruled Gaza but never will again.
The event was called and hosted by the campus chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America.
A little more than an hour before the event got started, which was only publicly announced the previous day, a university employee I spoke with said that they observed an enormous amount of Texas Department of Public Safety vehicles traveling from the university police department to the parking spaces near the quad, where the protest was to occur. I observed dozens of DPS vehicles in parking spaces behind the health sciences building. In addition, university system police ran constant patrols, on vehicle, around campus. On the campus, university police patrolled on foot, in multiples, some brought in from other regions to assist. There were, at least, dozens. Drones which we believed belong to Texas DPS patrolled the skies. UTRGV air space? Apparently, there is such a thing.
Although an enormous amount of Texas DPS vehicles could be seen in the parking lots, the officers themselves were not visible, adding to the psychological shock intended by their show of force. They could see us, but we couldn’t see them. One attendee told me they witnessed a sizable number of DPS officers inside a nearby classroom. I witnessed one DPS officer taking photographs of the pro-Hamas crowd from long distance, with a long-distance camera lens, near the area where the attendee said they had seen the officers stationed. The DPS officers were inside classrooms on campus, apparently in backup position, ready to deploy if needed. Meanwhile, dozens of university police patrolled on bicycle.
I, and a philosophy student I met at the last campus protest in December, walked to the event together. We’ve been discussing ideas on campus protests, and philosophy, one of the fields of study I undertook at university. He’s taking or has taken classes with virtually every professor I had classes with, so it’s been enjoyable going back and forth on a range of topics beyond politics. Matthew, his name, is one of those students who truly seeks wisdom and knowledge, eager to hold meaningful and honest discussions in search of truth. He stands in stark contrast to those currently running YDSA who demanded attendees to not interact with any counter-protestors nor speak to media.
A reporter from Channel 4’s Valley Central came to the table where Matthew and I sat with other pro-Israel supporters and expressed shock at the fact that no one at the Hamas circle would speak to him. He was quite stunned, really. This, however, lines up with how students have converted into zombies at other universities, telling reporters, “I’m not media-trained,” when asked questions. He interviewed Matthew though it has not been published online.
YDSA also recommended people cover their faces, in violation of the university’s handbook of operating procedures (above) forbidding masks and facial coverings “that both conceal the identity of the wearer and are calculated to obstruct the enforcement of this policy or law, or are calculated to intimidate, hinder, or disrupt a UTRGV official, officer of the UTRGV Police Department, or other person in the lawful performance of their duty.”
Former Dean of Students Rebecca Gadson and assistant Dean of Students, Delma Olivarez, both of whom guided the unconstitutional impeachment of a student senator who condemned campus antisemitism after the rally in December, and then covered it up, were on site enforcing HOP policies. One of their enforcement actions was to tell me and those from the Hamas camp that the flagpoles we held, dawning flags, were forbidden. I held an Israeli and American flag. They held a Palestinian flag, and a Mexican flag etched with trans flag colors. Both sides abided by the rule and separated the flags from the poles and removed the poles from the premises. But why didn’t Gadson and Olivarez enforce HOP policies regarding masks? They knew the pole rule off the top of their heads, but weren’t aware of the policy right above it, regarding masks?
Listen to audio of Gadson and Olivarez giving me a hard time about my flagpoles. Olivarez can be heard saying, “Anyone who has something that is not allowed by policy will be addressed.” She was obviously lying.
Above is a video clip of several marchers Thursday, 16 May 2024, at UTRGV-Edinburg, heeding the calls by YDSA to conceal their faces in order to avoid sanction and penalty, in clear violation of university policies. Delma Olivarez can be seen taking sips from a bottle of water, as people flout university policy right in front of her. Despite claiming that prohibited items would “be addressed,” she and Gadson just looked on as it happened. Anthropology professor, Guy Duke, can be seen marching, wearing a blue sweater, looking downcast, appearing to look ashamed — as perhaps he should. Graduate counseling student, Joy Watkins, can also be seen concealing her face and tattoos, as well as Kenan Phillips and Kristin Montez, both of whom are creative writing graduate students.
This attitude of non-engagement and no discussion, no free inquiry, no speaking to the media, no thinking for yourself, is a demonstration that this movement at large is not interested in free speech. They’re not trying to convince the public to a new perspective through civil discussion or discourse. In academia, when graduate students, researchers and professors are making new discoveries, or arguing for new paradigms in thinking, the first order of business after conducting investigations and documenting findings is to present them to scrutiny. This is peer review, thesis defense, and so on. But as is obvious from this action, and others like it around the globe, they’re not trying to make an academic point. They’re hostile, and even hysterical, to any challenges to their claims.
The Monitor’s Omar Zapata reported May 17 that an organizer and apparently a “media-approved” person, who he did not name — in complicity with the activists who want their identities concealed — bragged about the fact that they chose 16 May 2024 explicitly because there was a new student orientation scheduled for that day. Parents and incoming freshmen pay a fee for orientation, a special day when they’re supposed to get a pleasant tour of our beautiful campus. Like similar protests around the country disrupting regular life and business activity, YDSA aimed to do the same in Edinburg. Their sole aim was to intimidate. They ran what appeared like paramilitary drills without the arms, resembling a gang training. After receiving instructions and directions from people inside the huddle upon arrival, they formed circles, expanding and contracting on command. They marched around us, surrounding us, as they chanted at the top of their lungs, police getting in between us and them.
The Monitor’s Omar Zapata, again trying to cover for YDSA, falsely reported that they “kept their distance,” when they clearly intended to confront and intimidate us, if not worse, and if not for the police presence. They repeated this maneuver several times. They marched around the quad, took breaks, and then would start up again. These were public drills under the guise of a protest and rally.
A beautiful, spontaneous highlight was initiated by the woman referenced in the cover photo for this article, Evelyn Tencer. She’s a leader in the local Jewish community and a proud supporter of the nation of Israel. She studied at Hadassah University as a nurse. She was my classmate in a Hebrew course at Temple Emmanuel earlier this year. She and her daughter, Sandy, came to show support for Israel’s right to exist and to oppose the calls for an anti-Jewish boycott. Upon arrival, she grabbed the Israeli flag out of my hands, hurled it around her back like a cape, and then ran towards the quad where the Hamasniks were. She would run a lap around them, with no fear, as they just watched, and as The Monitor’s Joel Martinez captured the moment, running behind Tencer to keep up with her.
(Above, video of Evelyn Tencer running with Israeli flag wrapped around her back, at UTRGV-Edinburg. I had just said, “I love her,” before hitting record. After hitting record, Evelyn’s daughter, Sandy, said and can be heard saying, “I love my mother.”)
Martinez, in contrast to Zapata was kind and fair-minded. Zapata ignored us until the end of the rally. He came over and grudgingly asked to interview me but did not include any of my quotations in his story. Zapata appears to be a sympathizer of the pro-Hamas side, judging from the pages he follows on social media. An underhanded tactic often used by activist journalists is to “interview” political opposition of the side they support, just to gather intel, which they then pass on to the other side. This is what I suspect Zapata did. Matthew’s interview with Ch. 4’s Valley Central, like I mentioned, was also not published. He said the reporter grimaced when he referenced Hamas’ Charter, their warrant for Jewish genocide. The Rider, Monitor and Valley Central’s treatment of Hamas sympathizers versus defenders of Israel definitely exhibits a pervasive double standard.
This local grouping, like the broader movements to which it belongs and corresponds, labor under the delusion that they’re Maoist guerrillas. They’ve hosted and plan on continuing to host screenings of films like The Red Ant, which praises Maoist guerillas who have committed countless terrorist attacks against the Indian state and the Indian people. It was screened at ‘El Nopalito,’ a lower-middle-class wine bar in the McAllen art district. Food Not Bombs’ history has continuity in Maoism and Red Star TX is an explicitly Maoist group. In practice, what their armed and street-fighting cadre plan on doing in the near future is incite and organize anti-Jewish and anti-working-class political violence, in continuity with the Chinese Maoist cultural revolution and Nazi Germany’s pogroms. Like the Italian Blackshirts as well, who went on to become the armed wing of the Italian Fascist Party in the 1920s, groups like this will receive funding in the future from capitalists looking to establish fascism in the U.S., as a battering-ram against the authentic communist movement within the working-class, utilized to execute political violence, and intimidate, hence university administrators turning a blind eye to the Hamas crowd’s violations, while simultaneously tacking-on any little thing against us that they could find, like the flagpoles.
One indication that this movement is organizing an armed and militarized wing, despite its disclaimer of being “not a militia,” is the formation of the “Anzaldua John Brown Gun Club,” ‘Anzaldua’ being a reference to the writer, Gloria Anzaldua, for whom the university’s Mexican American Studies and Creative Writing Departments express a bizarre and cultish affinity. The Anzaldua Gun Club’s Twitter page glorifies political violence. They’re also in league with FNB-RGV and Red Star, having co-organized fundraisers for “Queer Range Days,” trainings at the gun range for the “LGBTQ+ community.” The gun club is most known for organizing an intimidating protest outside of a night club in August 2023, in McAllen, called, Dungeon, because the club refused to abide by the gun club’s demands to cancel certain artists who they deemed to be “fascist,” entirely missing out on the irony of their actions. At the time, I remembered thinking that should an anti-Jewish terrorist attack occur, they would be on the wrong side of it. Then Oct. 7 came. It’s unclear if the aforementioned university departments have any connections or affiliations to the club.
Joining us near the end of the event was a student named Celena. She runs the university’s Turning Point USA chapter. TP, for those who are unaware, is a conservative organization that champions the rights of conservative students to voice their views on college campuses. I’m not too familiar with the organization myself, but I know that much, as well as that it was founded by the popular conservative commentator, Charlie Kirk. Celena talked to me about how her organization and friends of hers who launched similar conservative student organizations have also been given a hard time by the university’s student activities bureaucracy who do not approve their events, or only approve them last minute, and count strikes against them for things that the Hamas crowd regularly does, not to mention the many other special privileges the Hamasniks receive.
(Above, video of protestors calling for a ceasefire, in defense of Hamas and for their survival. I heckle their chants and poke a little fun, in Spanish, at the fact that their chant leader was beginning to lose her voice. Celena notes, in shock, at the end of the video, that there is a small child present at the rally.)
Celena’s “lived experience,” as some might say, sounds identical to stories I’ve heard from members of the tiny Jewish organization, Hillel, started by my good friend, Johnathan Weisfeld-Hinjosa when we were both students in 2013. They’ve also been punished by the university and given a hard time when trying to host events on campus. And yet, the university, led by Rebecca Gadson, has unrolled a glossy red carpet for the American friends of Hamas and Islamic Jihad on our campus whenever they’ve felt like it, with just one day’s notice, during summer student orientations. This is the current state of affairs. The university has slightly entertained this by answering that they “do not invest in Israeli businesses,” as disclosed by Patrick Gonzales, UTRGV’s spokesperson, to The Monitor. The question shouldn’t even be entertained or dignified.
The May 16 action was also an opportunity to rehearse and exercise their secret police apparatus. Part of the incipient fascist formation of this grouping is to simultaneously run a secret police unit to complement their paramilitary functions, a kind of RGV Gestapo/Stasi. The organizers task certain people, finks, to remain away from the main protest and photograph counter-protestors without their knowledge. One of those individuals was the aforementioned Kristin Montez. At one point of the event, someone I was speaking to told me to turn around quick, as Montez was taking pictures of me behind my back, as she pretended to walk her little designer dog, running away as I turned to face her. Crossing paths with her a couple of weeks ago, she accused me of “doxing” or “trying to dox” Omar Casas, a local videographer who I reported attended a Hamas rally last October. (Would you have positively attended a Hamas rally in October?) For simply reporting this fact, Casas says I “doxed” him. Doxing, in fact, is the publishing of private information — like addresses and cell numbers — of people, something I have never done and which they cannot show that I have.
The “doxing” lie has been repeated by the RGV middle-class left, to which Montez and Casas belong, who support Hamas because, like the adult children that they are, they’d rather not face the consequences of their politics. They cry doxing and conceal their identities, rather than own them. Casas, a nonprofit huckster and co-rebrander of ‘Trucha’, also attended the May 16 rally. As he walked with Montez on the quad, I had some choice words for him, including my observation that he currently resembles Yosemite Sam.
jonathansalinas@substack.com