Students Protest Against Israeli Activist Noa Tishby

Over 30 students, including members of Amherst For Palestine (A4P) and members of various Five College Chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), gathered outside Johnson Chapel on Monday to protest a talk by Noa Tishby, an Israeli activist and Israel’s former special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization. Following the demonstration, a Palestinian poetry reading was led by A4P in Chapin Hall as a counter-event to the talk. 

Protest organizers argued that Tishby has largely used her platform to validate Israel’s violent occupation of Palestinian land, as well as to exacerbate the suppression of student activists. In a March 17 interview with Fox News, Tishby referred to the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) group as “a coalition of hate groups” that “led an insurrection, a violent takeover, of Columbia University.”

“She misidentifies us activists for Palestine as terrorists,” the main organizer of the protest, who asked to remain anonymous due to safety concerns, said.

They further explained that the idea of the protest arose from disproportionate efforts by the administration to represent both perspectives on the war in Gaza.

“The most recent pro-Palestinian event was a book talk,” they said, “The most recent pro-Israeli event, however, was so much larger in scale, and it invited a formal official of the Israeli government, a propagandist.”

Tishby was invited to campus by Amherst For Israel (AMI) to bring attention to false narratives and antisemitism surrounding Israel amid the war in Gaza. She has previously visited other colleges and universities to discuss similar topics, including the University of California, Berkeley; Liberty University; and Rutgers University. 

Ian Behrstock ’26, who attended the protest and Tishby’s talk, felt “disturbed” by Tishby’s history traveling to college campuses to give lectures for which she is “getting paid … to talk about Jewish hatred.” 

“It really just feels like a distraction,” he said. “It distracts us all from the genocide. It distracts us all from the real political questions at hand, and it makes it very hard to have any sort of a real discourse about these things.”

The college-sponsored event, titled “Israel and Antisemitism: Setting the Facts Straight,” was attended primarily by Amherst residents, with few students in the audience. As attendees entered the event, student protesters were stationed outside the chapel, where they distributed poems by Palestinian poets as well as flyers for the poetry reading.

Students and some attendees engaged in brief, peaceful discussions during the protest. Other interactions were less friendly, with attendees heckling and directing profanity towards protesters; one protester shouted “shame on you” towards attendees.

“It was very clear that just our presence, just the words ‘Free Palestine,’ were incredibly triggering to a whole lot of the people there … that is very disturbing and sad,” Behrstock said.

Unnamed Amherst alumni not affiliated with A4P also sent emails to professors and staff from all departments throughout the day on Monday, encouraging them to join the protest and to support students and community members who would participate.

“Such an invitation and event on Amherst College campus is unacceptable and we alumni, who are not on campus, are requesting your help in standing on the right side of history and holding the College accountable,” they wrote. 

The email also referred to Tishby as an “[Israel Defense Forces] propagandist,” and encouraged faculty to band together and request that the college “formally rescind the invitation” to Tishby. The email also drew similarities between Tishby’s rhetoric and Nazi propaganda from World War II.

“[Hosting Tishby], without irony or exaggeration, is the equivalent of Amherst College inviting a Nazi propagandist of any rank,” alumni said in the email.

Once the Tishby talk was underway, protesters chanted as they marched to Chapin Hall for the poetry reading. “Noa Tishby, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” and “Amherst, Amherst, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide” were among the chants.

Students who attended the protest hoped the demonstration would reignite A4P, which has been largely inactive over the past year. 

“I think [the protest], in part, was to try and get back the morale of Amherst College students, because our voices haven’t been as loud as they should be,” protester Camila Bonilla ’26 said. 

The reason for the on-campus decline in activism surrounding the war in Gaza, according to the main protest organizer, was due to the Board of Trustees’ decision not to divest following the faculty’s majority vote in favor of divestment from companies that supply military equipment to the Israeli government.

“The Board of Trustees’ decisions chilled momentum on campus in support of Palestinian liberation. However, if the Israeli military’s violence against Palestine will not stop, neither can us student activists,” the main protest organizer wrote to The Student on Tuesday.

At the poetry reading, A4P organizers expressed their hope to maintain momentum through future events, fundraisers, and demonstrations, particularly events similar to the poetry reading that aim to humanize Palestinian victims through personal narratives.

“We can’t [fully] comprehend the number 680,000 [referring to the number of Palestinian lives lost] — what we can do, though, is attempt to understand stories,” the main protest organizer said.

Despite A4P not being an official SJP chapter yet, members of SJP chapters at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Hampshire College; and Smith College helped organize the protest. According to the main protest organizer, SJP members who had been trained as de-escalators were brought in to support, should tensions escalate during the protest. 

Protest organizers viewed the demonstration as impactful, citing how many students who were originally unaware of the protest had joined in, and how, during her talk, Tishby referenced the protest multiple times. 

“In terms of turnout, in terms of impact, and in terms of momentum for future events, I’d characterize the demonstration to be a massive success,” the main protest organizer said.