The conflict in Gaza is certainly one of the most visible in recent memory. The deeply attached sympathies that it evokes, too, are some of the most powerfully voiced. However, despite the ferocity of the debate over the war and its horrifically eye-catching coverage, some stories, some voices have been actively denied the light of day. But perhaps more importantly, they have been made criminal.
The inundation of social media, with images of the conditions in Gaza — of gruesome injury to innocent people, of an already deteriorating territory reduced to rubble — have hardly inspired a passionate sympathy for the continuation of the war. More than just dampening support for any aggressive parties directly involved, the visibility of the conditions in Gaza have also made Americans skeptical of the ethicality of the policy of their own government, whose leadership has vocally supported Israel’s efforts in Palestine.
But reason to be skeptical of the role of the United States government in the Gaza conflict isn’t only found abroad. In fact, one of the most striking footage of the consequences of the war in Palestine was captured on our own soil — a broad-daylight abduction in Somerville, Mass.
On March 26, Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested and detained by seemingly unidentifiable masked ICE agents as she walked down the street. The video of the encounter, circulated widely on social media, looks unbecoming to say the least: Ozturk, dressed in white, unsuspectingly strolls down an average-looking city block before several strangers dressed in black swarm her, identify themselves as “the police” and take her away. Though it may seem highly unusual, the arrest was part of a broad, concerted effort by the federal government to revoke the visas of international students with a history of activism.
Ozturk had recently published an opinion piece in The Tufts Daily, a university student newspaper, criticizing the University’s policy on the war in Gaza. Other students or recent graduate residents of the United States, like Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil, have been arrested and detained at citizenship appointments or in their homes for having participated in pro-Palestinian campus protests in 2024. According to Al Jazeera, these parallels are not just coincidences. The Trump administration has explicitly cited “activism” and the spreading of “antisemitic and pro-Hamas sentiment on campus” as reasons for student visa revocation.
However one feels about war in the Middle East, or about student protests or even about the soundness of the legal grounds for deporting protesters, I find it hard to deny the tearing students from their campuses — something particularly close to home for eligible voters attending Colgate University or any other institution of higher education — is the wrong way to garner support.
Young Americans of a conservative bent should, I think, be particularly irked by the situation, given President Trump’s ostensible institutionalization of increased support for free speech. Despite this, it seems that one’s protected speech or action is not so much free as being compiled, surveilled and used against them. And if Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s words about students being at college “to study,” “to go to class” and not to “lead activist movements” are any indication, the consequences for voicing the wrong opinions may very well extend to all students, naturalized or not.
If we take seriously the data indicating the apathy of young people concerning Israel — which reveals that only 14% of adults under 30 feel that their sympathy lies more with the Israeli people — then we have to ask where the effort to target Gaza-related speech originates, if not with the demographic that is becoming increasingly important in Trump’s voter base.
Wherever the origin, I think one has to rule out popular sentiment. The optics are poor, the issue is highly contentious and the few polls that exist on the situation reflect opposition to deporting pro-Palestinian students among college-age Americans. In my own experience, social media, too, seems to reflect a popular sympathy with resistance to the war or at least to its human costs. But many of the major social media platforms have also been criticized for suppressing the speech of users whose opinions fall on certain sides of the issue.
This is, then, an example of a misalignment of the interests (or alliances) of society’s major institutions — social media, the government — and the feelings of the people who empower them. It is a case when the right to speak freely is more than a privilege — it is a necessary check on power. To ensure that such a check is successful, it takes everyone, of all political persuasions, to criticize such a mismatch and demand that their government answer to it. There can either be free speech, protected with transparency, or there can be no free speech at all.
