Pro-Palestinian protesters confront police at City College in New York City on April 30, 2024. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh May 22, 2024

An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers believe campus pro-Palestinian protests have required authorities to intervene and crossed the line into antisemitism, according to a new poll published Wednesday.  

The Siena College survey of 1,191 registered voters showed that 72% support the students’ right to peacefully protest the ongoing war in Gaza. Still, 70% say the demonstrations have gone too far and necessitated police intervention to shut them down. And 61% said they think the demonstrators seemed to have forgotten that Hamas started the war on Oct. 7.

The poll, conducted between May 13 and 15 via landline, cell phone and the web, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

New York has the largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel and a number of campuses in New York City have seen mass protests and arrests. 

Among the respondents in the poll, 64% back President Joe Biden’s call for an “immediate” ceasefire in Gaza that would release some Israeli hostages and increase the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza. 

The survey was conducted more than a month after the Gaza solidarity tent encampments took over dozens of colleges and universities around the country. Some came down after college administrators struck agreements with protesters, but most have been forcibly cleared, with police arresting students.

At least 3,025 people have been arrested on the campuses of 61 colleges and universities, according to the Associated Press. At Columbia University in New York, the epicenter of the protest movement and inspiration for dozens of others, riot police were called in to evict protesters who had taken over a building.

A majority of Jewish respondents in the Siena monthly poll – 57% – said that they do not understand the demonstrators’ frustration about the ongoing conflict and the harm it causes to the people in Gaza. Only 34% of Jews support calls for an immediate end to the fighting.

President Joe Biden told a White House reception on Monday marking Jewish American Heritage Month that he will ensure that Israel will have “everything it needs” to fight Hamas decried specified antisemitism on campuses.

“In America, we respect and protect fundamental rights of free speech, protest peacefully. That’s America,” he said. “But there’s no place in any campus in America, any place in America for antisemitism for hate speech that threatens violence of any kind against Jews or anyone else.”

The poll also showed that 48% of New Yorkers favor the recently passed federal budget supplement bill that includes $14.3 billion in military aid to bolster Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. The bill also allocates $9.5 billion for humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, and other conflict zones.

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