Student walkout: Updates as WA students protest Israel-Hamas war

About 30 demonstrators remained at Cal Anderson Park shortly before 1 p.m. as one of the largest protests of the day in Seattle against the Israel-Hamas war appeared to be wrapping up.

An annual audit by the Anti-Defamation League of antisemitic incidents, including vandalism, harassment and assaults expressing Jewish hate, found the number nearly tripled in Washington in 2023 compared to the year prior.

The ADL logged over 8,800 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. last year. That’s a 140% increase from 2022 and is the highest number on record since the ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979. Washington saw the 15th-highest number of incidents in the nation, recording 190.

There was a large uptick in antisemitic incidents after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people and led to the Israeli siege that’s killed more than 30,000 Palestinians and pushed Gaza to famine, the ADL said. The organization updated its methodology for tracking antisemitism after the start of the war.

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Tuesday's walkout in Washington follows months of protests on the Israel-Hamas war.

Last Monday, dozens calling for an end to the war blocked rush hour traffic outside Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. They demanded “no more U.S. arms to support Israel" and pointed to Alaska Airlines' partnership with Boeing, which supplies planes and other military equipment to the Israel Defense Forces.

Footage of the protest showed some people lying in the street and others locked arm-in-arm using the “sleeping dragon” technique, which has participants form a human chain by linking their arms inside PVC tubing. The technique tends to slow down police, as cutting off the tubing runs the risk of injuring protesters. 

The SeaTac City Attorney's Office has charged 46 people with misdemeanors for the protest.

And in January, protesters calling for the cease-fire shut down Interstate 5 in Seattle for hours.

The King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office last week charged five protesters with second-degree criminal trespass and another with disorderly conduct.

Seattle Times staff reporters Catalina Gaitán and Lauren Girgis contributed to this update.

About 150 students gathered near the reflecting pool at Cal Anderson Park in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood at noon. Some demonstrators carried signs with messages such as, “We demand a free Palestine,” and, “Zionism is fascism," and chanted, "Free, free Palestine." Demonstrators included students from the University of Washington, Garfield High School and The Center School.

Leo McKenna, a 16-year-old Garfield sophomore, said he was there for a simple reason: "I decided to show up because I think that civilians dying is bad."

"I support neither Hamas nor the Israeli government,” he said. “I don't want civilians to die. That's it. I am pro-civilian."

McKenna said he left school after biology class and made his way to the park. He was confident he could make up whatever he missed at school on Tuesday. 

"I don't know if our voices would necessarily make a difference, but I'd rather go to sleep knowing that I tried,” he said.

UW student Loren Peterson used a bullhorn to address the crowd from atop a metal structure and criticized the university for its ties to Boeing.

“Telling generations of young people that there isn't enough money for free college or free health care or housing our unhoused neighbors, and then spending billions to commit the gravest assault on Gaza — it really does elicit a very particular type of rage,” he said. “If our economy in this state is so dependent on building bombs, and selling them to be used on the disenfranchised masses across the world, then I don't think that economy should be running.” 

“What do we want? Justice!” the crowd shouted in reply.

The Israel-Hamas war protests creating friction at universities across the United States escalated Tuesday as some colleges encouraged students to attend classes remotely and dozens of people faced charges after setting up tents on campuses and ignoring official requests to leave.

The protests had been bubbling for months but kicked into a higher gear after more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia University’s upper Manhattan campus were arrested last week.

Police said 133 protesters were taken into custody late Monday after a protest at New York University and all had been released with summonses to appear in court on disorderly conduct charges. University spokesperson John Beckman said NYU was carrying on with classes Tuesday.

In Connecticut, police arrested 60 protesters — including 47 students — Monday at Yale University, after they refused to leave an encampment on Beinecke Plaza.

On the West Coast, California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, announced that its campus will be closed through Wednesday after demonstrators occupied a building Monday night. Classes were to be conducted remotely, the school said on its website.

Since the war began, colleges and universities have struggled to balance safety with free speech rights. Many long tolerated protests but are now doling out more heavy-handed discipline.

Campus protests began after Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. During the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and noncombatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.

A Redmond High School student said more than 150 students had walked out of class Tuesday morning and filled the school’s outdoor courtyard by 11:30 a.m. 

Four police officers stood outside the school’s front office doors near a parked police car. Reporters with cameras stood across the street. School staff requested a Seattle Times reporter leave the closed campus.

Another staff member approached a journalist with a camera and requested they not zoom in on students’ faces. 

About a dozen students gathered in front of Garfield High School at 10:30 a.m. carrying signs with messages like “Stop U.S. funded genocide,” as staff watched them from the top of the school’s stairs.

Some cars traveling on 23rd Avenue honked as they passed by. 

“It’s important that we, as youth, ask the state we live in to support us as well as Palestine,” said Maysun Dawahare, a Garfield senior who helped organize the walkout with GHS for Palestine, a student organization that formed in October. “I think as youth we’re more powerful than a lot of other groups.”

GHS for Palestine has organized bake sales and raised thousands to donate to Palestinian aid organizations, Dawahare said. 

Ahead of the planned walkouts, Solly Kane, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, urged parents and educators to speak to their kids about the line between peaceful protests and free expression, and when such protests could be interpreted as antisemitism.

Tuesday is the first full day of Passover, the weeklong Jewish commemoration of the deliverance of the ancient Hebrews from slavery in Egypt.

A student representative of the Washington Revolutionary Student Union said when students chose April 23 for the walkout, they didn’t realize the date fell on Passover. The student said the group does not tolerate antisemitism or hate speech.