Established on May 1st, 2024, the Gaza Liberation Plaza was one of many encampments set up at colleges around the nation created to stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza and to demand university divestment from weapons manufacturing firms. Less than 12 hours after its creation, several police forces were called in to dismantle it, leading to 21 arrests and the encampment being reduced to nothingness. The mess of fallen food and rubble left in the police’s wake only served to inform students that they couldn’t really express their rights to organize and to speak freely. If we want to ensure that our voices are heard, we must prevent any future destruction from occurring again. And to do that, we must find who’s responsible for the response to the encampment. After months of research, I believe I’ve placed the final pin in my Gaza Liberation Plaza evidence board. Let’s look at the facts and try to find who’s guilty of the destruction of the Gaza Liberation Plaza.

The Police

Our prime suspect for the destruction of the Gaza Liberation Plaza are the cops. They were the ones who physically destroyed the encampment, after all. According to Dallas Weekly, UTD Police, the Collin County Sheriff’s Department, Richardson Police, Allen Police, and the Texas State Troopers were called in to UTD to “respond” to the situation at the encampment. The police began militantly arresting protestors and tearing down the encampment. All the while, state troopers stood armed with anti-riot gear as snipers aimed at the crowds of student protestors. It was an incredibly well-coordinated response to a riot. There was only one problem — there was no riot. The encampment hosted teach-ins, speeches, and a sense of community, not crazed Comets hell-bent on violence. The police just decided to LARP as militant anti-riot forces at one of the most milquetoast universities in the American South, so we ended up having snipers aiming at skinny nerds and cops flipping over tables of home-cooked food. If they want to act big and strong, they should try responding effectively to school shootings so that we don’t end up with another Uvalde instead of taking out their anger on trays of rice.

So, are the police guilty of the demolition of the Gaza Liberation Plaza? I don’t actually think so. Despite, you know, physically demolishing the encampment and arresting people, it’s hard to say that they were entirely responsible for the encampment being torn down. The thing about cops is that while they do all the grunt work, they’re just following the orders of others. The orders of, say, someone like…

UTD Admin

Our next suspect is the UTD administration, as they were the ones who initially called in the police to flatten the Gaza Liberation Plaza. But that’s only one offense on their rap sheet. Case in point: the Spirit Rocks. For many years, the Spirit Rocks were an icon of UTD identity. For the freshman/transfer students with us today, the Spirit Rocks were essentially giant rocks in front of the AC on which students could spray paint different messages, continuing humanity’s long and storied tradition of slathering paint on rocks. After October 7th, pro-Palestine and pro-Israel students began spraying the rocks with messages in support of their respective sides. This went back and forth until one day, the rocks were gone. As it turned out, UTD admin had seen the political messaging and got scared by students expressing themselves on the rocks meant for self-expression. The Spirit Rocks were then replaced with a dinky basin full of pebbles, the UTD equivalent of filling in Ground Zero with Orbeez. Another incident would be President Benson’s letter after October 7th declaring his solidarity with Israel, failing to acknowledge the fact that Israel was actively massacring the families of Palestinian Comets. Examples like these show that admin has a history of making the grossest decisions from the confines of the Administration Building, whether that be sending a militarized response to a protest or removing beloved boulders. It begs the question of who exactly they mean to serve from their ivory towers, because it’s certainly not the students.

So, are Admin responsible for the destruction of the Gaza Liberation Plaza? Well, they’re more guilty than the police, but UTD Admin are also spinelessly following orders from someone else.

The Governor

Our last suspect is the big boss himself, Governor Greg Abbott. As the head honcho of the Lone Star state, Abbott is not only responsible for snuffing out UTD’s encampment, but for also smothering the life out of all the encampments established around Texas. In March of 2024, Governor Abbott issued Executive Order No. GA-44, which decreed that universities must update their freedom of speech policies to prevent “antisemitism” — which in this case seems to describe both anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli sentiment. The illogical conflation between the Jewish ethnicity and the Israeli nation-state makes it near impossible to criticize the state of Israel without being guilty of the government’s definition of antisemitism. For example, popular anti-Zionist protest chants such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are recognized by GA-44 as being antisemitic, despite only relating to the state of Israel. If that isn’t enough proof that Abbott is staunchly opposed to the efforts of student protestors, look no further than his Xitter account, where he declared that “[n]o encampments will be allowed. Instead, arrests are being made.” His domineering grasp chokes the life out of student agency on a variety of other issues, like when he signed off on SB-17, a bill that outlawed DEI programs at Texas colleges.

So, is he guilty of the destruction of the Gaza Liberation Plaza? Well, if you want a single person to point at, it’s him. But the Gaza Liberation Plaza was merely one brushstroke of the fresco that is the fight for Palestinian liberation. To understand what caused the demolition of the encampment, we must understand what it stood for.

We The People

The Gaza Liberation Plaza was set up to show solidarity with the struggles of people of Gaza and to educate others on what’s happening in Palestine. For over a year now, the US government has been spending billions of dollars to support the genocidal ambitions of a country whose greatest cultural contribution was “Raid: Shadow Legends.” Spending billions of dollars of our money. If someone is responsible for the destruction of the Gaza Liberation Plaza — no, the destruction of Gaza, it’s us. All of us. We’re handing Israel weapons and turning away when they use them, pretending that our hands are less soaked in blood than theirs are. To acquit ourselves of our role in the murder of Gazans, we must change things. We need grassroots activism in support of candidates in all levels of government who openly oppose Israel and their genocidal policies. We need to make sure our voices are heard through either demonstrations or the ballot. And we need to right our wrongs by sending support to those suffering in Gaza who desperately need food and water.

We’re all complicit in the destruction of the Gaza Liberation Plaza. And even though we may never be able to acquit ourselves of our involvement, we can create a future where our kids won’t have to witness democracy falling to its knees ever again.