In the late afternoon of May 3, several hundred individuals, chiefly Lehigh students, faculty and staff, gathered at the flagpole along the main entrance to the university’s campus to condemn the bombing of Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces.

Among other things, they also intended to urge Lehigh to end its association with Israeli universities and to liquidate investments in companies selling arms to Israel.

The event was the culmination of a weeklong effort to support Palestinian victims of the ongoing war in Gaza. The organizing group calls itself “Lehigh 4 Palestine.”

Unlike demonstrations on other campuses that have spun out of control, the Lehigh event was tightly planned and managed. Undergraduates who had been given “media training” were designated to speak with reporters; others were actively discouraged from responding to questions. (Students seemed nonplused when asked, “Doesn’t this sound to you like Orwell, or Lenin?”)

Media team members emphasized that their goal was justice for Palestinians and the end of support for the Israeli government’s policies in Gaza. They interpreted this to mean ending the shipment of weapons, bombs especially, to the IDF.

Asked if the United States should not have helped defend Israel against the recent massive air assault by Iran, they waffled. Despite their “media training,” that question seemed to catch students by surprise.

Reports about demonstrations at other colleges and universities have often included accounts of confrontations between students and police. By coincidence, when I first arrived at the Lehigh flagpole, I noticed four or five campus police officers gathered nearby, speaking with one another.

At the same time, a member of the university’s Office of Communications and Public Affairs approached me to ask my identity and to introduce herself and encourage me to contact their office with any questions I had.

I was curious about relations between students and cops, and as soon as I met a “media team” member, I asked about that. The story he told in response described an incident in which demonstrators were being hassled by anti-demonstrators, whom I took to be outsiders, not campus people.

I don’t recall if the Lehigh cops were called or if they intervened on their own, but they definitely came to the aid of the demonstrators. The word my interviewee used to describe their conduct was “protective.” In all the demonstrations I witnessed years ago, I never heard the word “protective” used to describe campus police officers. Kudos to the Lehigh cops.

The bulk of the demonstration I witnessed consisted of addresses by individuals who sought to stir up the crowd with chants and anti-Israel harangues (e.g. “Netanyahu, you can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!”).

Unfortunately for reasons of health, I had to leave well before the program concluded. But up to that point I felt like I had seen and heard everything many years ago, when, instead of Netanyahu, the trigger names were Nixon and/or Kissinger. But I want to add that the Lehigh students were unfailingly polite, even welcoming to an elderly stranger visiting their campus.

One final note: The day before the demonstration at Lehigh, the editor of the Bethlehem Press, George Taylor, received a call from Fritz Smith, a 1953 graduate of Lehigh who wanted to know whether Lehigh was having disruptive demonstrations such as those at Columbia and some large state schools. On May 6 I returned Mr. Smith’s call. In a nutshell I said that I was impressed by the demonstrators’ commitment to justice for the Palestinians, their determination to see justice done in Gaza, and their pursuit of their aims through peaceful political action. I told him that if I were a Lehigh grad, I would be proud of the students’ conduct. They may not have all the answers worked out (who does?), but in my opinion their dedication to justice for all is exactly what we want in the younger generation.