Milwaukee’s Pro-Genocide Backlash
On April 30, members of the state legislature met with UW-Milwaukee Chancellor, Michael Mone about the student encampment on Falasteen Lawn at UW-Milwaukee in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Only Democrats from the State Assembly attended, but they were united in support for the students, for free speech, and against genocide. Two politicians crashed the meeting on Mone’s invitation: County Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman, and Alderperson Jonathan Brostoff, who are both also Democrats, on the county and city level. Mone said he brought them to this meeting so they could represent the “other side” (that is, the pro-genocide side?).
At this meeting, Sheldon Wasserman made wildly unhinged and Islamophobic accusations. He thanked the police for preventing students at the encampment from making “another October Seventh” here in Milwaukee. We don’t have video of that zoom meeting, but we do have a video of speeches following it at Falasteen Lawn. About 30 minutes in, an attendee summarized it, including Wasserman’s comment. Wasserman’s office did not return calls for this article.
In reality, the student encampment led not to violence, but to a robust series of teach-ins, community events, marches, rallies, and, eventually, Chancellor Mone meeting some of the students’ demands.The schedule also included faith events like Muslim Friday prayers, Jewish shabbat dinners, and Christian Sunday services. It was a space of humanity, love, and solidarity against genocide.
The success of the encampment is well-documented on social media by Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace-Milwaukee, and in this article by Janan Najeeb in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The students self-organized de-escalation trainings and a security team to deal with anyone looking to create trouble at the encampment.
I spoke with Sam, one of the core security leads, who prefers their last name not be used. They said all the speakers at the encampment were known to organizers, and security team was prepared to shut down any antisemitic or threatening speech, but there was none. Sam also said encampment participants showed great discipline not reacting to right wing agitators who showed up almost daily with ignorant questions, very hostile hate speech, and sometimes loudspeakers to interrupt Muslim prayers. In the worst of these instances, the security team isolated agitators, de-escalated situations, and kept trouble out of the encampment.
We also contacted Hillel Milwaukee, a pro-Israel student center located across the street from the UW-Milwaukee campus. Josh Herman, the executive director, asserted that anti-genocide activists were just “using the tragedy of war as political cover for what is really unadulterated hate speech” and “an incitement to violence.” He framed chants of “intifada” and “from the river to the sea” as antisemitic. He did concede, however, that none of the protesters directly threatened individual Jewish students or anyone’s Jewish identity. “They’re far too smart to completely disconnect from Israel,” he said, “but, if you replace the word ‘Zionist’ with ‘Jew’ in a lot of the sentences they say, they become perfectly antisemitic.”
Rachel Buff, a Jewish member of the UWM faculty and organizer with Jewish Voices for Peace, described Hillel’s concerns and word-play as “a pre-existing narrative of Zionist fragility that gets conflated with hostile acts by students.” According to her, this is political. Many conservative Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the local Jewish Community Relations Council have been “taking fears about antisemitism and turning them into a broad anti-left thing” for decades. She takes antisemitism seriously and has seen examples of it elsewhere, but she “found none of that at the UWM encampment” which she has described in writing as the best hope for the university.
Its clear there was no actual violence or threats of violence from anti-genocide protesters at Falasteen Lawn. It seems Wasserman’s fears about “an October Seventh in Milwaukee” were, unsurprisingly, not based in any kind of reality, but only on his bigoted assumptions and stereotypes about Muslims and Arabs.
Unfortunately, there have been actual incidents of violent and threatening behavior around this issue in Milwaukee. It has come from Zionists and their allies targeting Palestinians and their allies.
Palestinian solidarity activists in Milwaukee have been threatened, spat on, and subject to trespassing and vandalism in their homes. Five of them were beaten, restrained and dragged into custody by police. Some Zionists even went to Marquette under the cover of darkness and armed with a pistol to desecrate a Palestinian memorial. Local media treated this story as a footnote and while there were arrests, there have been no charges or consequences for the perpetrators. If anyone is in actual danger here, it’s Milwaukee’s Palestinian Americans and their supporters.
That’s a danger that Sheldon Wasserman and Josh Herman increased by supporting police and pushing Chancellor Mone to clear the encampment. Herman told me, “I expected Mone to simply uphold the university rules and policies.” When asked if that should include police evicting the encampment he deflected, “That’s not my call… it’s the university’s job. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, but I do expect them to enforce their policies.” This is a thinly veiled insistence from Herman that armed gunmen with near-impunity to murder be deployed against his political opponents. Although UWM’s encampment ended through peaceful negotiation, police evictions of campus protests have been brutally violent in Madison and across the country, with cops hospitalizing many protesters, and even using live ammunition.
Local Palestinian solidarity activists haven’t made a big deal out of the backlash incidents. They are more concerned about the far greater hardships experienced by Palestinian people struggling and dying in Israel’s civilian bombing, genocide, and systemic forced starvation. They are also forward-looking. “Our energy is primarily focused on building our community and our movement here,” Heba, a Palestinian organizer with Milwaukee4Palestine told me. “And it's working,” she continued, “new people continue to join our movement with each event. While Zionists are working to tear things down during their final hurrah, we are building up a movement.”
As Israel’s actions grow ever more unconscionable, as their credibility wanes globally–with International Court of Justice charges of genocide and ruling that the occupation is illegal–and locally–with the State Democrats’ ceasefire resolution and strong Palestine solidarity presence at RNC protests–the pro-war position of local Zionists becomes increasingly untenable. They are flailing, resorting to islamophobic attacks, and silencing Palestinian voices.
Sheldon Wasserman is not the only public official engaged in this behavior. Leadership of the Democratic Party tried, and failed, to prevent the ceasefire resolution at their state convention. A Palestine-themed art show by Fanana Banana was canceled after the hosting organization, Mitchell Street Arts received indirect threats that their funding would be cut. Ann Jacobs, a member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) has been very aggressive, denouncing opponents of genocide in the state assembly and even recruiting someone to primary Assembly Representative Ryan Clancy, who has been an active peace advocate for decades, visiting Israel and Palestine repeatedly. Jonathan Brostoff, the other politician Mone invited to side with genocide on April 30, has endorsed and started knocking doors for Clancy’s opponent, even though, less than two years ago Brostoff hand-picked Clancy for his seat when he stepped down from representing district 19.
The commitment to Israel is putting Zionists within the Democratic Party increasingly at odds with the party base and its traditional anti-war values. Mainstream media loves to frame this as young voters and Muslim or Arab-Americans defecting from Joe Biden and the party. Local centrists have taken to denouncing Milwaukee’s anti-genocide politicians and candidates, calling them not-real Democrats.
A more objective frame for the politics involved here is that Joe Biden was trying to hold an irreconcilable coalition together. He was willing to lose some anti-genocide voters to keep pro-Israel ones, but, as the genocide rages on, the election draws nearer, Biden has dropped out, and Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Trump’s team, how long can top-of-ticket democrats maintain that position? How many anti-war Democrats can the party lose without losing the election?
One day after the meeting Wasserman and Brostoff crashed, where Wasserman accused UWM students of organizing an October 7 style attack on Milwaukee, Donald Trump mirrored that line at a rally 40 minutes to the west in Waukesha. It seems Donald Trump is hoping people like Wasserman, Brostoff, and Jacobs will soon have to choose between their party and their war, which begs the question: who will prove to actually be the “real Democrats” in this situation?
