“This Would Have Been a Peaceful Gathering”: Behind the UT Protest [Video]

Mohammed, a 21-year-old economics major at the University of Texas at Austin, has only sporadic communication with his extended family in Gaza. He might hear from them a couple times a week—usually in a text, sometimes in a video, or maybe in a phone call if he’s lucky. Whatever the medium, he said, the news is never good. “You don’t even feel happy about that ‘I’m alive’ text,” he said, “because you know, at that same time, they might only have two minutes left.” 

His family, whose home is in the center of the Gaza Strip, was trying to make it down to Rafah, in the territory’s southernmost region, a couple weeks after Israel began its ground invasion. Subjected to an embargo on food and water, his relatives cooked bread on a pile of trash they lit on fire. 

A few months ago, Mohammed received a video from his family—one …