Pro-Palestinian protesters have turned their attention toward a new enemy: bananas.
As a result, pro-Israel protesters switched up their tactics in combating pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA by eating and waving bananas during a counter-protest on Friday, according to UCLA’s Daily Bruin.
The Daily Bruin reported that hundreds of pro-Palestine students formed an encampment at UCLA’s Dickinson Plaza on Thursday “to call for the UC to divest from companies associated with the Israeli military and cut ties with LAPD in addition to a ceasefire in Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip.”
Because many students are not leaving the encampment as part of the protests, the Daily Bruin said that the encampment has enlisted the help of students, faculty, alumni and outside organizations to provide food for the protesters.
Apparently, word got out that one of the protesters in the encampment had a “severe banana allergy.”
Upon obtaining this information, Pro-Israel counter-protesters were seen waving bananas in the air near the encampment on Friday. One student was filmed eating a banana while draped in an Israeli flag.
There was a protestor in the liberated zone at @UCLA with a potentially fatal banana allergy. Counterprotestors invaded the encampment and saw all the no bananas warnings. The next day they came back waving bananas like settlers waving machine guns & smeared bananas everywhere. pic.twitter.com/sPlTVnwHsu
— Linda Mamoun (@mamoun_linda) April 28, 2024
“There was a protestor in the liberated zone at @UCLA with a potentially fatal banana allergy. Counterprotestors invaded the encampment and saw all the no bananas warnings. The next day they came back waving bananas like settlers waving machine guns & smeared bananas everywhere,” the post caption read.
Should the counter-protesters have brought bananas?
“Agitators were threatening to sexually assault a student with a banana after hearing that there’s a deadly banana allergy in the encampment,” Vincent Doehr, a third-year political science doctoral student, told the Daily Bruin. “The Zionists were told of this by the security and then waved bananas at us.”
It’s unclear if the pro-Israel protesters were actually seeking out the protester with the banana allergy or were merely trying to be comical.
Newsweek reported, this incident was just one of several that occurred between Israeli and Palestinian supporters over the weekend on UCLA’s campus, as part of a nationwide increase of pro-Israel counter-protests on college campuses.
While the actions of the pro-Israel, banana wielding protesters may not have been proper, this just goes to show how pro-Palestinian protesters look for excuses to become the victim.
To say that waving bananas is the equivalent of waving machine guns is a hyperbolic jump that does nothing to help people take the pro-Palestinian cause seriously.
In fact, when pro-Palestine protesters are arguing that it is OK for them to call for the death of Jews and the destruction of the Jewish state, but are calling pro-Israel supporters evil for waving a few bananas, it makes them look weak.
If you want to dish out highly inflammatory rhetoric and expressive conduct, you have to be willing to take it. You can’t cry foul when someone plays the game by your rules.
But it’s almost impossible to have a reasonable discussion with people who try to play victim at every moment.
Pro-Palestinian protesters have already brought ire to their cause, chanting and protesting about issues they don’t fully understand. Now, instead of going to their college classes, they’ve decided it would be more prudent to create an encampment on their school campus and essentially yell until they get what they want.
How they believe this will translate into support for their cause is difficult to wrap your head around.
