Pro-Palestine walkout at Natick High prompts fiery response

Last month about 20 students at Natick High School staged a walkout to protest the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and what they viewed as a bias among school leaders against pro-Palestine voices.

The small but passionate crowd gathered in a circle outside of the school. Three members spoke before the group walked downtown. Hatcher Cheeseman-Meyer, a senior at Natick High who helped organize the walkout, said he made a few new friends. 

The demonstration echoed larger student-led protests that swept through college campuses last year. Such efforts have remained ongoing, if more sporadic, as the war in Gaza continues.

The Natick students who participated are hardly alone in their views. In America, 33% of adults between the ages of 18 and 29 sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis, according to the Pew Research Center. Just 14% of people in that age range sympathize more with Israelis. 

But in the aftermath of the walkout, some students who protested are feeling uneasy because of what the walkout spawned: a blistering opinion piece that appeared in The Times of Israel shortly afterward. 

In that piece, author Eugene Levin described witnessing the walkout firsthand. He characterized it as a “disturbing, hate-filled, ignorance-driven spectacle” that represented the “moral collapse” of young people in Massachusetts. 

Levin, who describes himself as a film producer, authored a piece earlier this year calling for Israel to forcibly annex Gaza and the West Bank. In Levin’s telling, the very idea of a Palestinian state is a “fantasy” that must be “buried forever.”

Levin posted a few short video clips of the Natick protesters alongside his article about the walkout. Cheeseman-Meyer remembers seeing Levin there, filming. When the article was posted, it “freaked a lot of the other kids out,” the Natick student said. Some student protesters agreed to not comment or respond to it publicly. Cheeseman-Meyer feels differently. 

Levin’s piece is nothing more than an “irritating,” bad faith effort to slander the students, he said. 

“My biggest fear going into this was that my words would be misconstrued in a way that would make the Jewish community at our school feel unsafe around me; of course that anxiety was upsetting. I want everyone to feel safe,” Cheeseman-Meyer told Boston.com. 

“The man writing the article wasn’t writing out of any concern for the Jewish community, he was writing to make us look bad. I’d have a different response if this was someone with real concerns, but reading the article I just can’t find the voice of someone with any genuine heart in the situation. Frankly, I just don’t have the energy to be scared of one guy with a phone camera and a public blog,” he added. 

The student protesters were all prepared for some form of backlash, and that has manifested in some instances of verbal harassment in Natick High, according to Cheeseman-Meyer.

He criticized school leaders, saying that they are more comfortable platforming “Zionist voices.” A walkout to protest gun violence a few years ago was fully supported by school leaders, he said, a stark contrast from how they handled this demonstration. Students were barred from hanging up posters advertising the walkout, he said. 

In response to these concerns, a spokesperson for Natick Public Schools told Boston.com that the posters advertising the walkout made it appear as if the demonstration was school-sanctioned.

“These posters were not authorized by the school building administration for inclusion on our high school bulletin boards, as is our standard process for poster approval,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

School leaders explained to student organizers that the posters promoted disruption during the school day and were therefore removed, according to the spokesperson.

“Natick Public Schools does not tolerate harassment or bullying of any kind. We have not, to date, had any students come forward indicating that they have faced such treatment as a result of the walkout. All students are encouraged to speak to their guidance counselor or another trusted adult if they are mistreated at school, so that we can fully address the situation,” the spokesperson said in response to Cheeseman-Meyer’s claims concerning verbal harassment.

Before the walkout, Principal Josepha Blocker sent a message to families of Natick High students. She acknowledged that the walkout could affect the “sense of safety” and “sense of belonging” of some students. Those participating in the protest were told that they needed to gather off campus. Blocker also warned that student protesters missing class would still be subject to “typical attendance-related consequences.” Natick police were notified before the demonstration and monitored the students when they gathered off campus.

As Israel maintains a block of all humanitarian aid to Gaza, children continue to starve and patients continue to die, according to The New York Times. Israeli officers are privately telling their superiors that famine is imminent in the besieged enclave, the newspaper reports. At the same time, Israeli officials are ramping up efforts to annex the West Bank and forcibly displace more Palestinians, according to Reuters. 

That situation has translated into exhaustion and fear for some Natick students, Cheeseman-Meyer said. The opinions expressed by the protesters are not limited to the small group that actually participated in the walkout, he said, but some were afraid to protest because of possible repercussions from their parents.

Many others are silently hoping the suffering in the Middle East ends while choosing instead to focus on pressing issues at home, according to the Natick senior. 

“People just aren’t meant to hold onto that kind of anguish… we’re exhausted,” Cheeseman-Meyer said. “There are just too many things going wrong here to focus on something happening elsewhere, especially when it’s so stigmatized and discouraged to use words like genocide and ethnic cleansing to refer to what really can’t be taken any other way.”

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