Students are America’s treasure; they were the key to the U.S. emergence as a superpower. They are smart and young enough to see a world where things could be perfect.
They can see that at the same time as President Biden delivers a Holocaust remembrance speech decrying a rise in antisemitism, 86 Democratic lawmakers told Biden they believe there is sufficient evidence to show Israel has violated U.S. law by creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The area is now a famine zone. Record numbers of Republicans as well as Democrats voted against the new aid bill for Israel. Senator Bernie Sanders commended student-led rallies against the Israel-Hamas war: "I'm proud to see students protesting the war in Gaza. Stay peaceful and focused. You're on the right side of history."
Pro-Palestine supporters may not represent a majority of students on campus, but the majority are following their leaning. As sociologist Seymor Lipsett once wrote about the Vietnam protests: “to stress the minority status of the radicals is not to say that the majority has been opposed to them… The student vanguard has been powerful since 1965 precisely because the majority of students have been politicized to the Left, particularly through opposition to the war and to racism.”
They may still be convinced that no cause justifies violence, but they empathize with the youth in Gaza: almost 15,000 children have been killed, 90% of the schools have been flattened, half the homes have been destroyed, and one-third of the infants are starving. These numbers make it difficult to be angry with the protesters.
More often than naught, the students’ causes have been on the side of the angels; their causes have ultimately become the script that society follows:
There is a need for a new script in America; feelings of patriotism for America are at the lowest ebb since surveying began in 2001.
The students are racking up early victories. Deals include commitments by universities to review their investments in Israel or with firms linked to the ongoing war.
Of course their ideas are often met with resistance from authority – resistance that leads to violence that is blamed on the students – like that in Columbia, where the protests started.
Violence happens in places where the administrative mind-set is back in the 1960’s. The seeds of violence at Columbia, for example, were planted six months ago by the university administration. In the aftermath of peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrations, Columbia’s senior administration dictated a policy granting themselves the power to regulate protests and ‘sole discretion’ to determine sanctions on student organizations. Rather than following the rules of university practice, they gave themselves the power to ignore the students while enabling the appearance of hate groups like the Proud Boys. Events spiralled up until the evening of April 30th, when SWAT teams moved in on the out-numbered students, flinging flash-bang grenades, swinging batons, raising fire-arms against unarmed students, and pushing them down stairs.
The fact that violence did not spread to many other universities, while protest did, argue that the violence is uniquely baked in individual ovens of administrative temperature. 99% of pro-Palestine protests are peaceful…
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Barry, do you have any thoughts as to why this sad conflict is attracting so much attention while others such as Ukraine and Sudan are ignored or forgotten? Who is steering this media focus right before the Presidential election? The sad plight of the Palestinians has been festering for more than a century dating back to the British-Arab wars during the Mandate years. Why now has this become so prominent and who stands to benefit?