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punditman says…
Once in a while things reach a boiling point and then the lid blows off.
I have a distant memory. Long before disco and some time after the first Apollo moon landing, I'm sitting in the waiting room of my doctor’s office. As a kid who liked to read, I pick up a magazine with a photo of a longhaired guy and the probing headline: Back to School. Why?
I can’t carbon date this memory morsel with total precision (magazines once sat in lobbies for months, even years) but the article was about the campus revolt taking place in the US, and around the world.
Under Nixon, whose invasion of Cambodia had expanded the Vietnam War, the lid finally blew off the social cauldron. On May 4, 1970, four students were killed and nine wounded at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard, and then on May 15, two more students were killed and twelve wounded by Mississippi state police at Jackson State University.
The war had come home to the US in a visceral way.
© Out Now! By Fred Halstead
Yet even after Kent and Jackson State, polls showed most Americans still supported Nixon’s Cambodian incursion. Despite all the wanton destruction and devastation, much of which had been on the nightly news for years (albeit sanitized and biased)—napalm, Agent Orange, carpet bombing, My Lai, and other atrocities, and despite years of antiwar agitation—the war nonetheless continued.
© Out Now! By Fred Halstead
That spring over 800 colleges and universities went on strike in righteous revulsion, and much of the American education system ground to a halt.
After years of social unrest the dam finally burst, if only for a time.
Today’s Student Revolt
Fast forward to today’s US-led campus rebellion, a globalized movement against Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, and it’s hard not to draw comparisons to earlier upheavals.
Whereas students in the past were labelled “commies,” “traitors,” and “campus bums,” today’s protesting students face similar hostility and insults such as “spoiled brats,” “Hamas terrorists” and “anti-Semites” (many of the protesters are Jewish). Then as now, there’s the bogus accusation that “outside paid agitators and activists” are to blame for all the chaos. Meanwhile Michael Moore, cleverly, and I think correctly, counters such mischaracterizations by describing non-student protestors as “members of the community” who support the protests.
The facts on the ground in Gaza
No sane person will deny that the Hamas attack in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and hundreds taken hostage on October 7 was a brutal atrocity, because killing and maiming and taking hostages are all abhorrent. But Israel’s vengeful and disproportionate post-October 7th military offensive, and the fact that the US and Western countries are providing the weapons of mass slaughter, along with economic aid and diplomatic cover, is what the protests are all about.
On January 26, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s slaughter in Gaza is a plausible case of genocide. According to Gaza’s health ministry, in the past seven months:
Israel’s bombing and ground assault has killed at least 35,000 Palestinians mostly women and children.
Tens of thousands more are buried under rubble.
Israel has imposed a siege and razed whole neighbourhoods.
Nearly 90% of the Gaza's population has been displaced with a new wave of mass displacement happening now in Rafah.
Hundreds of Palestinian bodies have been uncovered in mass graves in and around three hospitals.
YouTube videos show IDF soldiers mocking their victims.
The entire population is facing acute food insecurity.
The Clampdown and Backlash
The response by university administrators and local police to the protests and encampments has varied from one institution to the next. In many cases it has included tear gas, rubber bullets, beatings, de-housing, arrest and expulsion.
It remains to be seen what kind of impact this movement—which aims to compel educational institutions to disclose their financial ties to Israel and divest from weapons manufacturers—will have on policy. But it's not zero.
Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign is being being live-streamed on al Jazeera, Instagram, and elsewhere. It takes a special kind of ignorance to deny it’s happening, or to offer lame apologetics for what is indefensible under the rules of war and occupation and international humanitarian law. Yet that’s what I often read when perusing the comments sections of mainstream media portals, along with a rebuking of the protesters. I'm struck by how some normies chastise the students as “unruly” and “snotty young elites” who “don’t know what they’re talking about.”
For a Canadian perspective, a recent letter to the Toronto Star, entitled I’m proud U of T has allowed encampment puts the lie to such sentiments:
In a number of letters, readers took issue with pro-Palestinian protests and encampments.
I attended the U of T encampment to see for myself what was going on. At the entranceway, I was oriented as to acceptable behaviour inside the encampment. In very clear language, I and others were told that no hateful speech would be tolerated. Masking was encouraged, to avoid participants being doxxed or harassed.
To test the reaction I would receive, I identified as Jewish, and was warmly welcomed.
I spent a couple of hours listening to lectures and walking around. At no time did I sense any hint of antisemitism. Unlike some of the readers, I do not conflate anti-Israel sentiments with antisemitism.
One of the readers raised the issue of why such actions are being taken against Israel, with so many injustices worldwide. It is because Canadian companies are selling deadly weapons to Israel, in full knowledge of their being used to indiscriminately kill Palestinians, largely innocent men, women and children. Also, the protesters are calling upon the universities to divest from their holdings in Israeli companies that are participating in the carnage.
Similarly with one of the other readers, I also attended the University of Toronto as a student. Unlike that reader, I was proud of my connection to the university that was permitting the encampment to continue.
John Liss, Toronto
These “snotty young elites” are engaged in what my fellow Substacker, Patrick Mazza, calls a "revolution of empathy." This doesn’t mean they’re completely correct in their analysis of everything, or that sometimes kids don’t say or shout dumb things. One can quibble over tactics, but focusing on these aspects only serves to distract.
Meanwhile, a recent Gallup polling shows that:
All three major party groups in the U.S. have become less supportive of Israel’s actions in Gaza than they were in November. This includes declines of 18 percentage points in approval among both Democrats and independents and a seven-point decline among Republicans.
Independents have shifted from being divided in their views of the Israeli military action to opposing it. Democrats, who were already largely opposed in November, are even more so now, with 18% approving and 75% disapproving.
Republicans still support Israel’s military efforts, but a reduced majority -- 64%, down from 71% -- now approve.
If a majority of citizens become so repulsed by the senseless butchering of civilians, it’s fair to assume that the average mealy-mouthed politician will change course for fear of getting the boot.
But I'm not so sure of that anymore. Because it's almost like President Biden is writing a book entitled: How to lose an election to a fascistic orange clown who faces four criminal cases - By Sleepy “Genocide Joe”
Mark Twain once said “History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” Where this is all headed is anyone’s guess, but the current moment does seem to have a 1968 vibe about it:
A campus revolt with students protesting a foreign war ✓
Russian tanks in eastern European country ✓
Democratic National Convention in Chicago ✓
A guy named Robert Kennedy running for president✓
Planet of the Apes film premieres✓
World's biggest musical act releases a bloated double album✓ (I’ll take the Beatles White Album over Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department):
I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake, we must surely be learning
Still, my guitar gently weeps, yeah
Many of today’s protestors have no personal stake in the conflict and yet their passion and dedication is both courageous and inspiring.
Listen to this University of Chicago student as he articulates why halting mass murder outweighs his career aspirations:
And this George Washington University student as she sings a protest song after getting out of jail:
Ceasefire now.
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Glad that you're talking about this, Punditman. It certainly seems that the brutal repression is creating the opposite effect. I was just watching Glenn Greenwald on the banning of Tik Tok because they blame it for young people opposing Israel.
I certainly go further than you in questioning the 1200 killed by 'Hamas', which forensic sources have put at no more than 115 with no less than 125 killed by the IDF in their Hannibal Directive to kill their own hostages, and their Apache bombing that incinerated the cars in the parking lot at the rave, prevented from leaving by roads blocked by the IDF.
But at this point, all those details are being brought to light, along with the true history of the world wars and the Balfour Declaration. So the terrible things being done to the Palestinians are meaningful in changing the course of this deception, but no less terrible.
Excellent piece! I agree with everything you’ve said. Have you seen this from the NYTimes yesterday? It’s about how the extremists have taken over in Israel: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html