Student action on university campuses against US involvement in Israel’s slaughter of Gaza has exploded across the country. Suddenly there is the distinct feel in the air of the anti-Vietnam war protests once they finally caught on in 1968 and soon thereafter changed the course of US history.
Both protest movements were fully demonized by the same forces of the mainstream Left/Right regime and what libertarian writer Jacob Hornberger rightly calls the “National Security State.” I would add the mainstream media from Fox to MSNBC. But these days there is relatively more freedom of expression available to Americans via some of the social media outlets. The US government war on one of these outlets – TikTok – may also be fueling protests, as this outlet is particularly popular among younger Americans and has become the platform for them to hear more objective and independent views on what is happening in Gaza. It should not be considered a coincidence that not long after Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblat was caught on tape panicking over the shift in opinion away from fealty to Israel among the younger generation, a big PR operation about “Chinese infiltration” of the platform emerged as did calls to ban the popular application.
“We have a major, major, major generational (TikTok) problem,” Greenblat said. This past week both Houses of Congress voted to ban TikTok. Problem solved? Not exactly.
So back to the protests.
Tens of thousands of students from New York’s Columbia University to the University of Southern California have risen up to demand an end to US support for Israel’s 200 day – and counting – total demolition of Gaza in retribution for the October 7th Hamas bloody incursion into Israeli territory.
To date, more than 35,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been killed including an estimated 15,000 children. Hamas, by contrast, is reportedly not significantly degraded and its massive tunnel system remains intact. Former Israeli Defense Forces General Yitzhak Brick told Israeli newspaper Maariv that Israel has already lost the war against Hamas and must admit it.
The wild disproportionality of the Israeli response has animated and ignited the sense of repulsion and demand for justice among the nation’s youth. Most recently the grisly details of Israel’s apparent mass slaughter of hundreds of patients at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza – many discovered with their hands and feet bound – may have been the last straw that led to mass student action across the country.
When the wave of student protests settled in the Lone Star State on Wednesday, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott wasted no time at all calling in the Texas State Troopers to smash the protest at the University of Texas. Heavily-armed Troopers – some on horseback – marched onto campus attempting to force the crowd of protesters to disburse. As might be expected, the situation very quickly got out of hand, with Troopers assaulting and arresting those participating in what began as a peaceful protest.
Shortly after siccing the heavily armed state militia on student protestors, Abbot released this Tweet:
Arrests being made right now & will continue until the crowd disperses.
These protesters belong in jail.
Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period.
Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled. https://t.co/XhLlQdvUl0
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) April 24, 2024
Abbott’s blanket accusation that these protests are prima facie anti-Semitic is belied by the fact that Jews across the country are participating in the mass action, including on university campuses.
There is clearly a major attempt being made to conflate legitimate concern over tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians being slaughtered – and hundreds of thousands facing starvation – with blanket hatred of Jewish people. But the youth are not buying it. So it’s time to send in the militarized police to shut down peaceful protest and the First Amendment.
In the case of Texas, one cheeky conservative Twitter/X user pointed out that, “Abbott sent more troops to shutdown peaceful protests at UT than he did to secure the border.”
Ouch – but revealing.
Other observers have similarly pointed out the hypocrisy of the massive deployment of militarized police to quell a peaceful political protest, commenting on a video montage of police beating and arresting American university students that, “imagine if this video was out of Tehran University in Iran, our politicians & media would have endless calls for regime change.”
Throughout the country, many “influencers” on the professional political Right are acting like the “woke snowflakes” they have derided, demanding that our fundamental liberty to freely assemble and speak our minds be amended in this particular instance due to the subject matter.
Many “professional right-wingers” have done their best to try and convince us that these protesters are identical to the BLM protesters of several years ago. Matt Walsh at the Daily Wire put out a podcast today claiming that, “The ‘Free Palestine’ Movement Is Just BLM Repackaged.”
The problem in his and the rest of their calculus is that the state and local authorities would not lift a finger to stop the BLM riots, yet they are cracking heads robustly among the Palestine protests.
Walsh even seemed to sense the inconsistency in his logic, questioning Governor Abbott’s move against the protesters by Tweeting, “Did Abbott ever arrest BLM protesters for antiwhiteism? Is antisemitism the only hateful ideology not permitted in Texas? Are you legally allowed to hate some groups but not others?”
He added, in a criticism of Abbot’s suggestion that the protesters were being arrested for “antisemitism,” that, “If you’re arresting them for an illegal encampment or for making threats then say that. But arresting people for ‘antisemitism’ is obviously a clear violation of the First Amendment. I can’t stand these protesters but you can’t arrest people simply for having ‘hateful’ views.”
He deserves credit for this observation.
As is often the case, action by state actors against this protest movement will only strengthen the movement. We have not even seen the beginning of what is in store.
Polls clearly show that a considerable majority in America believes Israel has gone way too far in its reaction to October 7th. America for the first time in my lifetime is in the majority opposed to Israel, and that shift is more than anything else a generational shift. Hence Greenblat’s panic.
This movement is picking up steam and threatens to turn Biden’s big Democratic Convention coronation ceremony into the disastrous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, where the Lyndon Johnson campaign went to die. Ironically the Democratic Party convention this year is to be held in… Chicago!
May 4th will be the 54th anniversary of Nixon’s National Guard killing four students at Ohio’s Kent state University for protesting our killing squads in Vietnam (My Lai massacre). Will soldiers in the US start cutting protesters down again?
