Time For America to Choose, Palestinians in Gaza Cannot wait
It is time to choose sides in the war between Israel and Hamas but unfortunately nuance is not a quality for most young people, and neither is a sense of history.
Both would be helpful in both understanding and acting in these days of rage against the Israeli assault on Gaza and the resurgence of anti-Semitism against anyone who believes Israel is doing what it must, simply to remain in existence.
The war in Gaza is maddeningly complicated. Historically, Hamas has said it will not rest until Israel is destroyed and eradicated “from river to the sea” and Palestinians can return to their homeland. Israel was created in the ashes of the Holocaust and its position of never surrendering was expressed by the late president Golda Meir.
“We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs,” Meier said. “We have no place to go.”
Further complicating the current war is the difficulty in separating protesters who believe Israel has been the aggressor and must stop and those who hide behind their opposition to the war to shield their anti-Semitism.
The latest Israeli-Hamas war was triggered when Hamas launched an attack against Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people in the worst savagery of Jews since the Holocaust. And then came the Israeli response that has deteriorated into the most horrific military campaign of the 21st century with at least 32,490 Palestinians killed, including more than 13,000 children and 8,400 women. More than 74,889 people have been injured, including at least 8,663 children and 6,327 women. More than 8,000 people are missing, starvation is rampant, and the homes of millions of Palestinians have been vaporized.
Many argue that the Hamas attack was a necessary response to the years of oppression and occupation of Palestinians and their homelands by Israelis. Others assert that the Israeli response is fathoms beyond what is necessary to deter further Hamas attacks on Israel and that Israel’s response has been tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
Israelis justify their response by claiming that the Hamas fighters sequester in tunnels under populated areas and hospitals and that they use civilians as human shields to avoid Israeli attacks.
Further complicating the war are the opportunists and agent provocateurs who are drawn to the protests. Some are anti-Semitic, others are from various right wing splinter groups and some may hope to provoke violence for right wing political reasons.
In repeating conservative points of view, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu generalized the protests as “antisemitic”; and said they were “reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s” during the rise of Adolf Hitler.
“It’s unconscionable,” he declared. “It has to be stopped.”
One natural quality of youth is the need to see the world in blacks and whites, good and bad. The world, however, never fits neatly into small, labeled boxes. The reality is always much more complicated, much more convoluted, much harder to understand and to pick sides is agonizingly difficult. Understanding comes only in hindsight when the complexities of history can be unraveled, separated from the white hot passions of the moment.
And the innocents die and there is no end in sight.
The people of Gaza do not have the luxury of waiting for history to unfold the truth about the war in Gaza. Hundreds of students at college campuses across the country will not wait and have been arrested in demonstrations for an end to the war.
A tutorial on the history of civil disobedience in the U.S. can be helpful in understanding the current situation.
Mass civil disobedience in the U.S. peaked during the anti-war protests against the Vietnam War. Many fashionable long haired, young people flashed their peace signs, wore their tie died shirts and in general, took peacefully to the streets, convinced it was an immoral war that was indiscriminately killing tens of thousands of Vietnamese while thousands of young American soldiers died.
There were many people with crew cuts who wore penny loafers and did not oppose the war, calling the anti-war protesters traitors. They believed the war was righteous and they bought into the government’s rationale for the war, the so-called “Domino theory,” that if Vietnam fell to the communists, it would open the floodgates for communist domination that would stretch all the way to India.
The days of the peaceful doves of the demonstrations began to come crashing down in violence as more militant groups sprouted, including the Weathermen and their successor, the Weather Underground.
There were three so-called “Days of Rage” anti-war protests in October 1969 as police and protesters clashed outside the doors of the Democratic national committee’s nominating convention. One person died, more than 30 were injured and more than 250 protesters were arrested. The upshot was that a month later, a plurality of American voters sought an end to the protests and the violence and elected as president Richard Nixon, who would go on to escalate the war and later gain infamy when he resigned in the chaos of the Watergate years.
The nadir of the protest years came with the bloody violence on May 4, 1970, when Ohio National Guardsmen shot and killed four and wounded nine unarmed college students during an anti-war rally on the campus of Kent State University.
The anti-war years were quickly politicized with Democrats taking a more accepting position toward the peaceful demonstrators in support of free speech while Republicans called for a return to “law and order” to quell the disturbances.
Thousands of students demonstrating against the Vietnam War chanted in unison, “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” “One side’s right, one side’s wrong, we’re on the side of the Viet Cong!” and “Save Hanoi, Lose Saigon, Victory to the Viet Cong!”
Today, pro-Palestine students have their own mantra, “From River to the Sea, Palestine is almost free,” which can have various meanings. One interpretation is that the expression means that Palestinians deserve complete freedom in Israel. Another meaning is that Israel has to be destroyed and driven away “from river to the sea.”
As they did in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, Police took to horseback and donned riot gear as they pushed back demonstrators.
The horrors of the Vietnam War were captured in the seminal photo of the Kent State student bending down over her wounded classmate after National Guardsmen opened fire on the protesters. A similar iconic image of the anti-Israel movement may be the violent confrontations between law enforcement and protesters at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga. An economics professor, Caroline Fohlin, was captured on video as she was violently wrestled to the ground and handcuffed because she was part of the demonstration.
As Fohlin is taken down, she flails and screams, “Oh my god!” while identifying herself as a professor. Protesters gathered around, shouting insults to law enforcement, “You are Hitler! You are rabid dogs! You are fascists! Shame on you!” It reminds of the anti-war epithets thrown at police as protesters screamed “pigs.”
In another, shorter video captured during the same mass arrest, cops deployed tear gas on protesters, and in one video, were seen tasing a medic as he lay handcuffed on the ground. According to one witness, the protest at Emory started off peacefully until over 200 state troopers arrived to break it up.
A woman with her arms behind her back is seen being escorted by an Atlanta police officer in tactical gear. She identifies herself as Noelle McAfee, chair of the philosophy department at Emory. McAfee is a professor of philosophy and affiliated faculty in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and psychoanalytic studies at Emory University, where she has taught since 2010.
McAfee’s research primarily focuses on questions of democracy and democratic practice. Her most recent research draws on prior work in psychoanalytic theory, democratic media, performative ethics, transitional justice, and feminist political theory to examine the role of informal political institutions in the formation of a democratic public.
McAfee has delved into the works of Hannah Arendt, a German-American historian and philosopher. Arendt is best known for her writings on the nature of power and evil, as well as politics, direct democracy, authority, and totalitarianism. She is remembered for the controversy surrounding the trial of Adolf Eichmann, when she attempted to explain how ordinary people become actors in totalitarian systems, which she called the “banality of evil.”
The gulf in responses to pro-Palestinian protests from Democratic and Republican lawmakers and voices mirrors the political fractures of the Vietnam War.
Predictably, pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses are getting very different responses from elected officials in predominantly Republican and Democratic states.
Republicans hope to capitalize on the unrest to taint President Joe Biden and boost former president trump as they oppose the Palestinian cause and show support for Israel. Republicans have criticized universities as bastions of leftist ideology, seeking to portray them as incubators of radicalism on issues of race and gender, and hostile environments for anyone who doesn’t adhere to those ideologies.
Encampments to oppose Israel began in blue states of New York and Massachusetts, where Columbia, New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology first saw students protesting for Palestine.
At Columbia, authorities initially called in the police to respond to the protests but have since been negotiating with student leaders to try to resolve the demonstration without the use of force.
After more than 90 people were arrested at the University of Southern California (USC), Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said he wants to “maintain people’s right to protest and, at the same time, do that peacefully, without any hate.”
In Texas, there was an immediate, aggressive response to arrest peaceful demonstrators. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) sent state police to the University of Texas at Austin to arrest more than 50 students after declaring, “These protesters belong in jail. Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period.”
In March, Abbott issued an executive order telling schools to revise their free speech policies to put in harsher punishments against antisemitism.
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, (R), threatened that students who engage in unsanctioned activism will be expelled. DeSantis said that eastern universities were “too weak and scared to do anything, even as these mobs harass Jewish students and faculty.”
“If you try that at a Florida university, you are going to be expelled,” DeSantis said.
At the University of Florida, students were told that they could be suspended and banished from campus for three years for violating rules regarding protest conduct.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Republican Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) are among the conservative leaders who have suggested the National Guard might be needed to control campus protests, stirring memories of the Kent State killings 54 years ago.
Last Wednesday, Johnson visited Columbia University and concluded that the protests were anti-Semitic. Johnson was booed by tany protesting students, including some who wore the provocative Keffiyeh, the traditional garb of the Palestinians. Counter-demonstrators wore yarmulkas, the defining headwear of Jews. Johnson focused on the anti-Israeli protesters.
“It’s detestable, as Columbia has allowed these lawless agitators and radicals to take over,” Johnson said. “If this is not contained quickly, and if these threats and intimidation are not stopped, there is an appropriate time for the National Guard. We have to bring order to these campuses.”
In predominantly blue New York, authorities said the National Guard will not be called in as authorities negotiate with the students at an encampment at Columbia University.
Protesters at Columbia and other colleges have demanded the schools cut ties with Israeli academic institutions and disinvest from Israel-linked entities. Protesters hope the university will divest from Israel as it divested in the 1980s from investments in South Africa over its apartheid racial segregation policy.
In April 1985, students led a three-week student demonstration against Columbia’s investments in South Africa. Months later, trustees voted to sell the majority of Columbia’s stock in American companies doing business in South Africa. Among other companies, it included American Express, Chevron, Ford and Coca-Cola, which together totaled $39 million in stock and about 4 percent of Columbia’s total portfolio.
Columbia was the first Ivy League university to divest from South Africa, and various other colleges followed suit, including the University of California, Berkeley, as well as Johns Hopkins University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. South Africa’s apartheid ended in the early 1990s.