By Debabrata Biswas from Boston
The student movement against the brutal Israeli invasion of Gaza resulting in a severe humanitarian crisis in Palestine, first stated in a chaotic way by the ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University which saw more than 100 demonstrators arrested on April 18, 2024. On April 23, 2024, the students there staged a walkout at the University campus in Washington DC and posted a call in the social media for students of other universities — “We will seize our universities and force the administration to divest from any Israeli connections, for the people of Gaza! Join the popular university, take back our institutions”.
In quick succession, students at ULCA (University of California, Los Angeles) set up a Gaza solidarity encampment inside the university campus on April 25. On April 28, clashes occurred between the pro- Palestinian and some pro- Israeli students as ‘ stand with US rallied on the campus’. During the attack, the pro- Israeli group chanted ‘second Nakba’ referring to the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes by Israeli forces in 1948. The following day, police dismantled the encampment, arresting 132 protesters and shooting multiple students with rubber bullets. On the same day, students from Georgetown University and George Washington University established a joint encampment in response to the International court of Justice’s ruling that Israel has violated the Genocide Convention set by U.N.O.
They were later joined by Howard University, George Mason University, University of Maryland and Baltimore University students. Soon students of many other colleges / universities including Ivy League universities like Harvard, M.I.T, Yale, Tuft, Boston, Emory, UNC – Capitol Hill, Brown, New York, Pennsylvania joined the movement and set up encampments in the campuses. In the month of April, 2024, students protests escalated on more than 60 University campuses in the USA, spreading to other educational institutions of many other countries ,including Europe (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Finland, Spain, UK), Australia, Canada, Egypt, Japan, Mexico, Kuwait, Lebanon, Yemen, as a part of wider Israel – Hamas war protests.
In 14 universities in UK, students set up encampments as protests spread up elsewhere. Students of Princeton and Edinburgh university began a hunger strike in protest .Small protests have taken place at universities including France, Netherland , Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Austria. In Amsterdam University Riot Police were employed to disperse an encampment by the students. The methods the students adopted were civil disobedience, encampment and picketing. In the US, police Force were deployed to disperse the protesters. As of May 8, over 2400 protesters have been arrested in the USA, including faculty members and professors and more than 30 protesters have been injured and hospitalized so far. In Sorbonne University in France police applied force to disperse the student demonstrators. The varying demands include severing financial ties with Israel and its affiliated entities, transparency over financial ties and amnesty for protesters, as well as an end to US military support for Israel – as a part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement.
The students’ protests have been criticized by President Biden, former president Donald Trump, many US governors and Israeli prime minister Netanyahu as anti-Semitic. The Republican Party as a whole vehemently criticized the movement. Many of the Democratic Party leaders are also against the students’ movement, but over 200 groups have expressed support for the protesters including Senator Bernie Sanders, Congress members like Alexander Occsio Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Irvine mayor Tarrah Khan and multiple progressive members of the Congress and various important Democrats. “I worry very much that president Biden is putting himself in a position where he has alienated not just young people , but a lot of Democratic base , in terms of views on Israel and this war “– Sanders told CNN.
The recent ongoing student movement in the US is the biggest since the anti-war Vietnam movement in the late 60s and to some extent the anti- apartheid movement against South Africa regime in the 80s. Senator Sanders drew comparison with Vietnam, noting former president Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to run in 1968 amid growing anger over the war in Vietnam. Just like the protesters of the 60s and 80s, the protesters of the present era are being arrested, suspended and expelled for setting up encampments on the campuses in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. For that they are demonized by politicians calling them anti-Semitic. Some demands, including divesture from firms that support Israel’s war and occupation, mirror demands that past student protesters made to divest from South Africa’s apartheid govt. Their discontent has similarly intensified in the face of police crackdown.
Anti-Israeli war protests on college campuses and a looming Chicago Democratic convention invite comparison between today’s protest against Israeli attack and genocide on Gaza and the student movement against the Vietnam War. The 54th anniversary of the Kent State University shooting on Saturday, May 4, 1970, reminds the day when the Ohio National Guard Troop shot 13 students during anti Vietnam demonstration on the campus, killing 4 and unleashing a surge of protest across the country. But the campus protests over the past three weeks differ in both scale and motivation. Students’ bodies have changed, as has the Democratic Party. Still, given the tight rematch incumbent president Joe Biden, Democrat, faces with Republican Donald Trump, they could hold political sway.
In Vietnam war, America was directly at war with North Vietnam led by Ho Chi Min, and after 5 years, nearly 1.8 million American had been enlisted and more than 30,000 had been killed. On the other hand, there are no US troops fighting in Israel’s war in Gaza, where 12000 were killed by surreptitious attack of the Hamas on Oct.7, 2023, with 253 hostages taken and more than 35000 Palestinians were killed by Israel’s attack on Gaza, 75% of which were women and children and more than 80 thousand were injured. The indiscriminate killing of civilians and the destruction of schools, hospitals, homes and infrastructure of Gaza by Israel has been terminated as genocide by International Court of Law. Those atrocities swayed public opinion against Israel; support for Israel’s military assault dropped from 50% in a Nov. Gallup poll to 36 % in late March.
America though not fighting in Gaza, actually enables Israel to destruct in such a scale. Without all the military and financial aid given unconditionally to Israel by the US government, Israel could not go for such a heinous assault on Gaza. Senator Bernie Sanders in a speech commented that US is actually waging a proxy war in Gaza and cannot avoid moral responsibility for the inhuman casualty inflicted on the civilians of Gaza by Israel. President Biden who last month signed a bill to provide $ 14 billion more aid to Israel, has faced growing criticism over his handling of the crises , with hundreds of thousands of voters casting “uncommitted ballots” in Democratic primaries in recent months to express their frustration and anger. “I worry very much that President Biden is putting himself in a position where he has alienated, not just young people, but a lot of Democratic base, in terms of views on Israel and this war.” – Sanders told CNN.
The Democratic Party “in 1968 failed to gauge the sentiment of the anti war youth and continued the horrific war in Vietnam and alienated young voters They are at risk of doing the same this time also” – said veteran journalist and poll analyst Abbas Alawieh.
It is very hard to imagine that the university authorities will agree to divest from companies that has direct business relations with Israel as the list includes very big International companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Cisco, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, General Electric. As for the political parties, the Israeli lobby in America hold a very strong influence, the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) is one of the biggest doner of Democratic Party and Joe Biden himself is very attached to them.
Yet the political pressure and public opinion matters in shifting policies sometimes. For example, Ever Green State College in Olympia, Washington reached a deal with students to work towards divesting from ‘companies that profit from gross Human Rights violation and / or the occupation of Palestinian Territories‘. It is one the few colleges to reach deals with protesters in the US as demonstrations spread to more than 154 campuses nationwide in 49 states. President Joe Biden also has to postpone temporarily, shipment of arms and ammunition to Israel on the eve of Israel’s full scale invasion of Rafah.
These protests are only getting started and it’s too early to tell just now how large might get before classes let out for summer, but one thing is clear, with Presidential elections less than six months away, President Biden is rattled at the magnitude of the students protests. That might have its impact on the US President’s latest decision to freeze shipment of high tech weapons to Israel for using in its planned attack on Rafah. For the protesting students, this is not a small victory. (IPA)
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