How Gaza protests have gripped American universities
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Thursday’s Guardian briefing provides a very helpful overview of the US campus protests, what has happend at Columbia University, how the protests have spread and the violent police repression they have been met with.
RK
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Thu 2 May 2024. Read the original here.
How Gaza protests have gripped American universities
In today’s newsletter: As Columbia makes headlines for its NYPD-aided crackdown on students protesting the war in Gaza, professor Bassam Khawaja explains how discontent has risen rapidly
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbiiK2vwIOg
Al Jazeera reporter Phil Lavelle takes viewers on a 6-minute walk around the pro-Palestine peace encampment at UCLA after riot police have cleared student demonstrators. Lavelle walks by a massive display that had been set up close to the encampment by Israel supporters playing, “day and night”, images from the Oct 7th Hamas et al breakout, with adjoining loudspeakers that had played, according to reports, loudly. Several students are lined up having been detained by police and they’re waiting to be loaded on to large buses. Lavelle asks, ‘Is this the end of the protest?’ One student answers, ‘People will be back … it’s not going to be the end … until the genocide ends and the funding for the genocide ends … the billions of dollars spent … [‘What would you say to UCLA?’] Very disappointing …’
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The website of the organisation Religion Dispatches (religiondispatches.org) carries the following: “At the April 17th House Education Committee hearing on Columbia University’s response to antisemitism on campus, Rep. Rick Allen (R-GA) questions Columbia President Minouche Shafik about her knowledge of the Bible. In a clip of the hearing below, Allen interrogates whether Shafik deems God’s ability to curse Columbia University a “serious issue.” Then, citing a version of Genesis 12:3, he proclaims: “it’s pretty clear it was the covenant that God made with Abraham, and that covenant was real clear: if you bless Israel, I will bless you; if you curse Israel, I will curse you.” When asked whether she wants God to curse Columbia, Shafik (who was born to Muslim parents in Egypt, but grew up in the US) responds “definitely not.”
If you are inclined to be critical of the responses of some University Presidents to the ongoing student protests in the USA you might ask yourself how you would have reponded had you been in the hotseat and faced with the above style of questioning.
The thing we need to take away from what is happening in the USA is that democratic rights there are a wafer thin covering of a highly militarised state whose links with academia are extensive.
The violence against peaceful student protesters is horrifying. And how is it being justified? Through the weaponisation of ‘antisemitism’ the one form of racism the establishment condemns. This is their moral alibi.
Unfortunately we do not see any other sectors of society mobilising. America’s working class is quiescent. The Marxist idea that the working class is the gravedigger of capitalism doesn’t seem to be working out very well in the West!
What is clear is that despite the slanted news coverage a steady 70% of people in the USA, Britain and Europe support an immediate ceasefire. Young people in particular understand a genocide when they see one.
For the left and the Palestine solidarity movement we have to move on from our previous positions and say, as Naomi Klein did last week in the Guardian that Zionism and its Statehood project is a disaster, not least to Jews.
Interestingly, the Newcastle Evening Chronicle is covering topics ranging widely from Newcastle United to street stabbings to filthy streets to Princess Charlotte to Hairy Bikers to Newcastle United, but not a mention of the current camp-in protest at the centre of Newcastle University campus.
It isn’t only in the U.S.
Update:
The Chronicle has now included a short account of the student protest on Newcastle University campus.
The University spokeperson’s statement includes the rather odd-sounding and promotional – ‘We are committed to our core values, which include Social and Environmental Justice; Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; and we have been deeply affected by the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine. Working with industry partners is critical in helping us to leverage our world-class research, to advance science and to support the UK’s development through high-value employment and skills’.
Better than calling in armed and armoured police, I suppose.