The Protesters on the Nation's Campuses are Winning!
The draconian tactics of corrupt and gutless college leaders to try and shut down protests against Israeli genocide in Gaza have angered young people Biden desperately needs in November
President Joe Biden’s abrupt surprise announcement that he was “putting a hold” on the shipment of hundreds of incredibly destructive and untargeted 2000-ton bombs to Israel, and his additional warning to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will withhold all “offensive weapons” if Israel launches a full assault on Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinians are seeking refuge, is a huge win for the anti-genocide protests continuing on college campuses across the country.
Even as militarized police brutally assault and arrest thousands of protesting college students and tear up their peaceful tent encampments, in the process hitting them with everything from batons to tear gas, mace spray, rubber bullets, tasers and “flash-bang” stun grenades — all at the specific request of feckless college administrators like the wretched president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik—it is clear that Biden’s turn-about from “rock-solid zionist supporter” of Israel to opponent of further IDF. mass murder of Palestinians trapped in Gaza, is happening because of those protests.
Biden only won election in 2020 thanks to the votes of the nation’s young people, and his recent McCarthyite condemnation of their protests as “anti-semitic” as well as his pathetic effort to assertion that protests must be legal and peaceful, are clearly causing young people, even those who aren’t in the tent protests, to sour on him this election year.
Whether the minimal steps he has taken so belatedly, after the slaughter of over 35,000 and the wounding over over 75,000 Palestinians in Gaze, 70 percent of whom are women and children, will be enough to win the youth vote back remains to be seen, but it seems unlikely to do so.
The Biden campaign surely is aware that they are facing a potential catastrophe in November. If Biden is serious about defeating Donald Trump he should be visiting a few campuses to see for himself the so-called “chaos” he claimed was occurring on campuses first hand. Not seeing any, he ought to admit his error and congratulate the protesters for their courage in peacefully defending not just Gazan victims of Israel’s genocidal assault, but also this country’s greatest freedom: the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and assembly.
Some may say that Biden’s turnabout from “proud zionist” and willing supporter of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank to critic of further slaughter of Palestinians is a meaningless bunch of words and token actions, but I think it is more than that. I’m sure that there is an awareness in Biden campaign headquarters that Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza, as well as generous US provision of advanced weapons to Ukraine that could enable its military to strike major targets inside of Russia, could trigger a nuclear war, are not playing well across this land. And when it comes to a contest for the votes of the “bomb ‘em back into the stone-age” demographic, that is already owned by Donald Trump.
What’s up-for-grabs is the huge mass of Americans who think the era of permanent war by US policy-makers needs to end and the country needs to focus resources instead on the needs of its own people. Unquestionably defending Israel — especially now that the US is not dependent upon Middle East oil but is in fact a major oil exporter — is not an election-winning strategy.
And while cops busting the heads of liberal-minded or leftist kids might thrill the the right-wing, high-school dropout gun nuts who constitute much of Trump’s MAGA cult following, a broader swath of voters, including the suburban moms whose kids are in college or are planning to go to college, are probably not happier about seeing that kind of thing on he news than they are thinking that their teen daughters might get pregnant and then not be able to obtain a timely abortion or morning-after pill.
Biden needs to tamp down global conflicts and violence, return to negotiating a reduction in the nuclear threat, and start addressing the real crises young people care about like looming climate catastrophe, raising the minimum wage significantly, ending the burden of lifetime indebtedness for obtaining a college degree. Defending a woman’s right to get an abortion is important and fine as far as it goes, but ending the daily harassment and all-too-frequent racial profiling arrests and brutal treatment that minority youth experience daily from the nation’s police is even more important.
There is no upsurge in anti-semitism — just a an upsurge in reclassifying criticism of Israel as breing anti-semitic. There is however certainly an uptic in the number or racists and antisemites who feel comfortable openly expressing their poisonous hatreds. There is also, however, an upsurge in authoritarianism, and in militarized policing, and young people bear the brunt of it.
Let’s face it! As a 75-year-old man myself, I can state with sincerity that Biden is an old man. But people’s attitude towards the elderly are not automatically negative. What people don’t like is grumpy old men. They like old men who are funny, who enjoy and care about children and who relate to the young the way good grandparents do. Biden needs to work on that. I’m getting far afield I know, but really, when’s the last time, or whenever, have we seen Joe Biden playing with kids? It would certainly set him apart from Trump, who I cannot even imagine playing with kids.
Biden needs do try conversing with protesters at one of their encampment protests (If Nixon could meet with anti-war protesters on the steps of the Lincoln Monument, surely Biden could meet with protesters on the Wesleyan or Princeton campus. He might also try visiting schools and playgrounds, maybe joining some kids in a pick-up baseballl game. Or how about a meeting with the Gazan mothers of children who have been killed by Israeli bombs (or the children of mothers have been killed by bombs)? Hey, if Joe wants to prevent Netanyahu from bombing Rafah, why doesn’t he fly there for a visit? He could land on a US carrier off the Gazan coast, use the floating dock being constructed, or a chopper to reach Gaza, and then walk to Rafah along the beach road, meeting actual ∂isplaced Palestinian victims of Israeli bombardment along the way. (If he could visit war-torn Iraq or Afghanistan to see what the military was doing there, he can surely likewise visit war-ravaged Gaza to see what US weapons have done and are still doing!)
But to get back to my major point: The campus protesters calling for an end to support for Israel in its war on Palestinians deserve enormous credit for bringing this crisis in Gaza to the fore and for calling out America’s culpability for what is happening daily in Gaza and on the West Bank. I hope they manage to. keep it up through the summer.
Well, Mr. This Can't Be Happening, IT IS HAPPENING! The Hebrews and Zionists have got the fix in. Think about it, we all live in the United States of Israel now. The Biden crime family is on its way out. And Von ShitzInPantz will be wearing a kippah when he swears in placing his hand on the Torah.
So hope you get to live next to the likes of Hamas and their ilk. Then you'll understand.
Looking at the world through western glasses, utterly incapable and unwilling to see it through the eyes of conflict in the Arab world. Height of whyte privlidge and cultural imperialism.