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PROTEST - Over 100 college campuses in the United States, Canada, France, Australia, and the UK have anti-war encampments which oppose Israel’s military attacks on Gaza’s dwellings, infrastructure, and non-combatants. While these anti-war protests began in early October 2023, they are now escalating, especially on college campuses, similar to the anti-Vietnam War movement over 50 years ago.
It is too early to predict how this mass movement will evolve, but we know that the Israeli army has so far killed over 35,000 Gaza residents, mostly women and children, and wounded another 75,000 people. Plus, the US government recently allocated $26 billion more military aid to Israel. This is why the protests will continue into the summer. Furthermore, the Democratic Party’s 2024 convention takes place in Chicago, from August 19-22. The convention is preparing for major anti-war protests, like the city experienced in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War.
This is what we know so far:
At least 100 college campuses have pro-Palestinian encampments, and local police have arrested over 1200 students, sometimes brutally. At UCLA thugs attacked the campus encampment in the middle of the night, similar to the coordinated police attacks on the Occupy movement a decade ago. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims: “Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel, they attack Jewish students, they attack Jewish faculty,” But Netanyahu’s claims, echoed by two pro-Israel lobbying groups, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, run contrary to the facts:
Many of the protesters are Jewish, and two Jewish groups, Jewish Voice for Peace and Not in our Name, are active in many of the anti-war protests and campus encampments.
The few incidents of alleged anti-Semitism are strictly anecdotal. They stem from a handful of Jewish college students who “feel’ threatened by pro-Palestinian protests. In at least one case, an anti-encampment provocateur at Northeastern University shouted “Kill the Jews” to (successfully) get his university’s administration to shut down the campus encampment.
The protesters call for the end of US government support for Israeli genocide in Gaza, university divestment from the military-industrial complex, including Israeli companies, and amnesty for arrested students.
No protesters have demanded a return of the anti-Jewish bigotry that was once widespread on American college campuses. No one has proposed that fraternities and sororities restore by-laws that barred Jewish students from membership. No one has called for the reinstatement of admission quotas on Jewish college applicants. Likewise, no one has called for a return of the glass ceiling that prevented Jewish professors from becoming department chairs, deans, and college presidents.
Based on the successes of the anti-Vietnam war movement in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, these are some of the open questions about this new student movement:
Will student protests continue to focus on college investment portfolios and US government diplomatic and military support for Israel’s war on Gaza? Or will they broaden their critique to reveal the common thread linking US military interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, and Somalia to the current US proxy war in Gaza?
Will the current student movement fizzle out from fading interest and police repression, like the 2002-3 anti-Iraq War protests, the 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, and the 2021George Floyd protests. Or will they continue to grow in size and militancy, like the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam war movements?
Will the current student movement invite campus workers to join in and link up with the community-based anti-war movements that have emerged since October 7, 2023?
Will campus-based opposition to plausible Israel genocide in Gaza generalize to other cases of ethnic cleansing and genocide, or will it retain its nationalistic focus, sticking to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank?
Will the causes of the Gaza genocide be explained through a careful analysis of US and Israeli history, or will its analysis stick to the anti-Palestinian stereotypes widely held by many Israelis ?
At this point we don’t yet know whether the glass is half-empty or half-full, but we are living through world historical events. Answers to these and related questions may soon be known once colleges shut down for the summer and when the Democratic Party national convention takes place in August.
(Victor Rothman is a California-based public policy analyst.)
