UNIVERSITY and college students have rattled the United State’s establishment in ways not seen for decades. They have risen to revolt against a long-held foreign policy of blind loyalty to Israel, and called on universities to divest from companies that are directly or indirectly involved in the arms trade with Israel.
The rapidly-spreading university students protests – first kicked off by Columbia university students in New York – have laid bare Washington’s cantankerous foreign policy fault lines in the wake of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Protests have also spread to Europe, Australia and Canada. Israel’s reputation as a pariah state is growing.
In the past six months, Israel has killed nearly 35 000 Palestinians, and displaced the entire 2.5 million population of Gaza. Some 30 kids have died as a result of starvation, and 15 000 of the total death toll are children.
Additionally, more than 10 000 women had also been killed in Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip. An estimated 10 000 people are unaccounted for and feared trapped under heaps of rubble. Schools, hospitals, UN-run refugee camps, factories and homes have all been destroyed in what South Africa and many in the world regard as a genocide.
American students have taken a dim view of their country’s support of Israel and taken a stance that has incensed and rattled the establishment.
US President Joe Biden and his arch-rival Donald Trump have finally found something very rare that they can agree on, which is their disdain for the widespread student opposition to Washington’s long-standing open-ended support for apartheid Israel.
After a deafening silence, Biden finally addressed the nation on the “universities against the war” phenomenon, and harshly lambasted the students for some of the violence that erupted on some campuses.
“There is no place for anti-Semitism in America. Order must prevail,” he said. His predecessor, Trump, was more combative in his response to the students’ protest, mincing no words and in typical Trump fashion spewing some expletives.
He described the protesting students as “morons” and “lunatics”. The two men are expected to contest the US presidential elections on November 5. As for President Biden’s Gaza policy, he risks losing an entire generation of young voters, who are struggling to fathom their country’s military and diplomatic support for apartheid Israel.
This is a generation that does not depend on US television news outlets for their propaganda, but instead use social media to evaluate geopolitical events.
And, as the students’ peaceful protests increased rather than decreased as they entered a second week, some university management – under heavy political pressure – began to call the police onto the campuses to dismantle students’ encampments.
Nationally, more than 2 000 students have been arrested at more than 40 campuses. Some faculty members, including professors, were arrested, as many academics had been seen to support the right of students to freedom of speech and expression, a hallmark of critical thought and university life.
US political elites from both the Democrats and Republicans alike have been taken aback by the young generation of students and their world view, which is markedly different to that of their parents.
At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a group of middle-aged hooligans, some waving Israeli flags, attacked pro-Palestinian student demonstrators on campus in full view of the police, who did nothing.
Almost everywhere, protests by students have become a huge international embarrassment to the US. It is no wonder the students’ brave stance has been met with a fierce backlash from the country’s establishment, which is laced with pro-Israel lawmakers and lobby groups.
University administrators on many campuses have also succumbed to political pressure in the wake of threats to cut their funding if they fail to reign in the protesting students.
Additionally, in many US media interviews with the students, frequent questions are premised on a few remarks – real or perceived – that are deemed anti-Semitic. Another frequent question posed to anti-Israel protesting students is about Hamas and the captives.
The media – print and electronic – desperately attempt to project students’ criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, or of Zionism, as tantamount to anti-Semitism. One erudite student responded by saying “one cruel act does not require another cruel act”.
The protests have undoubtedly fuelled anti-war sentiments across the US, where a strong Jewish lobby is credited with a stranglehold on the nation’s political elites.
Cries of “ceasefire now” reverberate across the US at a time when politicians appear increasingly disjointed from the young generation of tertiary students, many of whom will be voting for the very first time in November.
The insistence by Hamas for a permanent ceasefire as a precondition to the release of captives has also become a headache for the Biden administration, which has insisted only on a so-called “humanitarian pause”.
The sentiment is hardly shared by most countries at the UN. The US has blocked at least four draft resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Washington has also recently blocked a draft resolution to accept Palestine to full membership of the UN and the country’s statehood.
When it comes to its Gaza policy, the US seems neither to mind nor care about standing alone. But the students and their academic staff simply no longer want any more killing of the Palestinians to be carried out in their name.
The students, and this generation of youth, appear a certain game-changer in the US foreign policy on Israel. It can no longer, and will almost certainly no longer be business as usual. History teaches us that when the younger generation discover their mission, no amount of force can stop them. Be warned.
* Abbey Makoe is publisher and editor-in-chief at Global South Media Network