Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology, May 12, 2024
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/05/omni-student-protests-against-israeli.html
Also prepare for International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Nov. 29, 2024 https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/11/un-international-day-in-solidarity-with.html, and for ISRAELI BDS DAY (BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS) AND PALESTINIAN LAND DAY, MARCH 30, 2025.
CONTENTS (40 articles published in early May 2024; i.e., it’s an extremely limited sample of the countless articles in support of students, free speech, and academic freedom v. the decimation of Gaza; contact me if you would like to compile the 2nd shorter Anthology, I have the articles ready to edit)
“History Is Indispensable to Journalism.”
Nakba.
Finkelstein. Organizing, Slogans.
People’s Dispatch: Student Protests Growing.
Tomgram: From Kent State to Columbia U
Norman Solomon, “When Students Are a Shock to the System. “ Students v. US War Culture.
Global (Spain and) and US Protests (Columbia and).
The People’s Forum. “We’re focused on what matters: fighting for Palestine!”
Just Foreign Policy. “Take action: Block a bill taking aim at pro-Palestine civil society.”
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR. “Rachel’s Children [Rachel Corrie]. The Scourging of Gaza: Diary of a Genocidal War.”
Paul Street. “Genocide Joe.”
Michael Schwable. “How Holocausts Happen.”
Sonali Kolhatkar. “Student Demands for Divestment.”
Robin D.G. Kelley. “Letter to Columbia President Minouche Shafik.”
Defending Rights & Dissent. Campus Crackdowns, Mass Surveillance, and Academic McCarthyism.
etc.
SOURCES (several of these journals published more than one article, esp. Consortium Review, Counterpunch, Popular Resistance)
AFSC Roundup
Al Jazeera
Al Mayadeen
BeytTtikkun
Boston Review
Black Agenda Report
Common Dreams
Consortium News
Counterpunch
The Cradle
DC Media Group
Defending Rights and Dissent
The Grayzone
The Guardian
Historians for Peace and Democracy
Jacobin Roundup
Just Foreign Policy
The Monthly Review
Palestine Chronicle
Palestine Talks
The People’s Dispatch
The People’s Forum
Politico Magazine
Popular Resistance
Progressive Magazine
Tom Dispatch
Tricontinental
Unicorn Riot
Venezuelan Analysis
Zero Hour Report
TEXTS
“History Is Indispensable to Journalism.” Consortium News (5-6-24).
It’s missing from corporate journalism for a reason and for the same reason is a big part of Consortium News. Read here…
Israeli army in Gaza in 1956. (National Library of Israel/Wikimedia Commons)
You cannot understand a conflict without understanding its history. That’s why historical context is routinely suppressed by corporate media, such as in the Palestinian-Israel conflict and the war between Russia and Ukraine. They don’t want you to understand.
For establishment journalists, the violence in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023 and in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Understanding the Palestinian conflict from 1948 forward, and the Ukraine war from the 2014 overthrow of the Ukrainian government and the start of the civil war completely changes one’s perception.
So establishment media suppresses this history because it’s a perception they don’t want you to have. It goes against its agenda to promote Western foreign policies, rather than reporting on them.
In 1956, Moshe Dayan, then chief of the Israeli general staff, looked into both the recent past and to today to warn:
“What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. … We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house. . . . Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that accompanies and consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit all around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.”
Dayan understood the indispensability of historical context, even when it pointed to his own side’s guilt.
It’s a history of the still ongoing process of the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Arabs by Israel, in the face of the foundational myth of a land without people for a people without a land. It’s a history understood by student protestors across the U.S., which is why the state and the media want them silenced.
We have published numerous articles on the history of the Palestinian conflict and last year we ran a timeline that explained the war in Ukraine in a completely different way from what Western governments and media are telling us.
History is an invaluable part of Consortium News‘ reporting. Please contribute today to CN‘s Spring Fund Drive to help us to continue providing rare but essential historical context.
Please Donate to the
Spring Fund Drive!
The Media Digest, The People’s Forum. “Nakba.” May 10, 2024.
ALL OUT THIS SAT, MAY 11: PROTEST TO DISMANTLE THE GENOCIDAL ZIONIST ENTITY—FIGHT FOR LIBERATION AND RETURN
In honor of the 76+ year long plight and struggle for liberation of the Palestinian people, PAL-Awda calls for National Days of Action across the country in protest of the settler colony and in honor the freedom fighters and martyrs of Palestine.
The “NAKBA” (meaning “disaster” in Arabic), commemorated on May 15th, is the genocide and ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians from historic Palestinian lands which began months before the settler colony declared independence in May 1948. During the NAKBA of 1948, Zionist occupation forces and settler militias brutally murdered over 15,000 Palestinians and expelled 750,000+ Palestinians from their homes. The Zionist state was established on what had been “British-ruled Palestine” and displaced Palestinians were forced to flee their original homes; many of whom wound up in the Gaza Strip.
The Zionist project destroyed 70% of (over 530) Palestinian towns and villages and stole 78% of Palestinian land during the NAKBA of 1948.
For more than 76 years, displaced Palestinians have demanded a “right of return,” a position the US backed Zionist entity rejects. In Gaza today, the families of originally displaced Palestinians of 1948 have, again, been displaced in the ongoing genocide.
WE DEMAND AN END TO THE OCCUPATION, full liberation, and the right of return for all Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and around the world to their original lands and homes.
Advice for Organizing Your Protest, Choosing Your Slogan
“Norman Finkelstein: Build a Majority for Palestine”BY NORMAN G. FINKELSTEIN, May 9, 2024. https://jacobin.com/2024/05/norman-finkelstein-student-protests-gaza-free-speech
[Holocaust scholar and pro-Palestine activist Norman Finkelstein expresses his support for the student protests, insisting on the importance of free speech, choosing the right slogan, and uniting the majority of Americans around solidarity with Gaza.
On April 21, 2024, Holocaust scholar and prominent pro-Palestine activist Norman Finkelstein visited the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University. Finkelstein expressed his support and admiration for the student protesters, urging them to focus on bringing in the widest possible constituency into the Palestine solidarity movement and insisting on the vital importance of free speech and academic freedom for the Palestinian cause. We reprint his remarks here; the transcript has been edited for length and clarity.]
I don’t want to claim any kind of expertise, and I have to always be careful of appearing to be condescending or patronizing, or [claiming to be] all-wise in these matters. I would simply say, based on my experience, the most important things are organization, leadership, and having clear objectives.
Clear objectives means basically two things. One is slogans that are going to unite and not divide. In my youth, when I was your age, I was what was called back in the day a Maoist — a follower of Chairman Mao in China. One of the slogans that was famously associated with him was “Unite the many to defeat the few.”
That means, at any juncture in the political struggle, you have to figure out how you can unite the many and isolate the few with a clear objective in mind. Obviously, you don’t want to unite the many with a goal or objective that is not your objective. You have to figure out, having your objective in mind, what is the slogan that will work the best to unite the many and defeat the few?
I was gratified that the movement as a whole, shortly after October 7, spontaneously and intuitively grasped, in my opinion, the right slogan: “Cease-fire now!” Some of you might think, in retrospect, what was so brilliant about that slogan? Wasn’t it obvious?
But in fact political slogans are never obvious. There are all sorts of routes and paths and byways that people can go down that are destructive to the movement. It wasn’t a leadership decision, I don’t think; it was a spontaneous, intuitive sense by the protesters that the right slogan at this moment is “Cease-fire now.”
I would also say, in my opinion, the slogans have to be as clear as possible, leaving no room for ambiguity or misinterpretation, which can be exploited to discredit a movement. If you take the history of struggle, there was the famous slogan going back to the late 1800s, “The eight-hour working day.” It was a clear slogan.
More recent, in your own living memory — for all the disappointments, in my opinion, of the presidential candidacy — one of the geniuses of [Bernie Sanders’] candidacy, because he had forty or fifty years of experience on the Left, [was the slogan] “Medicare for all.” You might think, what’s so smart about that slogan? He knew that he could reach 80 percent of Americans with that slogan. He knew that “Abolish student debt” and “Free college tuition” would resonate with a large part of his potential constituency.
He didn’t go beyond what was possible at that particular moment. I do think he reached what we might call “the political limit.” The limit at that point in his candidacy was probably jobs for all, public works programs, a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, abolish student debt, and free college tuition. Those were the right slogans. It may seem trivial, but it really is not. It takes a lot of hard work and sensitivity to the constituency that you’re trying to reach to figure out the right slogans.
Free Gaza, Free Speech [Academic Freedom, Truth, Justice v. Standard of Hurt Feelings]
My own view is that some of the slogans of the current movement don’t work. The future belongs to you guys and not to me, and I’m a strong believer in democracy. You have to decide for yourselves. But in my view, you have to pick the slogans which are not ambiguous, leaving no wiggle room for misinterpretation, and which have the biggest likelihood at a given political moment of reaching the largest number of people. That’s my political experience.
I believe the “Cease-fire now” slogan is most important. On a college campus, that slogan should be twinned with the slogan of “Free speech.” If I were in your situation, I would say “Free Gaza, free speech” — that should be the slogan. Because I think, on a college campus, people have a real problem defending the repression of speech.
In recent years, because of the emergence of the identity-politics, cancel-culture ambiance on college campuses, the whole issue of free speech and academic freedom has become severely clouded. I have opposed any restrictions on free speech, and I oppose the identity-politics cancel culture on the grounds of preserving free speech.
I’ll say — not as a point of pride or egotism or to say “I told you so,” but just as a factual matter — in the last book I wrote, I explicitly said that if you use the standard of hurt feelings as a ground to stifle or repress speech, when Palestinians protest this, that, or the other, Israeli students are going to use the claim of hurt feelings, pained emotions, and that whole language and vocabulary, which is so easily turned against those who have been using it in the name of their own cause.
That was a disaster waiting to happen. I wrote about it because I knew what would happen, though obviously I could not have predicted the scale after October 7. But it was perfectly obvious what was going to happen.
In my opinion, the most powerful weapon you have is the weapon of truth and justice. You should never create a situation where you can be silenced on the grounds of feelings and emotions. If you listened to [Columbia president Minouche Shafik’s] remarks, it was all about hurt feelings, feeling afraid. That whole language has completely corrupted the notion of free speech and academic freedom. . . .
You now have that experience, and hopefully going forward that language and those concepts will be jettisoned from a movement that describes itself as belonging to a leftist tradition. It’s a complete catastrophe when that language infiltrates leftist discourse, as you are seeing now.
I’m going to be candid with you, and I don’t make any claim to infallibility — I’m simply stating based on my own experience in politics: I don’t agree with the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” It’s very easy to amend and just say, “From the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free.” That simple, little amendment drastically reduces the possibility of your being manipulatively misunderstood. . . .
Number one, no radical movement can make any kind of progress unless it has clarity about its goals and clarity about what it might be doing that’s wrong. You’re always engaging in course corrections. Everybody makes mistakes. Unless you have free speech, you don’t know what you’re doing that’s wrong.
Number two, the truth is not an enemy to oppressed peoples, and it’s certainly not an enemy to the people of Gaza. So we should maximize our commitment to free speech so as to maximize the dissemination of what’s true about what’s happening in Gaza — and not allow any excuse for repressing that truth.
What Are We Trying to Accomplish?
You’re doing ten thousand things right, and it’s deeply moving what you’ve achieved and accomplished, and the fact that many of you are putting your futures on the line is very impressive. I remember during the anti–Vietnam War movement, there were young people who wanted to go to medical school — and if you got arrested, you weren’t going to medical school. Many people struggled with the choice between getting arrested for the cause. It wasn’t an abstract cause — by the end of the war, the estimate was that between two and three million Vietnamese had been killed. It was an unfolding horror show every day. . . .
With that as an introduction, to return to my initial remarks: I said any movement has to ask itself: What is its goal? What is its objective? What is it trying to achieve? A few years ago, “From the river to the sea” was a slogan of the movement. I remember in the 1970s, one of the slogans was, “Everyone should know, we support the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization]” — which was not an easy slogan to shout on Fifth Avenue in the 1970s. I vividly recall looking at the rooftops and waiting for a sniper to dispatch me to eternity at an early age.
However, there’s a very big difference when you’re essentially a political cult and you can shout any slogan that you like, because it has no public repercussions or reverberations. You’re essentially talking to yourself. You’re setting up a table on campus, giving out literature for Palestine; you might get five people who are interested. There’s a big difference between that situation and the situation you’re in today, where you have a very large constituency that you could potentially and realistically reach.
You have to adjust to the new political reality that there are large numbers of people, probably a majority, who are potentially receptive to your message. I understand that sometimes a slogan is one that gives spirit to those who are involved in the movement. Then you have to figure out the right balance between the spirit that you want to inspire in your movement and the audience or the constituency out there that’s not part of the movement that you want to reach.
I believe one has to exercise — not in a conservative sense, but a radical sense — in a moment like this, maximum responsibility to get out of one’s navel, to crawl out of one’s ego, and to always keep in mind the question: What are we trying to accomplish at this particular moment? [End Mearsheimer]
[Dick’s comment: Everything Mearsheimer says about speech is fully supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, whose affirmation of free speech has always been absolute. –Dick
“Students vow to continue struggle as Israel closes in on Rafah.” People’s Dispatch. May 07, 2024.
The student movement remains undeterred by police repression and focused on solidarity with Gaza as Israel moves forward with attacks on Rafah
Despite the thousands of students arrested for encampments, the movement continues to grow.
Students across the United States and world continue to push the movement for Palestine forward despite heavy police repression and violence, as they remain undeterred in this ongoing struggle. It is estimated that over 2,600 students have been arrested in campus protests and encampments in support of Palestine. Despite severe police repression, students and workers took to the streets together on May Day to commemorate this international holiday and to recommit to the liberation of Palestine.
On May 6, Hamas agreed to a three phase permanent ceasefire proposal but Israel rejected the proposal, instead choosing to announce its forced displacement of eastern Rafah. As Israel invaded Rafah, thousands of students in the U.S. faced further repression for protesting their institution’s complicity in the genocide on Gaza. At The New School, faculty, inspired by the student encampments erected an encampment of their own, establishing the very first faculty-led Gaza solidarity camp.
The world condemns the invasion of Rafah as the war on Gaza enters a new stage.
World leaders have spoken out against Israel’s invasion and bombing of Rafah, where over 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are taking refuge. Biden, facing a severe political crisis due to the student and mass movement for Palestine across the world,has threatened to stop shipments of military supplies and equipment to Israel, which, if followed through, could deal a significant blow to Israel’s operations. In northern occupied Palestine, 81% of Israelis have claimed they will not return to the settlements unless Hezbollah — a resistance group in Lebanon which has carried out offensives over the last seven months in solidary with Palestine — is pushed further back into their country. Resistance factions in Gaza, the West Bank, and in the Arab region are undeterred by Israel’s actions, and the continued, unified effort is bearing light on a new political project emerging in Palestine. On May 1, the United Nations General Assembly held a meeting to discuss the U.S. veto on the Palestinian bid for UN membership, a decision criticized by several countries including China which condemned and called the U.S.’s repeated use of its veto power as ‘irresponsible.’
Context: History of Student Protests against US War Culture “Tomgram: Norman Solomon, When Students Are a Shock to the System. “ TomDispatch tomdispatch@typemediacenter.org via uark.onmicrosoft.com
“Norman Solomon, When Students Are a Shock to the System.”
May 9, 2024
Once upon a time, in another era, maybe even another universe, the head of a university refused to call on the police, the National Guard, or even federal troops in the face of student and other protests. Instead, he opened the doors of his school to the demonstrators.
I’m thinking of Kingman Brewster, who was the president of Yale University on May 1, 1970, as peaceful protests over racial justice and against the Vietnam War were taking place in New Haven, Connecticut. It was just days before, thanks to the killing of four demonstrators by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University, anti-Vietnam War protests would — rather like the present Gaza ones — spread across hundreds of college campuses nationwide. Yale avoided the worst of it, when Brewster, among other things, said: “I am skeptical of the ability of Black revolutionaries to receive a fair trial anywhere in the United States. In large part, the atmosphere has been created by police actions and prosecutions against Panthers in many parts of the country. It is also one more inheritance from centuries of racial oppression.” I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that Republican Vice President Spiro Agnew promptly and publicly called for Brewster’s ouster, while the students united behind him.
No such luck these days, of course. The police are being called onto ever more campuses, starting with Columbia University where the Gaza demonstrations were first launched. Had its president, under pressure from the Spiro Agnews of this day, not called in the police to arrest students, there might be no nationwide Gaza protest movement today. Instead, as I’m writing this, more than 2,000 students have been arrested across the country, including — yes! — 44 for “trespassing” at Yale.
Rare indeed has been Brown University, where “only” 61 were arrested after two sit-ins and a hunger strike before its president finally agreed to let its governing body vote this fall “on a proposal to divest the school’s $6.6 billion endowment from companies affiliated with Israel” and the Gaza Solidarity Encampment there ended peacefully. With that in mind, let TomDispatch regular Norman Solomon, author of War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, fill you in on the ways in which American students have bravely risked their college careers and their futures to reject what he calls an all-American death culture amid a horrifying war in Gaza to which this country continues to supply the most devastating of weaponry. Tom
“War Culture Hates the Ethical Passion of the Young:
In the Thrall of a Dominant Death Culture” By Norman Solomon.
Persisting in his support for an unpopular war, the Democrat in the White House has helped spark a rebellion close to home. Young people — least inclined to deference, most inclined to moral outrage — are leading public opposition to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. The campus upheaval is a clash between accepting and resisting, while elites insist on doing maintenance work for the war machine.
I wrote the above words recently, but I could have written very similar ones in the spring of 1968. (In fact, I did.) Joe Biden hasn’t sent U.S. troops to kill in Gaza, as President Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam, but the current president has done all he can to provide massive quantities of weapons and ammunition to Israel — literally making the carnage in Gaza possible.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
Neha Gohil and Jon Henley. “Global student protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza+Colonialism challenged/reinforced on campuses.” The Guardian 5-8-24. Al-Jazeera. Forwarded by Sonny San Juan.
Date: Wed, May 8, 2024 at 10:10 AM
Subject: Global student protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza+Colonialism challenged/reinforced on campuses
Ceasefire and divestment calls have spread beyond US campuses, with more expected as Rafah offensive begins
Wed 8 May 2024 Why have student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza gone global?
University campuses around the world have been the stage of a growing number of protests by students demanding academic institutions divest from companies supplying arms to Israel. The protests, which first spread across college campuses in the US, have reached universities in the UK, the rest of Europe, as well as Lebanon and India. The students say they are voicing their opposition to, what they describe as, their university’s “complicity” in Israel’s assault on Gaza that has killed more than 34,700 people. Israel said its military offensive was a response to the attack by Hamas militants on 7 October, when about 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.
More than 2,500 demonstrators have been arrested in the US so far, with protests on college campuses attracting global media attention and reaction from Palestinians trapped in the besieged Gaza.
More protests are expected, with the Israeli assault on Rafah drawing international condemnation. Some students have begun hunger strikes in protest against their university’s “silence and inaction”.
Where are the protests happening?
Demonstrations have been staged at nearly 140 college campuses in the US, spanning 45 states and Washington DC since protests began at Columbia University in New York. Dramatic scenes unfolded at Columbia about a week ago when more than 100 students were arrested after police officers entered the campus. The university called on the police to tackle demonstrators who had occupied Hamilton Hall, renaming it Hind’s Hall, after a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed in Gaza. Afterwards, Joe Biden, rejected claims that the protests were non-violent. “Destroying property is not a peaceful protest; it’s against the law,” the US president said. Biden added: “There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans.”
Since then, students at about 14 UK universities have also set up encampments. Hala Hanina, a Palestinian student who has been involved in protests at the Newcastle University, said: “It’s so important for the student community and British community that they are fighting for justice.” More than a dozen students at Princeton and 10 students at Edinburgh have said they will begin a hunger strike in protest at their university’s policies. Prof Peter Mathieson, the principal and vice-chancellor at Edinburgh, said: “We have very recently been notified of the intention of an unknown number of students to commence a hunger strike as an indication of their strength of feeling and determination around issues related to Palestine and Israel. “While we recognise their bodily autonomy, we appeal to them and others not to take risks with their own health, safety and wellbeing. We are in daily contact with the protesters to ensure they are aware of the health and wellbeing support available to them.”
What is the situation in mainland Europe?. . . .
How have universities responded?
There has been a varied response from academic institutions to student protests, ranging from dramatic crackdowns to negotiations. Brown University in Rhode Island brokered an agreement with students last week that the institution’s highest governing body, the Corporation, would vote on divestment from companies affiliated with Israel during a meeting in October. In return, students cleared the encampments. Northwestern University in Illinois and the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, have also reached agreements with students, while Columbia has called off its main graduation ceremony.
An occupation at Goldsmiths in London also came to an end after the university agreed to the students’ demands, including the renaming of a lecture hall after the Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, humanitarian scholarships for Palestinian students and a review of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.
Support from lecturers and no arrests as Spanish students rally for Gaza. . . .https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/8/support-from-lecturers-and-no-arrests-as-spanish-students-rally-for-gaza
By Graham Keeley, 8 May 2024. . . . Madrid, Spain – Huge Palestinian flags are hanging on campuses across Spain as thousands of students protest against Israel’s war in Gaza. . . .
Anti-Gaza war protest marchers in New York City say ‘hands off Rafah’. . . . Israel War on Gaza, https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/5/8/student-protests-against-israels-war-on-gaza-spread-across-europe?traffic_source=Connatix
Student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza spread across Europe. . .
Ulises A. Mejias is professor of Communication Studies at SUNY Oswego, and recipient of the 2023 State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship. His new book, co-authored with Nick Couldry, is “Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back” (Chicago University Press).
[End Guardian, Al Jazeera
“We’re focused on what matters: fighting for Palestine!”
The People’s Forum <info@peoplesforum.org> 5-7-24
Right-wing smears won’t phase us!
Israel is currently initiating a full-scale invasion of Rafah, scuttling the internationally negotiated ceasefire agreement and defying the demands of all of humanity. Rafah is the most densely populated place on the planet, where for months one million Palestinian civilians have been systematically deprived of food, water and medicine. The whole world knows that if Biden wanted to actually stop this catastrophe — as he claims — all it would take is one phone call to Netanyahu to deliver his ultimatum.
This is the genocide that the student encampments have been ringing the alarm about for the last two weeks. All the elite institutions that choose to remain invested in the Israeli military are complicit in its killing machine. Everyone who is silent must speak up.
If you have been following the far-right media conglomerates, and the Murdochs in particular, the real problem is not this catastrophic invasion or the murder of 40,000 Palestinians, but the students who are fighting to stop these atrocities. And the real problem with the student movement, they claim, is … “outside agitators.”
It is absurd to reduce the students’ courage, on display in over 100 campuses nationwide, to outside instigation from either TPF or of any Palestinian solidarity organizations that are rallying to support them. The students are risking suspension, expulsion, arrest, loss of housing and so much more based on their own convictions and sense of outrage. They are seeing their own schools and tuition money supporting an ongoing genocide and doing everything they can to stop it.
The People’s Forum has been the subject of a slew of defamatory articles and video segments in the New York Post, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal. Reporters are secretly recording our volunteers’ meetings and our staff have been ambushed at their apartments. The escalating smears are part of a coordinated campaign that clearly involves the right-wing media, far-right members of Congress, and police officials. They want to deny the reality that the cause of Palestine is now the cause of a generation, and instead try to discredit the movement as “foreign-funded” or “outsiders.”
All these smears have already been answered before. Since the days of McCarthyism and COINTELPRO, the state has attacked movements in this way, to go after its institutions, funding, leaders and reputations. We call on everyone to be on guard against these tactics and stay united and focused on what matters now: to stop the genocide against the people of Palestine. Gaza is calling and the world must answer.
“Your May Debrief.” ACLU Foundation <fdngift@aclu.org> 5-11-24 James (Dick), Thanks to our nationwide network of attorneys and advocates, and generous supporters like you, the ACLU is well positioned to take on so many consequential fights leading up to Election Day, and beyond. We invite you to read more about them in this month’s Debrief.
Caitlin Johnstone. “Gaza’s Demise Should Be Radicalizing.” Consortium News (5-7-24).
Imperial spinmeisters have been churning out talking points about radicalization and nefarious support because it’s the narrative bludgeon they plan on using to stomp out the burgeoning antiwar movement.
CaitlinJohnstone.com.au Listen to Tim Foley reading this article.
What’s happening in Gaza should radicalize you.
Right now, even as its own criminality hits fever pitch, the Western political-media class is fretting with increasing shrillness about young people getting “radicalized” and turned against their government by the spread of information and ideas at campus demonstrations and on TikTok.
But young people should be radicalizing right now. Everyone should.
When you see Israel rejecting a Hamas ceasefire and beginning its long-threatened assault on Rafah (the last so-called “safe zone” in Gaza), that should radicalize you.
Just Foreign Policy. “Take action: Block a bill taking aim at pro-Palestine civil society.”
James R., 5-4-24
The ongoing threat of police violence against student protestors demanding an end to the violence in Gaza is a direct violation of young people’s right to peacefully protest—and hold their elected leaders to account for enabling a genocide.
This week at UCLA, police pelted students with rubber bullets. We can’t overstate how dystopian this is. Students are crying out for peace, and their calls are only being met with more violence.
This situation will only escalate if the Biden administration continues to diminish the outcry from this nation’s young people as states and colleges ramp up their attempts at silencing students.
Instead of listening to the concerns of young people who have put their safety and educational futures at risk to fight for what they and the vast majority of people of the world believe in — an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and justice for the Palestinian people —, Biden is calling for “order” and rejecting student protestors’ calls.
In nearly every major moment in our nation’s troubling history of supporting violence against people abroad, there have been students speaking out against war, holding anti-war demonstrations, and calling on our elected leaders to actively pursue peace.
And in each of these moments, those in power who opposed these young people were on the wrong side of history.
We can’t let pro-war voices drown out America’s students and use police violence to squash these peaceful protests. The Biden administration has an obligation to its students, and its citizens, to support the right to peacefully protest the genocide in Gaza.
In solidarity, Just Foreign Policy
Rachel Corrie
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR. “Rachel’s Children. The Scourging of Gaza: Diary of a Genocidal War.” Counterpunch (5-4-24).
Had she not been murdered in Rafah protecting Palestinian homes from demolition, Rachel Corrie could have become the mother of today’s protesters on US campuses. They’re certainly the inheritors of her fierce moral spirit and unflinching courage…
President Biden
Paul Street. “Genocide Joe.” Counterpunch (5-7-24).
The blood-soaked imperialist decries student protesters.
Michael Schwable. “How Holocausts Happen.” Counterpunch (5-7-24). University Leaders are Teaching Us How Holocausts Happen.
We are now seeing how holocausts happen. We are seeing how people who dare to speak out against massive state violence—in this case, college students protesting Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza—are being beaten and arrested at the behest of university leaders, who in turn are acting as agents of the Israel-allied US government.
After 35,000 Palestinians, mostly children and other civilians, have been killed, after all of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed and its hospitals bombed, and now as over a million Gazans face death by forced starvation, university administrators are having students arrested for setting up tents and asking for dialogue about how their schools might be complicit in an unfolding genocide.
This is how the paralysis that allows holocausts to happen is induced. By forcibly evicting and arresting protesters on university campuses, a clear message is sent to sympathetic others: keep quiet, accept things as they are, don’t step out of line—or you too will suffer. There’s no need to arrest everyone; just make enough arrests to set an example.
Most people, reasonably fearing arrest and its potential consequences, are then less likely to protest, less likely even to speak out. They look away from the violence, foreign and domestic, carried out by their government. They avoid asking how universities, supposedly society’s institutional stewards of humane values, might be complicit in the violence. Later, after many innocents have been murdered, they will claim ignorance about what was going on. . . .MORE click on title
BDS
Sonali Kolhatkar. “Student Demands for Divestment.” Counterpunch (5-7-24).
These calls for divestment are not new. [See ISRAELI BDS DAY (BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS) AND PALESTINIAN LAND DAY, MARCH 30, 2024.]
The President of Columbia University
Robin D.G. Kelley. “Letter to Columbia President Minouche Shafik. “
Dear H-PAD members,
We believe this is well worth-reading. If any of you have a Columbia connection (alumni, parent, former faculty), please send your own!
Her address is: President Minouche Shafik
Low Memorial Library, Room 202
535 West 116th Street
New York NY 10027
“Letter to Columbia President Minouche Shafik” BY Robin D. G. Kelley
Best wishes,
Margaret Power and Van Gosse, H-PAD Co-Chairs
Campus crackdowns, mass surveillance, academic McCarthyism, national security surveillance hawks
Defending Rights & Dissent <updates@rightsanddissent.org> 5-6-24
Dick,
Here’s our May 2024 newsletter. Here’s what we’ve been up to, and as always, we appreciate your support. You can view this email as a webpage here.
DRAD responds to campus crackdowns
Cops are losing their minds on college campuses. And they’re doing it at the behest of campus administrators and with the tacit blessing of the president of the United States. It’s a dark day for dissent in America.
As police storm college campuses with MRAPs, barrage students with rubber bullets, and teargas nonviolent encampments, we’ve been speaking out and pushing back. We’re also investigating the collusion between campus administrators, local police, and the FBI. We’ve filed several requests under the Freedom of Information Act and look forward to exposing the truth behind the crackdowns.
Last week, we issued a statement calling out systematic failures to defend the freedom of political expression. We wrote in part:
As a free speech organization, we must be clear. There is only one cause for the violence taking place. It is law enforcement and the officials who have chosen to resort to state violence when faced with peaceful protests. There is no justification for police violence against peaceful protests. And there is no excuse for the college administrators who willfully chose to call the police on their own students in order to suppress their expressive conduct.
You can count on us to keep you updated as the situation on campuses continues to develop. Follow along on Twitter/X for the latest updates.
Rebuking the new McCarthyism in Congress
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has launched an investigation into pro-Palestine academics, institutions, and funders. As an organization targeted by the Red Scare, we know all too well the culture of fear instilled by threats of investigation and official attempts to purge those holding disfavored views from public life.
We’re working behind the scenes to convince members of Congress to pull the brakes on these McCarthyite investigations, and rallying civil society to stand with us in condemnation of political targeting.
We fight to the bitter end on surveillance reform
The national security surveillance hawks pulled a lot of dirty tricks on us this year. They raised a panicked alarm about the need for expanded surveillance to address Russian space nukes. They sabotaged votes on reforms to bring surveillance into compliance with the Constitution, and drew on long rosters of spooks to meet with undecided members of Congress. Behind closed doors, they even showed slides of Palestine protesters as potential targets of surveillance.
We gave everything we had into fighting to impose constitutional guardrails on the behemoth Section 702 surveillance program. We lost. Not only did Congress shoot down our reforms, but they voted to extend the reach of the NSA’s all-seeing eyes into public WiFi at our laundromats and libraries, among other public places. It was a bitter defeat.
But there are silver linings. Where the spooks fought to hold onto their unbridled spy powers until 2030, we made sure they expire in 2026. In two years, we’ll be right back at it, ready to cut down the surveillance state so constitutional liberties can be upheld.
On our radar:
· Out of all the surveillance drama, we got the surprise win! The House passed the Fourth Amendment is Not For Sale Act, a bill that closes the data broker loophole that currently allows agencies to buy data they’d otherwise need a warrant to collect. Now, the pressure’s on in the Senate!
· Julian Assange’s next hearing will be May 20. At the hearing, the UK High Court will consider whether the assurances provided by the United States government will satisfy the British court’s concerns about extradition. Whatever the decision is, we’ll bring you news of what happened and what the outcome means for Julian Assange’s future.
· Keep your eyes peeled for our forthcoming report analyzing over 120 lawsuit settlements paid out to protesters and journalists injured by police violence during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. The report, slated for release on the fourth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by police, exposes the grievous harm protesters suffered, and puts cities on notice that they might have to pay out big for current and future police misconduct at protests. The report will be released on May 25.
Stay loud, stay strong, Sue, Chip, Cody, and Michael
fulfill the promise of the
Defending Rights & Dissent
1325 G St. NW Suite 500
Washington, DC 20005
US MEDIA FAILURE TO REPORT ISRAELI ATROC ITIES
Patrick Lawrence. “Of Journalists, Students & Power.” Consortium News (5-6-24).
Student protesters with their clarity of words and actions are riveted to reality, while the media class flinches from it. Read here… By Patrick Lawrence, ScheerPost.
The American media are never short of red-letter days when it comes to their wonderful combination of superciliousness and irresponsibility. But last week the mainstream dailies and magazines went all the way to scarlet and alizarin crimson. The brighter the better, I say, when the derelictions of our media are on display such that readers can no longer miss the deceptions and distractions that are at this point their intent.
I was reading along over breakfast last Thursday in search of the overnight news on the Israeli–U.S. genocide in Gaza when I came upon the headline in The New York Times, “Laundry Detergent Sheets Are Poor Cleaners.” Wow. This is a story The Times had been following since its April 5 opener, “The 5 Best Laundry Detergents of 2024,” but my friends on Eighth Avenue left me hanging. At last, I could go forth into the day confident I was a well-informed American, altogether engagé.
Last Thursday — wasn’t that the day the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) reported that Israel’s military operations “continue from air, land and sea” and that “in northern Gaza only five hospitals remain operational, and in the south only six”? Yes, I read this on a U.N. website, but the Times didn’t have room for it.
Then I was even better informed last Sunday, when The New Yorker published a long, delightfully inane conversation between David Remnick, who has very excellently overseen the ruination of what was once a good magazine, and Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian who always has a lot of important things to say. The occasion was … I shall let Remnick explain: “And now, for the first time, he has directed a movie. It is about a Russian Orthodox monk in the sixteenth century who starves himself to death rather than give in to the depredations of tsarist society. No, it isn’t. It’s about the race in the early sixties between Kellogg and Post to invent the Pop-Tart. Yes, really. It is called Unfrosted and will air on Netflix on May 3. It is extremely silly, in a good way.”
Extremely silly in a good way. I think I understand.
Elsewhere in the news, as they say in the broadcast trade, the Israel Occupation Forces continued bombing Rafah as the Remnick item came out — Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where the IOF had ordered Gazans to flee for their safety as they, the Israelis, bombed and bulldozed northern Gaza to the point of uninhabitability.
But let us not allow brutalities of Medieval-style gore, savagery for which we pay, to disturb our psyches. With what shall our media fill our minds? The dropping of American ordnance on Palestinian children or the history of Pop–Tarts, humorously told? MORE click on Read here above
“OUTSIDE AGITATORS”
Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt. “We Need Outside Agitators.” Jacobin Roundup. (5-6-24).
Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix on the smear campaign aimed at pro-Palestine student protesters and community activists.
These days, outside agitators are everywhere. According to politicians, police commissioners, university administrators, and mainstream journalists, they lurk on every campus where there has been resistance to the unfolding genocide in Gaza, especially at the solidarity encampments.
Emory University president Gregory Fenves complained that “highly organized, outside protesters” were behind the school’s pro-peace demonstrations. The University of Texas at Austin followed suit, releasing a statement expressing “concern that much of the disruption on campus over the past week has been orchestrated by people from outside the University, including groups with ties to escalating protests at other universities around the country.” In a story that ran under the headline “Professional protestors of Texas unmasked,” the Daily Mail salaciously reported that the infiltrators included an elementary school teacher, a Palestinian shopkeeper, an interpreter, and a costume designer.
No one has sounded the alarm louder than New York City’s compulsive liar mayor, Eric Adams, who has complained that “outside agitators” are out to “radicalize our children” — the implication being that young people would be quiescent in the face of mass starvation and bombardment if not for some nefarious external influence. . . . https://jacobin.com/2024/05/outside-agitators-columbia-palestine-civil-rights
Following 8 articles from Popular Resistance.org (5-4-24).
“The Students Will Not Tolerate Hypocrisy” By Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/students-for-palestine/
From universities to grassroots movements worldwide, young people are fighting back against the complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestians, setting up encampments and facing repression with resilience. This resistance is rooted in a long tradition to impose clarity upon a world encrusted by compromise, from the movement against apartheid in South Africa to China’s May Fourth Movement.
It was inevitable that the Global North governments’ full-throated support for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians would result in furious retribution from their citizenry. That this retribution began in the United States is also not a surprise, given the ongoing cycle of protests that, since October 2023, have contested the US government’s blank cheque to the Israeli government. The US bankrolling of Israel’s extermination campaign against Palestinians includes over one hundred weapons shipments to Israel since 7 October and billions of dollars of aid. -more-
“George Washington University Students Create Gaza Campus Solidarity Encampment” By John Zangas, DC Media Group. Washington, DC—George Washington University students along with students from other universities, supporters from the local community, and some local allied groups, have joined the rising wave of university campus protests currently sweeping the nation. Unlike many other university encampment protests, police and campus security have failed to persuade students to leave and not successfully ejected them from the University Yard, which students have renamed “Liberated Zone.” Students are protesting the continued War and destruction of Gaza by Israel, and laid out five demands to University… -more-
“Repression Of Campus Palestine Solidarity Reveals Nature Of The State” By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. “As the ICJ is saying, there’s a possibility of a genocide happening. And we’re seeing our government continually sending more and more weapons, 2,000 pound bombs that are being dropped on whole neighborhoods. Schools being destroyed, hospitals being destroyed, and all our government can say is, ‘Well we’re going to ask the Israelis what happened in this situation,’ in situation, after situation, after situation. And there is no accountability for what we’re seeing with our own eyes. We’re giving him that Morehouse degree, that honorary doctorate saying you’re one of us. -more-
“Masked Israel Supporters Attack UCLA’s Palestine Solidarity Encampment” By Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot. Los Angeles, CA — Over more than five hours on Tuesday night, pro-Israel Zionist agitators violently beat, pepper sprayed and threw fireworks at hundreds of college students and protesters in a “unilateral, surprise attack“ as they held UCLA’s Palestine solidarity encampment while security and police stood by idly. Though police didn’t intervene until the fifth hour of the attack, the encampment stayed intact with the students repelling the continuous onslaught as they defiantly chanted “we’re not leaving” and “Free Palestine.” -more-
“City University Of New York Workers Announce Wildcat Sickout” By Left Voice. In the evening of Tuesday, April 30, hundreds of New York Police Department (NYPD) officers from precincts all over New York City assembled in Harlem to raid both Columbia University and the City College of New York. The university presidents had invited the police force onto campus to forcibly remove the Gaza Solidarity Encampments at each school and the students at Columbia occupying “Hind’s Hall,” normally known as Hamilton Hall but renamed by student activists after a 6-year-old girl in Gaza who was killed by Israel tanks while surrounded by her dead family members in their car. -more-
“Meanwhile In Australia, Campus Protests Undisturbed”
By CN Live!, Consortium News. “Last week students in Australia established encampments at their universities in solidarity with Palestinians. These join the dozens of solidarity camps established across the US and elsewhere in recent weeks. Like their peers, Australian students are calling on their institutions to end relationships with weapons companies that are enabling Israeli war crimes, and urging our government to sanction Israel and cut military ties. The Jewish Council of Australia strongly rejects the claims that these protests are a threat to Jewish students and staff. -more-
“Pro-Palestine Protest Camps Spread Worldwide”
By News Desk, The Cradle. Students at several universities in Australia have launched rallies to protest Israel’s campaign of genocide in Gaza, as the spread of the massive pro-Palestine protests sweeps across western nations. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up an encampment at the University of Sydney. Other encampments opposing the mass murder of Palestinians have since popped up on campuses in Melbourne, Canberra, and other cities in Australia. On Friday, students marched on the Sydney University campus to protest the Israeli offensive and demand that their institution divest from companies linked to Israel. -more-
AFSC Weekend Reading (5-4-24).
8 ways to support student protesters: Across the country, thousands of students are demanding their universities divest from companies profiting from Israel’s attacks on Gaza. But instead of respecting students’ right to peacefully assemble, many universities have responded with brutal force and called in police. AFSC joins in solidarity with students and their powerful nonviolent protest. Here are some ways you can show your support.
Following 3 from Consortium News (May 4, 2024),
“Enforcing Silence on Genocide.” May 4, 2024.
The U.S. public should by now be realizing that instead of stopping genocide, U.S. institutional and media authority is actively stamping out cries to stop the mass murder being committed with U.S. complicity, writes Elizabeth Vos. Read here…
Developments on university campuses and in Congress this week showed that the U.S. government’s top priority is not protecting students or civilian lives in Gaza, but to protect Israel’s ability to continue its unimpeded slaughter.
Anti-genocide student protestors at Columbia University, demanding Columbia divest from Israel, occupied the campus’s Hamilton Hall on Tuesday and renamed it Hind’s Hall after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza earlier this year. The Columbia protest has inspired more than 40 other anti-genocide university encampments across the country and in other nations.
On the morning the students occupied Hamilton Hall, MSNBC’s Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski compared the student protests to Jan. 6, calling for authorities to “just start arresting people.” Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti Defamation League, echoed the comparison in the same MSNBC segment. Other supporters of Israel also made the same Jan. 6 anaolgy on social media early Tuesday morning.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon wrote on X that the Columbia protest “feels January 6th ish to me” because the protesters had occupied a building. Not a federal government building, but a university hall. Has Lemon not heard of a sit-in?
Missing was the most apt and obvious comparison: the occupation of the same Columbia hall took place 56 years to the day since it was the site of a police crackdown on an historic student occupation against the Vietnam War.
Columbia University itself commemorates the anti-Vietnam War occupation of the same building by student protesters in 1968 on their own website. Nonetheless, the NYPD descended on the Hall on Tuesday night at the direct request of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik.
[See: The Israeli Connection to the Raid on Columbia University] MORE click on Read here above.
“Omar Says Student Terror Watch Call ‘Insanely Dangerous’” By Julia Conley Common Dreams. May 4, 2024
Rep. Ilhan Omar says Sen. Marsha Blackburn has put “a target” on campus protesters across the U.S. with her latest attack on them. Read here…
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is urging her colleagues to condemn threats to use the federal government to suppress university students and faculty over their involvement in anti-genocide protests. . . .
“The Israeli Connection to the Raid on Columbia University” By Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal. The Grayzone. May 3, 2024.
The violent crackdown carried out on Columbia University students protesting Israel’s genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip was led by a member of the school’s own faculty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has declared.
The NYPD’s Counterterrorism Bureau’s Tel Aviv office coordinates with Israeli security. A Columbia lecturer, heading the NYPD bureau, probed the students, whom the bureau arrested, and is the bridge between Israel and New York, The GrayZone reports. Read here…
CATHERINE KIM . “Student journalists speak about campus protests.” Politico Magazine, 05/03/2024. Catherine Kim is an assistant editor at POLITICO Magazine. Forwarded by Sonny San Juan Sat, May 4, 2024.
“What’s Really Happening on College Campuses, According to Student Journalists.”
POLITICO Magazine asked leaders of campus news organizations to set the record straight about campus unrest, antisemitism and what the media is getting wrong.
Over 50 schools. Nearly 2,000 arrests. One canceled graduation ceremony — so far. We’re in the midst of the most widespread campus unrest since the 1960s, sparked by the war between Israel and Hamas. Over the last two weeks, campus protests have escalated, with pro-Palestinian tent encampments set up in public spaces, triggering counterprotests and, on more than 30 campuses, clashes with police.
With so many incidents taking place in so many places, it’s hard for anyone to grasp what’s really happening at America’s universities right now. So POLITICO Magazine reached out this week to top student journalists, who have been reporting on the turmoil at the ground level for weeks and months. As neutral observers able to interact with all sides, they can provide unique insights, even as they watch friends get arrested or worry if their graduation ceremonies will even take place. . . .MORE click on title above
College Presidents Silent
“Prof. Yates writes to College Presidents silent on genocide/suppressing dissent.” Forwarded by Sonny San Juan. May 4, 2024.
MAY 3, 2024, Counterpunch.
“Letters of Protest: Colleges Suppress Dissent While Closing Their Eyes to Genocide”
BY MICHAEL D. YATES. [U of Pittsburgh, Hobart and William Smith College, Illinois State U, Princeton U]
As Israel began its genocide in Gaza, those who manage U.S. colleges and universities also commenced to issue statements of outrage at what Hamas had done. And as campus protests erupted in condemnation of the slaughter of Gazans, and especially children, and the destruction of homes and every major institution, including hospitals, these same institutions of higher learning began to disrupt these protests and bring them to an end. As a former college teacher, one who witnessed the attacks on those who protested against the War in Vietnam and who studied the repression on campuses during the McCarthy period, I became so appalled at what was being done to our brave and courageous college students that I began to write letters to the leaders of what are, in reality, academic enterprises.
University of Pittsburgh
Immediately after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian groups, on October 10, the chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh, Joan Gabel, sent a message to the Pitt “community” decrying Hamas’s violence and offering University services to students traumatized by this. She wrote:
“Another wave of darkness has emerged in the violence taking place in Israel and Gaza. These heinous acts are antithetical to our values. We are compassionate. We are givers and doers. As such, we recognize the deep impact of these events across our community. Many of us are struggling with what we have seen, including members of our university family who face the unimaginable burden of grief for fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, friends, and loved ones. For those hurting — for those grieving — we have resources available including Pitt Global, the University Counseling Center for students, and LifeSolutions for faculty and staff. We encourage all students, faculty and staff to use them. As more resources become available, we will share them.
Given her wording, she was almost certainly addressing mainly Jewish members of the “community.” In response, I sent the following email to her the same day:
Yes, the killings were terrible. But will you send another note about grieving as the Israelis bomb hospitals and kill many innocent people?”
Michael D. Yates, Pitt PhD and Pitt professor emeritus
I sent a follow-up note on December 11, when it was clear what Israel was doing:
Still waiting but not holding my breath for you to tell us (your colleagues, Pitt family, take your pick) that you are horrified, or at least a bit disturbed, by the wanton slaughter of children in Palestine, and that Pitt will help anyone traumatized by this. I suspect that you will be like every other University CEO (which is what you are) and say nothing or agree that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. International law will not be something you will refer to unless the culprit is an enemy of the US in the eyes of the US government.
Yours in peace,
Michael Yates, Professor Emeritus and Pitt PhD
ps Monthly Review Press, of which I am Director, published a book titled A Land With a People. The introduction, written by 80-year-old Rosalind Petchesky (a Jewish anti-Zionist), is worth reading. If your flack catchers, by some rare chance, let you see this, read it, and I am certain you will learn a great deal.
Again, no response was forthcoming. To date, there is a Palestinian solidarity encampment at the University, but the university has not attempted to have it dismantled. . . .
It would be foolish to imagine that my letters will have any effect on what the officers of these colleges and universities will do. Yet, it is necessary for each of us to do what we can to raise our voices against any and all complicity in genocide. No matter how small. If many speak out, the students will gain more confidence and courage. It is what they are doing that is important and has a chance of bringing about real change.
Michael D. Yates is the Director of Monthly Review Press in New York City. He has taught workers throughout the United States. His most recent book is Work Work Work: Labor, Alienation and Class Struggle (Monthly Review Press, 2022). He can be reached at mdjyates@gmail.com
Students’ Gaza protests spread across Britain
Editor. mronline.org (May 5, 2024). Wave of campus occupations launched at six universities.
“Weaponizing anti-semitism.” Forwarded by Sonny San Juan
From: Sadanand, Nanjundiah (Physics and Engineering Physics) <sadanand@ccsu.edu> Date: Sun, May 5, 2024 at 12:41 PM
Subject: Weaponizing anti-semitism
Antisemitism: The Big Lie Smearing Campus Protesters
Students are being slandered by politicians, the media, and campus administrators.
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a former executive with experience in health care, benefits, and risk management, finance, and information technology. He is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future and hosts The Breakdown, which is broadcast on We Act Radio in Washington DC.
RICHARD (RJ) ESKOW
MAY 01, 2024, https://www.zerohourreport.com/p/antisemitism-the-big-lie-that-smears
Mainstream journalists and politicians have engaged in a campaign of mass slander against US college students protesting the Gaza genocide. Their “antisemitism’ Big Lie echoes the racist hate campaigns of the past, inciting hostility toward young people whose only crime is their dedication to justice.
A newly published survey provides some important context for these protests and undermines the smear campaign against the protesters.
Students Are Not Antisemitic
The Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), a project of the University of Chicago, recently published “Understanding Campus Fears After October 7 and How to Reduce Them,” subtitled “a non-partisan analysis of Antisemitism and Islamophobia among College Students and American Adults.” Robert A. Pape, political scientist and CPOST’s director, writes that its findings “are an opportunity to re-center the national discussion around students and away from politics.” Let’s hope so.
Understandably, Pape and his colleagues focus on the steps that should be taken to make all students feel safe on campus, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or politics. In doing so, their report includes important findings that deserve wider attention.
Is there a “climate of antisemitism” on campus? CPOST’s study found that college students are less Islamophobic than the general population, but they are not more antisemitic. The level of student bias against Jews is the same as their bias against Muslims, but no greater.
Why, then, is there a national debate about campus antisemitism and none about the comparable scourge of Islamophobia? What message does that send to the Muslim students whose fears are being ignored?
The Protests Aren’t Antisemitic, Either
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wants a vote on the “Countering Antisemitism Act,” but neither he nor the president have proposed similar safeguards against Islamophobia. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said that Columbia protesters have begun “to threaten lives and intimidate and harass people,” has an even more draconian antisemitism bill – also without plans to address Islamophobia.
President Biden, like the others, has condemned what he calls “antisemitic protests.” That slur is challenged by the Chicago study. The authors found that “while college students are not more antisemitic than the general population,” they are “more antizionist.” They also found that “prejudicial antisemitism and antizionism are largely separate phenomena,” with an “overwhelming” absence of any overlap between antisemitism and a negative view of Israel.
We’ve know for decades that the lie which equates antizionism with antisemitism serves a political goal by suppressing speech. We now have evidence to back it up.
“From the River to the Sea”
One protest slogan has been cited over and over as “antisemitic,” with accusers claiming it calls for genocide against Jews: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Most students do not use it in anything approaching a genocidal way. The CPOST study found that only 14 percent of Muslim students, or roughly one in seven, interpret that slogan “to mean the expulsion or genocide of Israeli Jews.” That figure is too high, as is the 13 percent of students who believe that violence against Muslims is sometimes justified. But it also tells us that most people who use the slogan are not calling for harm against anyone.
That makes sense, since the phrase can be interpreted nonviolently in at least two ways. One is that a two-state solution should include the territory ceded to Palestine in 1948, which touched both the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Another is that Israel and Palestine should become a single, democratic, non-racial and non-theocratic state, with rights and safety for all. Under that interpretation, “Palestine will be free” is no more a call to genocide than “South Africa will be free” was a call to kill whites during the anti-apartheid struggle.
The study does note that the slogan makes two-thirds of Jewish students feel unsafe. For that reason, Pape recommends avoiding it.
But we now have confirmation that campus officials, politicians, and the media are misleading the public about that phrase. They’re endangering the protesting students and worsening the fears of pro-Israeli students. They should stop.
Conclusion
The political scientist Bernard Cohen once wrote that, while the press isn’t always successful and telling people what to think, “it is stunningly successful in telling people what to think about.” The student protests are a textbook example. The debate around these protests is focused on the false charge of antisemitism, not on the moral challenge raised by the protesters.
Does antisemitism exist among them? Since it is pervasive in this society, the answer is yes. But amplifying a comment or two from a couple of isolated individuals is a totalitarian smear tactic. Republicans did it with the racist Willie Horton ads in 1988. Trump does it when he highlights crimes allegedly committed by immigrants. And politicians, journalists, and college administrators are doing it today with their charges of protester antisemitism.
CPOST’s moderate recommendations for easing campus fears include, “Clear and immediate communication by college leaders condemning violence and intimidation by students and against students on their campuses.” Instead, those leaders are ordering police violence against protesting students, as they and the political/media elite stoke more fear and hatred against them – even in the wake of the anti-protestor mob violence at UCLA. That isn’t just wrong; it’s a dereliction of duty.
As leaders, these prominent individuals have been entrusted with the care and protection of the nation’s young people. Instead, they’re slandering them and putting them at risk. Why? To distract us from a genocide.
The people who make, report, and teach history should take note: it has never been kind to those who spread Big Lies. It won’t be this time, either.
_____________
Ali: Mocking Gaza protesters as ‘gluten-free warriors’ was fun — until a mob at UCLA attacked them
Lorraine Ali, Fri, May 3, 2024 , LA Times
Bill Maher on his HBO talk show this week said that pro-Palestinian student protests on college campuses are what happens when “activism merges with narcissism.”
The Atlantic columnist David Frum referred to protesters like the UCLA students who were violently attacked Wednesday by a mob of counterprotesters as “banana-allergy revolutionaries.”
During Tuesday night’s tactical police response to Columbia University students’ taking over a building on campus, author Judith Miller tweeted: “Hey Columbia protesters! If you’re so proud of what you’re doing, why are you covering your faces?”
Mocking student protesters has become a fun and easy pastime since they began marching and camping out in opposition to Israel’s ongoing military incursions in Gaza following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in Israel. All critics and jeering old folks need is a platform (cable TV, Instagram, a tattered soap box) to discredit the movement as the performative act of feckless snowflakes and spoiled children.
The protective gear of the “gluten-free warriors” is a form of dress-up. Their safety measures — encampment barricades and self-manned medical tents — are seen as ploys for attention. They’re called cowards for covering their faces with masks and goggles.
But these actions weren’t just for show. UCLA’s pro-Palestinian demonstrators did need to shield and defend themselves when a violent mob of pro-Israeli counterprotesters attacked their encampment.
Video shot by The Times, other media outlets and witnesses at the scene show counterdemonstrators in black attire and white masks ripping down barricades, beating people with batons and poles and screaming racial epithets. Campers were dragged, kicked and pummeled by the predominantly male mob Tuesday night and Wednesday morning while police and campus security stood by for three hours before responding.
Law enforcement eventually cleared the counterprotesters, who reportedly included non-student organizations. No arrests were made.
But 24 hours later, more than 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested when UCLA called in a massive police presence to clear the student encampment.
“What we’ve just witnessed was the darkest day in my 32 years at UCLA,” David Myers, a professor of Jewish history at UCLA who is working on initiatives to bridge differences on campus, told The Times. “Why didn’t the police, UCPD and LAPD, show up? Those in the encampment were defenseless in the face of a violent band of thugs. And no one, wherever they stand politically, is safer today.”
The optics, at best, discourage free speech on campus and encourage violent reprisal from those who disagree with the message. Recent weeks have seen police summoned by universities such as USC, UCLA and Columbia to quash largely peaceful student rallies and clear encampments, while racial slurs, verbal threats and violent attacks perpetrated against antiwar protesters have not been treated with the same seriousness or urgency.
Fox News naturally took the “Good vs. Evil” theme a step further when describing the protest movement as a Trojan horse for nefarious, anti-American operations.
“A lot of them seem to be the same type of protester we saw during the George Floyd protest,” anchor Trace Gallagher said in response to the tactical response of the NYPD at Columbia this week. “They have changed the chants. It’s a new location and a lot of the same crowd that moves into these things.”
His guest went on to say that the protesters are “targeting the American system and using the Palestinian cause to piggyback their nonsensical, glazed-over beliefs in order to start mass anarchy.”
Delegitimization is a classic tactic in the debate over who has the higher moral ground. But it shouldn’t matter: All peaceful protesters — on and off campus — need to be protected, regardless of where their participants stand on the war.
Watching footage of the violence at UCLA this week is chilling, and there’s sure to be more dangerous clashes if the safety of protesting students is mocked as unnecessary, or colleges continue to treat them as the threat. Their right to safely exercise free speech has to be protected.
Cynical agitators like Maher will always leverage incendiary moments for ratings and clicks. But tucking one’s opposition to the protest movement into a flippant screed against Gen Z isn’t just obnoxious, it’s dangerous. It feeds a harmful narrative that their need for protection is make-believe, that they’re a whining, pampered generation we should ignore, or worse, allow others to target while we watch from the sidelines.
This originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Preview YouTube video Palestine Talks, Dr Harriet Fraad.
The following is not directly about the students protests, but Beyt Tikkun provides a thoughtful context for peacemaking. –D
“Listening & Grieving Circle” from Beyt Tikkun <rabbi@beyttikkun.org> May 10, 2024.
Dear Dick,
On Sunday May 19th, 4:30-6:00pm PST (5:30 MT, 6:30 CT, 7:30 ET) Beyt Tikkun/NSP will host our own intimate listening and grieving circle to honor the 10-day period that will have just passed between Yom HaShoah (May 5th), Israeli Memorial Day (May 12th), Israeli Independence Day (May 14th) and the commemoration of the Nakba Day (May 15th).
In this forum we will hold space to feel into and share emotions that have been coming up within us throughout this extraordinarily painful and challenging period. Our hope is that by listening and grieving together we can become more connected and whole and feel our way into the possibility of another world. We will send another email next week with instructions for how to register for our event. In the meantime, please save the date and keep an eye out for that email!
We are hosting our event in partnership with American Friends of Combatants for Peace. Prior to our event, American Friends of Combatants for Peace is hosting two events to commemorate both Israeli Memorial Day and the Palestinian Nakba––one on May 12th (Memorial Day) and one on May 15th (Nakba Day). You can learn more and register here.
In solidarity and with love,
Beyt Tikkun/Network of Spiritual Progressives Community
“Unfurling love from the window.” Editor. mronline.org (5-11-24). Originally published: The Progressive Magazine on May 7, 2024 by Kathy Kelly (more by The Progressive Magazine) (Posted May 10, 2024).
Education, Movements, Protest, WarAmericas, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, PalestineNewswire“Hind’s Hall”, Hind Rajab, Solidarity, Student Encampment, World Central Kitchen
On April 30, when Columbia University student protesters took over Hamilton Hall, they renamed it “Hind’s Hall,” dropping a large banner out the windows above the building’s entrance. This was a hall famously occupied by students in the 1968 protests against the Vietnam War and against Jim Crow racism in the United States. The students are risking suspension and expulsion, and a very real blacklist has already been generated against them, with Congress joining in to define criticism of genocide as a form of antisemitism that state universities and state-linked employers will not be allowed to tolerate.
I believe their love for Hind Rajab guides the movement so desperately needed to resist militarism. Hind was six years old when Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons to kill her.
If our civilization survives a looming ecological collapse that is helping to drive catastrophic nuclear brinkmanship, I hope future generations of students will study the “Hind’s Hall” occupation in the way that students of the civil rights movement have studied the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the story of Emmett Till. Hind’s story is tragically emblematic. Her cruel murder has befallen many thousands of children throughout the decades of Israel’s fight to maintain apartheid. Just in our young century, from September 2000 to September 2023, Israel’s B’tselem organization reports that 2,309 Palestinian minors were killed by Israelis and some 145 Israeli minors were killed by Palestinians, with these numbers excluding Palestinian children dead from deliberate immiseration via blockade or traumatized as hostages in prisons. We hear reports that thirty-eight Israeli children and some 14,000 Palestinian children have been murdered since October 7, deaths which can all be laid on the doorstep of the ethnostate project so lethally determined to keep one ethnicity in undemocratic governance. . . .
José Luis Granados Ceja. “Venezuela’s Maduro criticizes U.S. hypocrisy after crackdown on students.” Editor. mronline.org (5-7-24).
Originally published: Venezuelananlysis on May 7, 2024 by (more by Venezuelananlysis) | (Posted May 10, 2024)
Empire, Imperialism, State Repression, WarAmericas, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United States, VenezuelaNewswireCommunard Union, International Court of Juistice (ICJ), Invasion, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Joe Biden, Rafah, Ricardo Vaz in Caracas, Student Encampment, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro expressed his solidarity with students in the United States protesting against Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza while questioning the silence of human rights organizations amid a crackdown against freedom of expression in the U.S.
“What would they say if in Venezuela the police suddenly entered and raided the country’s universities and dragged away professors, students, workers as is happening in the United States, where seventy universities have been raided?” asked Maduro during his weekly broadcast on Monday night.
The Venezuelan president likewise criticized Israel’s decision to censor Al Jazeera and expressed his support for the workers of the Qatar-backed international news outlet. . . .
Rescue teams discover third mass grave in Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Editor. mronline.org (5-10-24).
Seven hospital mass graves have been discovered so far across three Gazan hospitals.
Originally published: Al Mayadeen on May 9, 2024 by News Website (more by Al Mayadeen) | (Posted May 10, 2024).
Human Rights, Inequality, State Repression, WarAmericas, Gaza, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, United StatesNewswireAl-Shifa Medical Complex, genocide, Kamal Adwan Hospital, Mass Grave, Nasser Medical Complex
A third mass grave was uncovered on May 8 in the vicinity of what used to be Al-Shifa Medical Complex, bringing the total number of discovered mass graves to seven.–
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