The recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests that spanned in over 150 college and university campuses in the United States may have been suppressed on the surface level, but they have certainly not been silenced. Students, supported by many professors and faculty members alike, issued calls for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to US military assistance for Israel, university divestment from arms suppliers and other companies profiting from the war, and an amnesty for students and faculty members who have been disciplined or fired for protesting.

While the bulk of the demonstrations have officially been motivated by horror over the treatment of people in Gaza, not by bigotry, there were reported instances of antisemitic language or advocacy for attacking Jews by some protesters, or ‘outside agitators’, which are beyond reprehensible.

Sympathy for the Palestinian Cause

One can logically understand the fury against the Israeli government as tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced, half of them women and children, as a result of the ongoing war waged by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), to say nothing of the ongoing risk civilians face in dying from starvation.

It is ironic, however, that the protesters, while having legitimate positions, have remained altogether silent on the atrocities committed by Hamas, to say nothing of their main sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In truth, ever since an estimated 750,000 Palestinians lost their homes amidst the creation of the State of Israel 1948, there have been American Jews deeply unsettled by Israeli policies toward both the Palestinian refugees and Arabs living under Israeli rule. These critics of old have become part of the American Jewish establishment, such as leaders and staff members of the American Jewish Committee.

There were, to the surprise of many, numerous Jews who joined the pro-Palestinian demonstrations, such as University of California at Los Angeles student Benjamin Kersten who, like others, wants the US government and university institutions divest its ‘complicit’   funding that have turned ‘Gaza into a graveyard’. Yet other prominent Jewish organizations, such as IfNotNow:

‘As Jewish people whose ancestors went through the Holocaust, when we hear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant use words like ‘the children of darkness’ and ‘human animals’ to describe Palestinians, we feel the resonances of that in our bones’, said IfNotNow political director Eva Borgwardt, referring to recent comments made by the Israeli officials.

‘We know exactly where that language leads’, added Gallant, ‘and we are here to stop what they clearly intend to be a genocide. We will come to the doors of our lawmakers, we will be at the doors of our lawmakers for as long as it takes.’

Instigating Hatred

The political tactics of the campus demonstrations, while catching the country off guard, were the result of months of training, planning. and encouragement by longtime activists and left-wing groups.

Of the organizers, according to the Wall Street Journal, was the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP). It has been around some two decades and has more than 300 chapters across the US, which for months called on students to stand strong against colleges until they divest themselves of investments in entities doing business with Israel.

There was also there ‘Resistance 101’ training at Columbia University with guest speakers that included longtime activists with Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based group that celebrated the terrorist attacks by Hamas of 7 October. The administration twice barred the event, citing some of the organizers’ known support of terrorism and promotion of violence. Columbia students hosted the event virtually nonetheless, which prompted Columbia President Minouche Shafik to suspend several of them. 

This apparent jihadist mindset paved the way for anti-Israel protests to spread unto the streets in hostile manner, as in New York when demonstrators chanted support for terrorist organizations, waving Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s flag while burning the American flag. They also called for the jihadists of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades to attack again, as well as,  threatened Jewish students with chants: ‘Never forget the 7th of October’, and ‘That will happen . . . 10,000 more times’!

They did not stop there. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, three men interrupted the Saturday Easter vigil unfurling a banner and shouting: ‘Free Palestine’—whatever that is supposed to mean!

This, as a matter of fact, was forewarned by the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Pahlavi, during a 1976 interview with 60 Minutes anchor Mike Wallace:

‘The Palestinians, obviously have the sympathy of many, many people…exactly like the sympathy that the Jews had when they were searching for a home. But, our good Palestinian friends must know that there is only a limit to where they can go and [bully the world] by terrorism and blackmailing and this and that.’

Victory Is Claimed

Aside the trespassing and vandalism committed by students, ‘the mini-Gazas that have sprouted up at colleges across America’, as William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal sarcastically described the encampments, have had some level of success.

Students at Brown University, Northwestern University, and the University of Minnesota, got some concessions as administration officials took steps toward divestment from Israel and/or agreed to provide scholarships for Palestinian students. While these victories may seem modest, they nevertheless illustrate how in a very brief period of time students were able to use pressure to extract policy wins from their universities.   

They also were able to extract a comment from President Joe Biden, who finally spoke on the matter after the demonstrations and encampments were being put down by police forces. Also, the mainstream media, which has been constant in its defense of Israel as a result of influential Jewish lobbyists, at least as the Shah had opined in the aforementioned interview, a number of them, such as The New York Times and the BBC have been more favorable to the victims in Gaza at the cost of making the Israelis look bad.

Indeed, some like the Times of Israel has been openly critical of the Netanyahu administration and the IDF saying Israel’s seemingly high tolerance for civilian casualties is tied in part to the way that Israeli Prime Minister sees security through the prism of domination of the Palestinian territories. Its government is not just seeking a change of regime, but, says the journal, wants an ‘indefinite‘ occupation and partial annexation of a territory filled with people who are inclined to resist occupation.

Protests at times look like failures in the short term, at least initially. What will eventually determine their success will be the long-term effects on both the protesters themselves and the rest of society.

The views expressed by our guest authors are theirs and do not necessarily represent the views of Hungarian Conservative.

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