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Why are Students Still Protesting for Palestinians?
By now, we don’t have to define the kind of rampant protests that are unfolding; everyone knows that they are organized as pro-Palestinian protests (and some pro-Israel protests). One of the most notorious protests, Occupy Wall Street, only lasted 59 days. So what continues to fuel the current protests?
Many protestors seem not to know what they are protesting about. They are captivated by the passion, excitement and may be only slightly aware of the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hatred of the organizers. They are also fed by an anti-American contingent that is angry because of the U.S. support of Israel.
They also have plenty of funding:
The movement overall appears grassroots, with localized efforts that coordinate primarily through social media using apps such as Telegram, X, WhatsApp and Instagram. Other groups have backing from major U.S. foundations. IfNotNow, an organization with the stated aim to ‘end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system,’ was awarded $100,000 during the past five years by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a decades-old philanthropy based in New York. The fund has awarded close to a half-million dollars over the same period to Jewish Voice for Peace, another Palestinian rights organization.
The Open Society Foundation, funded by George Soros, has also contributed to their cause, as has Jewish Voice for Peace, which has organized hundreds of protests across the country.
One non-profit group, Samidoun, has been active in these activities, and champions Palestinian causes:
Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is an international network of organizers and activists working to build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom. Samidoun developed out of the September-October 2011 hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, seeing a need for a dedicated network to support Palestinian prisoners. We work to raise awareness and provide resources about Palestinian political prisoners, their conditions, their demands, and their work for freedom for themselves, their fellow prisoners, and their homeland. We also work to organize campaigns to make political change and advocate for Palestinian prisoners’ rights and freedoms.
Israel declared Samidoun a terrorist organization in 2021. Neither Canada (where Samidoun is registered) nor the U.S. will confirm or deny if they are investigating the organization.
And how are the college and law enforcement authorities responding to the protests? The responses are mixed: some universities have forbidden camping out on common areas; other universities are providing courses online, which is supposed to substitute for actions against the protestors, but only the students are penalized; some have called in law enforcement, but whether being arrested has an impact or not is unclear:
At Yale, police officers arrested about 45 protesters and charged them with misdemeanor trespassing, said Officer Christian Bruckhart, a New Haven police spokesperson. All were being released on promises to appear in court later, he said.
I’m sure the released protestors will keep their promises.
The procedures for other police departments vary, since every community reacts differently to these disturbances. We don’t know if people are actually incarcerated after being arrested.
Protecting free speech is a complicated process:
Federal officials say fine lines separate protected speech, hate speech and incitement. Federal prosecutors can prosecute speech if it rises to the level of clear threats of violence when stated specifically and if violent actions are being planned. Hate speech alone is not enough to deem a person or an organization a terrorist.
‘Unlike many of our foreign partners, the United States, under the First Amendment, cannot designate organizations based solely on hateful speech,’ Vincent Picard, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, said by email. ‘The Secretary of State must determine that it is a foreign organization that engages in terrorist activity that threatens the security of United States nationals.’
In addition to the other factors, we can’t ignore the mindset of the protestors in this environment. These are people who may feel like outcasts, who don’t know how to fit into the larger society, and are angry about their perceived exclusion. For those who actually do know the purposes behind the demonstrations, fighting for the underdog feels empowering and righteous. And as mentioned earlier, they hate America.
* * * *
In the short term, pro-Palestinian protests will probably continue, and increase, because there is little to stop them. They are fueled by zealots who have plenty of funding as well. The universities are ambivalent about taking action against them. Jewish students will continue to fear for their lives, and although violence has been limited, the future may be more dangerous as tempers and temperatures rise. The criticism from the federal government has been limited, since Joe Biden would prefer to pander to the radicals.
Will protests intensify? Will violence be added to the profile?
Will anti-Semitic behaviors be empowered in the larger population?
I see no end in sight.
Published in Domestic Policy
In his 2009 mini-book, Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model, David Horowitz quoted an SDS radical who wrote, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” So you’re right, this will never end. We have generations of kids being taught by malcontents to hate capitalism and the U.S. I wonder whether they ever stop to think, “Wow, it’s great to live in a country where we can take down the US flag and hoist the Palestinian flag without ending up in a gulag.” Probably not.
Thanks, Gene. I suspect there is little self-reflection going on at all. They have so much to appreciate, but none of that matters. Chaos matters.
The previous comment covers the point I will say more on. Government officials protecting citizens constitutional rights is only one piece. Our academic institutions do not teach American history in the sense of how events happened and what the reactions and results were. Our media also does not favor, explain, and promote free expression. The damage resulting from such omission is great. Some people in other parts of the world have never had a protected right to free expression.
Indeed. Their idea of free speech only includes speech of which they approve.
Both @genekillian and @bobthompson reflected my immediate reaction to the post. Demonstrations in the 20th Century seemed to be something that either resulted in incremental change to society or simply survived and transcended. But demonstrations in the 21st Century seem to be revolutionary in nature — not seeking adaptation, but “winner take all”.
I agree! And how are the decent US citizens supposed to triumph over this insanity?
@rodin Perhaps things have moved faster than we can really keep up so that we are experiencing changes that we don’t properly understand. The political divisions in America have widened and recently a serious divide within the Republican Party with Donald Trump’s Presidency. Much attribution of this is said to be rural versus urban. We know there been many forces pushing against religion and family values in America. So perhaps it is really more attributable to a divide between those who have a Godly spiritual reference and embrace family values and ultimately humanity and those who are missing these value attributes, the leaders of the urban class (as contrasted with those enslaved in the big cities) who seem to prefer saving the earth and its animal life over humanity.
My ramble for Sunday.
Just picked this up from PJ Media regarding Columbia:
The protestors should be expelled and arrested for trespassing.
If anyone says “I am Hamas” they should be arrested and sent out for rendition.
I had not been aware of this quote. But I long ago had my own version: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always you.”
In this case, the “you” are Israelis and largely religious Christians.
The leftists are, at best, self-doubting amoral narcissists seeking to use cognitive dissonance to live action role play your moral superior. It is no coincidence that they gave us terms such as “live action role play (LARP)” and “performance art”. That’s what this is.
On the one hand, a leftist looks at an Israeli and doubts their own moral standing. They similarly question their own moral standing when they see someone in fly over country who takes their kids to Friday night HS football, 4H on Saturday, and church on Sunday. On the other hand, when they see a Hamas savage, they don’t doubt their own moral superiority. So they concoct a world where Israelis and Christians are the villains and Hamas are victims.
They often will echo the general anti-Semitism because that is how Hamas operates. They don’t want to offend Hamas. Or they will attempt to deny it to the point of parody.
To wrap this up, there is also no logical confusion in the facially absurd alliances involved. You must understand the difference between a physical threat and a moral threat. Hamas is only a physical threat to the radical Jews, feminist, gays, and the like supporting them. Physical threats are matters of proximity and probability. Essentially none of these people are going to go to Gaza. And the few who will are only going to do so while they remain valuable useful idiots. However, that same distance does not reduce the moral threat that an Israeli poses to a leftist. In fact, Israeli perseverance in harsh conditions increases the moral threat they pose.
We must think of people inside these cities with the ‘elite’ universities in proximity as composed of those who cherish traditional American values and those who don’t. The leaders in charge of the government and the other large established institutions like the media, academia, medical institutions, etc. are among those who don’t. Those sustaining the city infrastructures, the workers actually keeping production functioning, are the real Americans there.
Think what this means.
Why are students still protesting for “Palestine”?
Because the students are communists. Next question.
When our daughter was in college (2003-07) she occasionally mentioned a classmate she was convinced, “would protest the existence of air, if someone arranged such a protest.” He either had no idea what was being protested, or didn’t care. He just wanted to be in on a protest.
Why are the students being supported in the protests by the school officials and the city?
Because they are communists.
Let’s save everyone some time: It’s communists all the way down.
Maybe. But on the rare occasions the protesters were interviewed, I’ve never heard Communist rhetoric. Maybe their leaders?
They aren’t well-read enough to be Communists. I don’t know how useful they truly are, but they have a mortal lock on idiocy.
I call them all communists now if they don’t support individual liberty as set forth by the American constitution. Most all of them want to tell all of us how to live or they want us to die.
I’d say that’s about right.
And they probably do not know who their real leaders are.
I’d bet on it. Just follow the crowd…
Students are still protesting for Palestine because of what is still going on in Palestine?
In any case, it feels like a significant moment.
I don’t believe that the worldwide demonstrations are communism, pro-palestine or even anti Israel. They are heavily orchestrated antisemitism, an earlier name for which was judenhass.
On a slightly more serious note, I note that these students were admitted, in part, due to their protesting as high school students (as well as other political activism). This is well known. Why would anyone expect different behavior when they are college students?
I’ve never heard that, MWD! But I shouldn’t be surprised. They must list it as part of their “contribution to the community.” Good grief.
The FBI is busy right now investigating traditional Catholics.
Years of programming about “colonialism” made it easy to push some verbal buttons and make the brainwashed march. The same slogans repeated while wearing an old COVID mask and a dish towel for headgear make the victim think she is a social justice warrior.
“Woke” is not just a set of beliefs but a cognitive state that feels threatened by reason and actual scholarship. To shill for Hamas without shame or embarrassment requires a lot of deficits.
They’re all Commies, Sue. Perhaps you have to scratch them to find this out, but it’s true. Here’s one of them admitting it in so many words:
“Dozens of anti-Israel protesters are still occupying the encampment and no violent incidents have taken place at George Washington so far, unlike in encampments on other college campuses. At a rally held at George Washington this week, a speaker was recorded saying, “There’s only one solution, intifada revolution. We must have a revolution so we can have a socialist reconstruction of the United States of America.” What appeared to be hundreds of masked protesters gathered at the camp this weekend to chant “shame, shame, shame on you,” and demand that the university divest from Israel “now, or go to hell.”
Every Socialist, every anti-fascist, is a Commie at heart. We deny this at our own peril.
Why? Because, since they were cowed by 9/11, the American Left has been pro Palestine & pro Islamist. I guess it’s the “please kill me last” philosophy.
If they actually cared about the people in Gaza they’d be outside the Egyptian embassy or consulate demanding the Egyptians open the border with Gaza. Dont the want Egypt to experience the blessings of economic growth that comes with mass immigration ?