Mass pro-Palestinian protests at college campuses across the United States are developing with great intensity. The protests, now in their second week, show no signs of abating despite the bloody violence of the US police.
Protests first at elite universities, but today spreading to many other higher educational institutions, continue demanding an end the Israeli war on Gaza as supported by the United States government.
The protests in the form of Gaza encampments that were set up by students in Colombia University and quickly spread Harvard University, Princeton, MIT, Emerson College in Boston, Tufts, as well as Georgetown University, University of Texas in Austin, University of California and Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and many more are being destroyed a mass student intifada across the United States.
At Emory Economics Professor Dr Caroline Fohlin was was set upon by one of the police officers while the Philosophy Department head Dr Noelle Mcafee was seen as being led away by another officer. These uprisings however are being seen as a new dawn for the world oppressed as Dr Angela Davis is describing them.
This is while the protests have spread to around 58 universities and is likely to continue in the next weeks to demand that universities take a pro-active Palestinian stance and demand that they stop cooperation and divesting on Israeli companies.
Protests are continuing despite the American police who have been called to these universities to arrest the protesters. Already 500 students as well as university professors who have been arrested for protesting the war on Gaza that is supported by the United States through provision of a mass weapon supply corridor to Israel.
Critics, including the police seen inside these universities, beating protestors and lecturers as well as hand cuffing them, have called these demonstrations as antisemitic but this has been totally rejected by the students and professors. They say that Jewish students and professors have been in the forefront of these protests against the Israeli genocide in Gaza, now going onto its eight month.
The nationwide protests and the police being reactions to them which are mildly described as brutal, are likened to the anti-war protests experienced in America during the 1960s when US universities then become pivotal against Washington’s war in Vietnam.
Palestinian activist Mostapha Barghouti is echoing what other leading activists are saying as pointing out the young generation’s uprising in American universities against the current genocide resembles the protests against the war in Vietnam and the anti-apartheid movement and spread to other universities in the world.
He pointed out it is remarkable that many Jewish faculty and students participate in it proving, that anti-Israeli actions are not anti Semitic and it is strange some main stream media is ignoring these historic events.
The Biden administration has been caught off guard because of the scale of the Protests. Joe Biden is facing a presidential election this coming November but many on these campuses have already said they won’t be voting for him as he prepares to run for reelection. Many observers say Biden is deeply worried on what is happening at these campuses and the police violence that is being captured on the social media.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been, and as expected, deeply critical of these growing protests which he calls as antisemitic and called on Biden to swiftly end them as if the former worked for him. But in reality, this is what the American president has been doing by serving as the check-book supplier of American weapons to Israel.
However if these protests continue, Biden, at least for the rest of his tenure could squeeze the taps on the weapons to Israel. So far he has been unwilling to do this no doubt because of the powerful Israeli lobby.
Further the US protests are having a world domino effect, turning into a ‘global intifada’. They are spreading to Britain, France, Italy and Australia and will see many other countries join this global spring wave of protests.
Dr Marwan Asmar is a writer based in Jordan covering Middle East Affairs
