I have been troubled over the past few weeks by some events happening on our nation’s college campuses, particularly the Ivy League. At one campus, I believe it was Columbia, the police were even called in to break up the protests with force by the university’s own president! The Republican Speaker of the House then traveled to that campus to denounce the protests as unlawful and anti-Semitic. Students with pro-Palestinian sentiments have been refused their normal rights of peaceful dissent. One Palestinian student, who was the valedictorian of her college class, was refused permission to give her speech, which is a tradition on that campus and many others, because of her pro-Palestinian social media posts.
The excuse for these forceful crackdowns is often that the protests are intimidating Jewish students. These has been alleged but I dont see any real proof of it other than the normal back and forth of differing sides of an issue. Jewish students have been involved in the pro-Palestinian protests, and even held a Passover Seder on one site, I think it was Columbia also.
Let me be clear, if any student regardless of their faith or lack of it is actually threatened with real , personal violence, then police action is warranted. But if a student feels threatened by a political slogan “From the River to the Sea”, what about the other students who are threatened by Israeli bombs dropping on their homelands? People have said that the slogan “from the River to the Sea” has other meanings than the destruction of Israel. Who is to judge? AIPAC? I thought we had free speech in this country! It seems to me that these protests are being violently repressed because of the content matter of their protests- pro-Palestinian.
I’m not really on one side or the other. Hamas’s evil attack and murdering of so many Israelis on October 7th was horrifying. But we cant isolate this from what has been ongoing repression in the West Bank and Gaza for generations. So when is it going to be enough for Israel? How many more innocent Palestinians will have to be killed , among them thousands of babies and children, until they stop the bombing, the blockades of food and water, the all out displacement of millions of people? What has been going on in Gaza and the West Bank has understandably upset the consciences of students across the country.
With whats going on with our Supreme Court and the delay and obstruction of the Trump legal cases, I guess it doesnt make any sense to expect American freedoms, including freedom of assembly and speech, to be respected.
Is this America anymore?