Rehman Ali

Over 200 campuses across the United States have been rocked by student protests against the US support for Israel’s war in Gaza. The demonstrations have been sustained and have spread rapidly, with more recently students establishing protest encampments in the center of some campuses.

Columbia University in New York began the encampments last week, and ten days later, nearly four dozen universities had followed suit. The most striking aspect of this effort has been the diversity of the students involved in the demonstrations. Arab American students have been joined by fellow students of every race and creed.

The leadership of the protesting students has been impressive, with disciplined and articulate demands for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza. Many have also called on their universities to divest funds from entities contributing to the Israeli war effort.

The protesters have been peaceful, although purposefully disruptive at times. They have occupied central locations on campus and chanted, as demonstrators often do. However, respected observers who have visited the protest sites have noted that the protests have been peaceful and orderly.

The protesting students have been proactive in their efforts to bring attention to their cause. They have used social media to spread their message and have also taken to mainstream media outlets to give their perspective on the issue.

Unfortunately, Republican congressional leadership and a few pro-Israel Jewish organizations have tried to paint these demonstrations as antisemitic and a threat to the safety of Jewish students. The members of Congress have exploited this as a wedge issue, portraying the protesting students as liberal elites captive to anti-Israel groups.

Both the Republican leadership and the small but influential group of Jewish leaders have used their respective platforms to repeatedly argue that chants used by some of the students are inherently antisemitic. For example, they’ve said that “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is actually a call to commit genocide against Jews in Israel. They recently passed a Congressional resolution making that very point.

However, in most of the encampments, a disproportionately large number of the protesters are Jewish students. Ironically, while one Jewish leader was advising Jewish students at Columbia University to stay home and not come to campus because it was unsafe for them and was urging New York’s governor to call in National Guard units to restore order on campus, the Jewish students in the encampment were holding an interfaith Passover Seder.

Despite the peaceful nature of the protests, police action has been taken to disband the encampments. New York City police were ordered onto campus to disband the encampment, followed by similar police actions in Texas, California, and Georgia, where disturbing levels of violence (tear gas, rubber bullets, tasers, and baton beatings) were used against the peaceful protestors.

Instead of dampening the students’ commitment to continuing these protests, the actions by the police, elected officials, and university administrators have hardened the protesters’ resolve. The way these campus protests are playing out does not bode well for the President during this election year.

Comparisons are being made to the 1968 anti-Vietnam war protests and the role they played in costing Democrats the presidency. Today, empowered and organized Arab American and progressive American Jewish students have taken the lead in mobilizing opposition to Israel’s Gaza war—with the former saying “Not to our people” and the latter saying “Not in our name.” Because they have found allies in the other movements in which they too were participants, the anti-war effort has grown.

Through it all, the Biden White House has demonstrated only limited concern, apparently convinced that they’ll weather this storm and still defeat Donald Trump in November. They dismiss polls showing the President losing support among young and “minority” voters. This is a dangerous miscalculation. As repression against student demonstrators continues, that opposition is solidifying.

Should the war continue for several more months and the scene at this summer’s Democratic Convention in Chicago be as ugly as it was in 1968, many young voters will be hard pressed to vote for Mr. Biden. They won’t vote for Mr. Trump. Most likely they’ll either vote for a third party or not vote at all.