Demonization of Gaza Protests Won’t Stop Them from Spreading

I don’t claim to be able to accurately report on the details of college protests around the nation, but I do understand that the pro-Gaza cause has a righteous basis, namely that a couple of million people are being mercilessly attacked by a military power enabled by United States military and industrial might. 

The worthiness of this cause has been overshadowed by reports of virulent anti-Semitism and the overreaction of university leaders under pressure from pro-Israeli political forces. Students from high profile universities are being arrested and expelled for expressing their first amendment rights.

Amid all the noise over protests, a State Department Country Report on Human Rights in Israel paints a painful picture of abuses on all fronts. And the discovery of mass graves adjacent to hospitals by Gaza Civil authorities has added another outrage to an almost unbelievable story.

• “Among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands…tied and stripped of their clothes,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.  

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The much ballyhooed breakup of an encampment at Columbia had even NYPD officers wondering how "the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger" to the school. The protests are spreading due to a convergence of factors (seasonality, class schedules, the continuing bombing in Gaza) and because students are angry about media inferences that anti-genocide activists are terroristic.

From the Associated Press:

• The various actions followed the arrest last week of more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s green, as schools struggle with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining a safe and inclusive campus.

• In addition to the demonstrations at the Ivy League schools, pro-Palestinian encampments have sprouted up on other campuses around the country, including at the University of Michigan, New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• The protests have pitted students against one another, with pro-Palestinian students demanding that their schools condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel. Some Jewish students, meanwhile, say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism and made them feel unsafe, and they point out that Hamas is still holding hostages taken during the group’s Oct. 7 invasion.

The mischaracterization of the student protests as much as anything else is leading to violence. Virtually all the student groups protesting the Gaza war have issued statements making it clear that antisemitism is not welcome or representative of their demands.

If this framing (by elected officials, law enforcement, and clickbait influencers) had been so virulent during my antiwar days, myself and my friends would have all ended up in jail, decried as being pro-Weatherman.

Demonization of a few as a means of discrediting a  cause is a lot more serious in an era where law enforcement and some politicians see a brown-skinned terrorist lurking behind every street corner.

For a more nuanced view of what’s going on at one campus, Parker Molloy suggests checking out the Columbia Daily Spectator. They included a list of recent articles, with three of being:

• “‘You have failed your Jewish students’: #EndJewHatred holds rally in support of Shai Davidai, calls for Shafik’s resignation” (Columbia Daily Spectator, Isha Banerjee, Apurva Chakravarthy, 4/18/24)

• “Protests outside Columbia gates in solidarity with arrested students draw hundreds” (Columbia Daily Spectator, Isha Banerjee, Apurva Chakravarthy, Miranda Lu, 4/18/24)

• “Faculty, students host press conferences expressing outrage over mass arrests” (Columbia Daily Spectator, Chris Mendell, 4/18/24)

At Progress Report, Jordan Zakarin commented on the propaganda war in progress:

• College students have always made good foils for conservative elites because they are as earnest and committed to their beliefs as most politicians and pundits are cynical and calculating. When students began protesting the Israeli war on Gaza, they became prime targets for this crowd, who succeed in using them to distract from the atrocities that have been rained down mercilessly on innocent Palestinians.

• Now that Israel’s genocide has become so overwhelming that even the White House has tsk-tsked it, a new and even more embarrassing effort to scapegoat campus protestors has suddenly bloomed.

• Over the past four or five days, peaceful protests at Columbia University, many of which were organized by Jewish students, have been seized upon by a group of truly deranged propagandists, self-righteous weenies, and political opportunists. They have depicted the protestors’ tents on the quad as a terrorist compound, spread disinformation about campus events, and posted videos of themselves walking across the manicured green toward student housing and dining halls as if navigating an active war zone. I’d laugh at them, but having been raised Jewish myself, they mostly just make me feel embarrassment.

The culture warriors of the religious right have decided they want a piece of this action. Sean Feucht, the christofascist minstrel/ influencer, has called for a “Jesus March for Israel” at Columbia University on April 25 (Thursday).  He’s been called the chaos muppet by critics. Proud Boys extremists have been seen recently providing security for his concerts. 

Given that the school is located in a densely populated area, and that much of the most inflammatory rhetoric has come from off-campus, you can bet 1) Feucht will do a masterful job of fundraising and 2) the chances of violence are high. 

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The Palestinians targeted in Gaza are not all saints in any sense of the word, but the vast majority are simply people trying to exist in a world where even their allies scorn them. The Israelis are heavily influenced by extremists who are intolerant of the very idea of the area’s original inhabitants even existing.

Opportunistic Palestinian leaders have stolen opportunity and any chance of a peaceful existence from their people and are historically enabled by authoritarians who view them as pawns. 

The viciousness of the October Hamas attack was the point, aimed at inflicting terror in a situation where Israeli forces would ultimately prevail. The irony is that the assault was enabled by Netanyahu’s blind eye toward Gaza and its Qatari funding mechanism.

The ultimate victor of a Gaza war in a larger sense would be Iran, intent on disrupting any softening of the animus between the Sunni Muslim states and the nation of Israel. It’s overly simplistic to view any conflict among the nations birthed as colonial powers waned as being “right” or “wrong.” There’s more than enough evil intent to go around, and hate is often seen as a virtue.

Self-congratulation over the latest back and forth between Israel and Iran for not blooming into a regional war should be tempered by the knowledge that a broader struggle is emerging, on college campuses and in cities worldwide.

There is something very wrong going on in Gaza, and students worldwide have made it their mission to make sure it is not ignored in the name of national security. It is their right to do so and it is wrong to lump them in with the very real threat of anti-Semitism currently in vogue at the far right fringes of society. And the fact that many of these protests have been organized by Jewish students should give lie to the assumption that supporting Hamas is a cause.

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On this date four years ago…

Then-President Trump went off script at a press conference, suggesting injecting people with disinfectant (not specifically bleach!) or maybe UV light as treatment for COVID.

• “And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute,” he said, incorrectly and insanely. “One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.” 

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Tuesday’s News to Think About

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He swore to fix some of California’s deadliest jails. He gave up. Via CalMatters –

• Four years ago, Paul Parker set out to fix some of California’s deadliest jails. San Diego County was paying out millions of dollars to families whose relatives died in jail, two jail medical staffers were facing criminal charges, and the sheriff in charge insisted nothing needed to change. 

• Everyone said the right things when Parker was appointed to take charge of the county Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board. He said he was excited. The review board’s chair welcomed his arrival. The board, formed in 1990, had just been given a bigger mandate and more power to investigate in-custody deaths at San Diego County jails. 

• But that hopeful honeymoon period quickly eroded. The San Diego County jails system set a record high of 18 deaths in 2021. A new sheriff took over in February 2022, and the jails matched its record total deaths again. The county jail’s death rate in 2023 was the third-highest on record, following only 2021 and 2022.  

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A historic victory for unions via Tesnim Zekeria and Judd Legum at Popular Information

• The organizing victory for the UAW was also a major defeat for right-wing advocacy organizations—many of which were funded by billionaire Charles Koch—which have been aggressively attempting to thwart unionization in the South for more than a decade. 

• In 2014 a constellation of right-wing groups launched an aggressive campaign to defeat an earlier unionization effort at the VW plant in Chattanooga. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), an organization that receives funding from Koch, spent months distributing "materials, such as flyers and pamphlets, detailing the negative economic consequences of UAW representation." The CEI campaign also included billboards with the slogan, "Auto Unions ATE Detroit. Next Meal Chattanooga?" 

• The allegation was that if workers at the Chattanooga VW plant were to approve a union, it would sink the entire city's economy. "The citizens of Chattanooga should know that if the plant workers decide to unionize, the consequences could be devastating — for the plant, the town, and indeed all of Tennessee," Matt Patterson, the CEI fellow who ran the campaign, said. "The United Auto Workers union has a history of saddling companies — and entire industries — with job-killing costs and red tape." According to a June 28, 2013, press release by CEI, Patterson's effort involved coordinating with "representatives from the Tea Party."

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Elon Musk's 'X' marks the spot for Nazis, disinformation. Why? By Gil Duram at FrameLab

• For the past several months, I have been researching and reporting on the development of this new ideology, which goes by different names: techno-authoritarianism, TESCREAL, tech plutocracy…some even call it tech fascism.

• It has many things in common with Republican ideology, but it also has some distinctive characteristics. Over the next few weeks, I will categorize the main elements of this emerging ideology and explain why it (increasingly) matters.

• To start, it helps to think of ideology in terms of color. Blue is traditionally associated with the Democratic Party, or progressive-leaning politics. Red is traditionally associated with the Republican Party, or regressive-leaning politics.

• The new tech ideology has been labeled as “Gray” by some of its strongest proponents. So, for the purposes of mapping out this moral system, we will start within the frame of Gray.