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| NYPD officers in riot gear (National Review) |
To the casual observer it might seem like throwing gasoline onto a fire. After all don’t students have a right to passionately and vigorously express their views about injustices in the world? ...and to get the people in power to do something about that? Weren’t they simply exercising their inherent free speech rights? That they may have broken a rule about setting up tent encampments on the college campus hardly seems worthy of sending in the ‘storm trooper’ police in full riot gear!.
Ordinarily I might agree that sending riot police to a protest rally for what seems like minor and insignificant rule infractions is a bad idea. But the facts say something entirely different than what the optics suggest. That is where Mayor Adams comes in. He authorized the police to go there full force and and arrest the troublemakers at the behest of university officials. These ‘students’ actually occupied a building. (Kind of like the ‘protesters’ who occupied the Capital building on January 6th.)
There were violent clashes between – on the one hand students and a few faculty members.. and on the other hand the police. It was reminiscent of the protests on college campuses of the Viet Nam War era.
Mayor Adams explained that most of those arrested were outside agitators from various terrorist groups around the country and all over the world. These young people were being unduly influenced by these infiltrators. Then he cited a statistic that showed only 18% of American youth loved their country.
That - to me - is shocking and at the same time quite revealing. It helps identify who it is exactly that hates Israel. The same people that hate America. People influenced by radical progressives (both on and off campus) whose rhetoric is dripping with antisemitism disguised as anti Zionism. That many of these students are asking their schools to divest from Israel is not new. That demand was being made long ago by student councils all over the country supporting BDS. (The D in BDS)
There are those who might reject this idea and suggest that most of these protests are about the way Israel is conducting the war. Although I would strongly disagree with them, that would be a legitimate protest. That may even be true in a few cases. But as noted many of these students have been anti Israel long before Israel's war with Hamas. Influenced to ignorantly claim that Israel is committing genocide and that they have been occupying Palestine for 76 years.
I believe the New York mayor got it right. Problem is that these protests have a life of their own and are expanding. The attention given by the media to these protests have had a subliminal message of justifying them. To the casual observer these protests are indeed only about Israel's conduct in the war. And just like the Viet Nam war era protests. - the media paints the police as near storm troopers descending on innocent young students for simply voicing their opinions on an unjust war. .
I fear that public sentiment may turn in their direction if nothing is done. I would like to see a lot mote Jewish students in peaceful counter protests. I emphasize peacefull because if they get violent, they will be counterproductive.
We need to get the message out that there is another, more legitimate side to this story, and to make our case to the public. I'm glad to see that local and federal governments seem to be on the right side of the issue right now, But I still think we ought to be doing more to present out case. Especially where the media can mostly be found. Which is at the expanding number of campus protests all over the country.