The protests at US campuses

'How universities are cracking down on a swell of tension months into student protests over Israel's bombardment of Gaza'. This sentence is the heading of a CNN report of April 28 on campus unrests in the USA.

The mentioned CNN heading makes it clear that the university authorities are not listening to what the students have to say, but have decided to deal with the issue in a high-handed manner. And the heading, too, does not tell much about what is exactly happening in Gaza that the students are protesting against. The establishment and the Western media cannot simply accept the fact that the predominant narrative of exceptionalism about Israel can be challenged by any quarter. Consider what Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of US House of Representatives, faced when she tried to speak at the Oxford Union in the UK. BBC says, 'pro-Palestinian protesters' called her 'warmonger'.

In the USA, the demonstrators, according to the BBC, dumped manure outside her own home in California. But unabashed, she said that she asked protesters if they cared about what Hamas had done and what happened in Israel and so on and so forth. In other words, she is asking the protesters to be even-handed. One wonders if she herself is even-handed in her approach to support destruction of  Gazan settlements and indiscriminate massacre of men, women, children, even newborn babies, doctors, journalists, aid workers … you name it. By denying access to food, water and electricity, the remaining Gaza people are being starved to death. How can all these bear comparison to what Hamas did to Israel about 7 months ago as part of its resistance against the forces of occupation?

When in a democratic society, a section of the population is protesting, it is expected of the leadership that that they would listen to the protests and not tell them what they should or should not say or do. The mainstream media which at other times are found to be so vocal and graphic in their accounts if atrocities are committed by regimes they do not like, are now muted.  It is half-truth if it is said that student protesters on US campuses are 'pro-Palestinian protesters', for they are protesting an ongoing genocide that is taking place in a part of Palestine called Gaza. And they are also not protesting against what is often reported in the Western media as 'Israel-Hamas war'. An army armed to the teeth with the world's most advanced weaponry is killing innocent people and trying to catch a ragtag group of resistance fighters using guerrilla tactics of hit and run against the invading Israeli troops. If anything, it is a war on an unarmed civilian population that has so far mindlessly massacred about 35 thousand innocent civilians.

Students of different universities across the USA are protesting this seven months long killing in Gaza. But they are being arrested in hundreds. Undaunted, more students are joining the protest. They are protesting at Columbia University in New York, at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, at the University of Texas at Austin, University of Southern California, Emory University in Atlanta, Boston's Emerson College-- the list is getting longer every day. And in every case of protest, the students are facing arrest, academic suspension, expulsion and every other form of suppression. And their protest against Israeli atrocities is being branded as 'anti-Semitism'. And all this is happening in a land of free speech! The world has as though turned topsy-turvy. The predominant narrative of the older generation has been shattered. The younger generation is questioning and challenging it. Hence is this heavy-handed action to silence them.

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