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Waves of protest by university students from the United States have now shaken not only the campuses of highest seats of learning in that country as well as Europe and Australia but also the world conscience that went into hibernation or has long become moribund. The protest against Israeli genocide significantly began on April 17 last on Columbia University campus where 56 years ago on April 23, 1968, the flame of the anti-Vietnam war campaign was first ignited. There has been a repeat of police brutality of the 1968 on the student campers of the 50 tents they pitched on the campus. The campus was cleared of protesters but students started rallying all across the US.
It is remarkable that the Ivy League member acted as the cradle of the anti-Vietnam movement among students and youths in 1968 and it has once again made the point clear that US policy on Gaza war is an aberration of principles that made America what it is today. The US administration made a historical blunder by waging a war on Vietnam and Joe Biden's government is committing a similar mistake by fuelling the Israeli crime against humanity in Gaza.
It is a monumental shame that Biden is supplying the war machines to Israel, which are being used to kill scores of civilian Palestinians on a daily basis. At a time when world conscience has taken a leave of the Western leaders who toe the American line, any hope of prevailing on them is the youth spirit. Student movement shook the political systems in the 60s of the last millennium, shaping a new reality. Countries as diverse as the US, Japan, France, Mexico, West Germany, Brazil, Italy and Czechoslovakia felt the heat of student uprising. Crest-fallen America had to leave Vietnam that earned its hard-fought independence.
Under the rule of Joe Biden, the principle of human liberty its original charter upholds is trampled and unless the clarity of vision youth movement brings when civilisation finds itself at a crossroads takes over, the rogue state's hegemony on Palestinian lands backed by American money and military hardware cannot be eliminated. The conservative and derelict leaderships in the West still pursue a policy of maintaining pockets of conflicts or even creating new ones in the interest of weapon sale and trade monopoly so that countries remain independent only on paper but actually turn into outposts or fiefdoms of big powers.
The saga of Palestinian ordeal and tragedy is the worst injustice that the Western powers led by the UK and US could do to a people in modern times. An artificial state has been implanted on the Palestinian soil while the people of the land are denied of their right to live as a free nation. Even the status quo has been violated by the Israeli government and its military umpteenth of time since the creation of Israel and there has been brutal response to any counteraction to Israeli atrocities and occupation of Palestinian territory beyond the original boundary.
If students of the US Ivy League institution have taken the initiative to impress upon the leaders of big powers, their peers in Paris's Sorbonne University and other universities in London, Rome, Sydney and Tokyo have taken the cue. This is not just an awakening for the world's young population but also a clear message for conventional leaders across the free market spectrum that justice must be done and people must not be treated like vermin and annihilated as such anywhere in the world. The 1968 student movement together with the civil rights movement brought about phenomenal changes to societies. Let this latest student protest consolidate and the growing solidarity with the hapless Palestinians bring their ultimate freedom. Let also those who wage war on civilians and finance proxy war be dumped into the dungeon of history.