By Peter Dreier It is hard to find an objective analysis of the ongoing student protests about Israel and Palestine – which so far have taken place on over 50 campuses and led to over 2,000 arrests -- or the wider war that has provoked the demonstrations. Here are 20 observations to help understand what's happening: 1. Most of the student protesters want an end to the horrific violence, deaths, and violations of basic human rights (housing, health care, food, water) that they see on TV and on social media every day. 2. The pro-Palestine protest movement is not monolithic. The majority of students participating in rallies and encampments don’t support Hamas (a theocratic, anti-women and anti-LGBTQ terrorist organization) or want to see the mass murder or exile of Israeli Jews. But a small fraction of protesters DO support Hamas and they are typically the ones driving the narrative. For example, when the national office of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) called Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel "a historic win for the Palestinian resistance," and when 34 Harvard student organizations issued a joint statement saying they "hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence," that can reasonably be interpreted as support for Hamas. These views are often what the media reports and what gets the headlines. Most news outlets, particularly TV, are suckers for extremism. So we wind up with media reports that emphasize the most extreme views, similar to how the handful of anti-war protesters in the 1960s who supported the National Liberation Front got disproportionate media attention, which sociologist Todd Gitlin described in “The Whole World is Watching,” published in 1980. 3. Most student protesters are not seeking to dismantle Israel as a nation. Beyond a ceasefire in Gaza, they want an end to the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and to Israel’s widespread discrimination against its Palestinian citizens. They want equality and peaceful co-existence between Jews and Palestinians. They want Netanyahu gone, but they don’t know enough about Israeli politics to know what kind of government might replace him and his government. Most don’t have clear or well-reasoned thoughts on the end-game, but neither do most well-informed experts. Many of the protesters I’ve talked to share some vague idea that a two-state solution would be a good idea, but they don’t understand what that would look like. 4. Most of the protesters don’t know much about Israel-Palestine history, the displacement of Palestinians from Israel and of Jews from Arab countries after Israel was founded in 1948. They know very little about the long history of anti-Semitism across the centuries and around the world, including the Holocaust. As a result, they view Israel’s founding and 76 year history mostly through the lens of European colonialism and the displacement of Palestinians rather than view Palestinians as, in the words of the late Edward Said, a Columbia University professor and a Palestinian, “the victims of victims, the refugees of the refugees” – a more nuanced understanding of the origins of the current crisis. They know little about Israel’s current demographics – for example, that many Israeli Jews are not white and not descended from the early Jewish settlers from Europe. They don't know about the Israeli peace movement or groups like Standing Together, founded by Israeli Jews and Palestinians to work toward mutual understand, justice, and peace. Many don't understand the geo-politics of the Middle East and what it would take to forge a real peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians that would require pressure from other Arab governments, the US, the EU, and the UN to allow separate self-governing nations for both Jews and Palestinians. 5. On the extreme left, however, Israel is not a nation to be reformed, or to share its geography with Palestinians based on full citizenship and equality, but to be eliminated. Among those who view themselves as revolutionaries, there is clearly a double-standard regarding Israel. There are many countries with worse human rights records than Israel, some of which receive military aid from and trade with the U.S., but the extreme left doesn't demonize them the way it demonizes Israel. They do not call for the dismantling of Yemen, Syria, China, Iran, or any other sovereign nation, no matter how egregious its human rights record. Likewise, they use terms like apartheid and genocide to describe Israel and call for its extinction, but don't apply these ideas consistently toward other countries. For example, the US is certainly a settler colonial society. The original colonizers, who came from England, Holland, and Spain, engaged in genocide against native Americans and pushed those who survived into reservations under intolerable conditions. They promoted or at least benefited from slavery, and when slavery ended they instituted Jim Crow, an American version of apartheid that involved legal segregation in jobs, housing, education and other core aspects of society. The majority of Americans today are descendants of white immigrants, who fled oppression and destitution and arrived in the US in the 19th and 20th centuries from Greece, Sweden, Italy, Ireland, Russia, Poland, Norway, and other European nations. Most white immigrants were peasants or workers who struggled to gain acceptance and a foothold into the working and middle classes, although their whiteness offered some advantages not available to black, Brown, Asian and native Americans. Only a small fraction made it into the ruling class or social elite. But the extreme left does not insist that the descendants of those early colonizers who perpetrated human rights atrocities -- say, members of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of the American Revolution, and the Mayflower Society - or the descendants of subsequent white immigrants who shared some of America's prosperity - be expelled from the country. Nor does the extreme left insist on dismantling the United States as a nation as punishment for its racism and human rights abuses. Most American liberals, progressives, and leftists seek, instead, to create a more humane society by adopting policies that recognize these historic injustices based on race, class, gender, ethnicity, and indigenous status. 6. Jews were among the white immigrants who arrived in the US in the 19th and 20th centuries, although they were often described as a separate race. Most students also know little about the persistence of anti-Semitism throughout American history, including ugly stereotypes and discrimination in housing, jobs, colleges, hotels, and social clubs. As a result, they have a distorted view of the number and influence of Jews in the United States. This is not their fault. They have been mis-educated. But their ignorance has consequences. Anti-semitism has ebbed and flowed in US history. It has certainly been increasing over the past decade, There was a big upsurge of right-wing anti-Semitism, blatant and often violent, when Trump started campaigning for president in 2015 and it has continued ever since, reflected by the 2017 Charlottesville march, by shootings at synagogues, and by the growing assertiveness and visibility of white Christian nationalism. There's also been an upsurge of left-wing anti-Semitism, not as widespread or as violent, triggered by the war in Gaza. Anti-Semitism is not the same as anti-Zionism, but sometimes the two overlap. When Jewish students hear slogans like “intifada forever,” “Zionists don’t belong here,” or “Settlers, Settlers Go Back Home, Palestine Is Ours Alone,” they aren’t unreasonable to view them as attacks on Jews. When protesters tell Jewish students to “go back to Poland,” when they see swastikas on campus buildings, or view the poster of UC-Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, sponsored by SJP, that calls him a “Zionist” and depicts him with blood on his knife and fork “while Gaza starves,” they recognize it as anti-Jewish bigotry. Such incidents only have to happen once and they can be hard to forget. 7. Some Jewish students feel uncomfortable on campus because anti-Israel/pro-Palestine views are the default position for many of their fellow students and many of their professors, especially in the humanities and social sciences, even faculty who have no expertise in their areas. Some report facing a social penalty among other students if they express pro-Israel views, even if they are critical of many of its policies. Most faculty don’t discuss the issue of Israel and Palestine in their classes but many have signed petitions and public statements that make their views visible. 8. So I understand the concern among Jewish students and their parents about feeling "uncomfortable." But for most Jewish students, even those involved in Hillel or J-Street, feeling “uncomfortable” is not the same as feeling “traumatized” or "vulnerable,“ or "unsafe,” which is how their feelings are typically depicted by groups like ADL, Mothers Against College Anti-Semitism, and some Hillel and Chabad rabbis. In fact, there have been very few physical assaults on Jewish students and the few that have occurred are made visible in ways that make it appear to be a serious trend. Any physical assault is one too many, but Jewish students are not cowering in their dorm rooms fearful of being physically attacked. I have no doubt that some Jewish students feel traumatized, vulnerable, disoriented, and unsafe, and we should not deny those feelings. For many of them, it is the first time they've experienced blatant expressions of anti-Semitism and such vociferous attacks on Israel and they are not prepared emotionally. Neither are they prepared intellectually, in part because most Jewish institutions - summer camps, day schools, youth groups, and synagogues - have ignored some harsh truths about Israel. 9. Based on my conversations with pro-Palestine non-Jewish protesters at Occidental and some at UCLA, I don’t believe that most of them are anti-Semitic. They are all very critical of Israel, for good reason. Most believe that Israel is an apartheid state, that its history is one of settler-colonialism, and that the current assault on Gaza is a form of genocide. I may not agree with all this, but there is a legitimate case to be made for all of these accusations. It can’t just be called “anti-Semitism.” 10. But there are groups with a stake in exaggerating and weaponizing the kind and scale of campus anti-Semitism, among them the grandstanding Republicans in Congress, their white evangelical allies, and groups like ADL, Mothers Against College Anti-Semitism, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). I would like to see an honest accounting of all such incidents on college campuses (slogans shouted and verified, posters and graffiti, signs at rallies, physical assaults, identified by campus and, if possible, where and when), but I don’t trust the ADL to do it, because for them, most criticism of Israel is considered a form of anti-Semitism. (I would also like to see an honest accounting of incidents of Islamophobia on campuses). 11. Since 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu has been Israel’s Prime Minister for 18 of the last 28 years. So understandably, most American college students – in fact, anyone under 30 years old -- identifies “Israel” with Netanyahu, an authoritarian and a racist. If the only U.S. president since the mid-1990s was Donald Trump, most young people in the US and around the world might think that the US has become a fascist country. So it should come as no surprise that a 2022 Pew Research Center survey found that 56% of Americans under 30 had an unfavorable view of Israel – a dramatic shift within a decade. In fact, polls show that even most young Jews under 30 are highly critical of Israel. Almost half (45%) of Jews under 30 have been to Israel at least once but only 35% say that caring about Israel is “essential” to what being Jewish means to them, according to a 2021 Pew survey. Among Jews under 40, a whopping 43% think that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is similar to American racism, 33% believe that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, 38% said that Israel is an apartheid state, and 20% oppose Israel’s right to exist, according to a 2021 survey of American Jewish voterscommissioned by the Jewish Electorate Institute. Orthodox Jews, who constitute about one-tenth of all Jews, are more likely than others to support Israel without question, but there are few of them on most university campuses. Many (perhaps most) Jewish college students are supportive of Palestinian self-government. A few get involved with groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, but most of them do not take part in the campus pro-Palestine movement because the conversation has become so polarized that it is difficult to have a serious discussion about a complex subject. Most Jewish students don't identify with or support the small number of Jewish thugs at UCLA and elsewhere who have attacked pro-Palestine protesters. 12. One of the key demands of the pro-Palestinian protest movement is for universities to divest their endowments from corporations that do business in Israel - a strategy that played a key role in the 1980s movement to challenge the apartheid government in South Africa. The BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement has been around for years, but it has accelerated since the current wave of protest after October 7. (Note to organizers: The 10 universities with the largest endowments – Harvard, University of Texas, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Texas A&M University, University of Michigan, and the University of California – own 29% of the $839 billion in endowments of all American universities and colleges). There is a logic to the strategy to pressure corporations to stop doing business with Israel, but the idea of boycotting Israeli institutions involved in cultural and intellectual work - including cultural exchanges with the U.S., such as inviting Israelis to speak in this country and ending exchange programs for students and faculty at US and Israel universities -- is not very strategic. Israeli writers, artists, and academics are among the strongest critics of Israel's right-wing government and policies. We should be encouraging them to visit the US and for Americans to visit Israel to meet them. 13. What’s troubling is that a relatively small group of ultra-left sectarians, some of them involved with Students for Justice in Palestine, have controlled the narrative and have influenced how the protests have been portrayed in the media. (I don’t know if this is also true of Jewish Voice for Peace, which shares many of SJP's views). Such groups, like the ANSWER Coalition, are not simply random “outside agitators,” as they are often described. These are ideological organizations with few but very disciplined members. They don't believe in electoral politics as a vehicle for change. They don’t believe in negotiation and compromise. Some of them believe that more and more militant protest and confrontation leads to repression, that repression expands sympathy for the protesters and the cause, and that somehow this will catalyze a growing cadre of “revolutionaries.” That's an absurd bit of fanaticism, but there are ultra-left groups that still believe this, as the Weathermen - a splinter group from SDS - believed it in the late 1960s. 14. University and college administrators play into their hands when they bring police on campus and arrest even peaceful protesters pitching tents on the quad, singing, chanting, even praying. The extremists among the protesters put college administrators – most of whom want to allow students to protest, but who also feel it necessary to make sure that the universities can function, such as holding classes and graduation exercises, and may be under pressure from trustees or elected officials to “restore order” -- in a no-win situation. The most radical factions among the protesters have engaged in destroying property – such as breaking into Hamilton Hall at Columbia University – for which they were understandably arrested. (A few protesters even insisted that the university bring food while they occupied the building). 15. Most of the student protesters don’t appear to understand what’s going on in this regard. They don’t consider these ultra-left sectarians to be their leaders, but they are caught up in the exhilaration of the moment and the legitimate cause of ending the violence and starvation in Gaza. It would be great if the majority of leftists and progressives could police and separate themselves from its most extremist members, but this is very difficult to do. (It is also difficult for conservatives to police their most extreme members, as we see happening in Congress). The more reasonable members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), for example, should publicly criticize those DSA chapters who have participated in rallies and other events sponsored by extremist groups and failed to challenge their pro-Hamas rhetoric, a sin of omission with serious consequences. Republicans and even moderate Democrats have accused progressive Democratic politicians with close ties to DSA of being anti-Israel, even pro-Hamas, and even anti-Semitic. Some progressive politicians, and a growing number of DSA members, have quit the organization over its silence about Hamas and related issues. 16. Let's be clear that the Republicans in Congress like Elise Stefanik (R-NY) are exaggerating and weaponizing anti-Semitism on campus to win elections and promote their right-wing goals, which is to weaken (and even de-fund) American universities, which they view as bastions of liberal ideas, students, faculty, and voters. Stefanik and her ilk don't give a damn about Jews or anti-Semitism, but they are smart enough to seize the opportunity to demonize universities, setting a trap for the poorly-prepared presidents of Harvard, Penn, and Columbia (and perhaps others in the future) whose wishy-washy testimony undermined their credibility. 17. At the same time, the failure of some colleges and some college faculty to encourage disagreement and debate, to encourage students to understand the importance of the First Amendment in the history of progressive movements, and to take conservative views seriously - if for no other reasons than to provide students with opportunities to test and sharpen their own liberal/progressive views - plays into the hands of right-wingers who love to attack "woke" universities and so-called "cancel culture." 18. Although the protests are spreading, most of them have taken place on relatively elite universities and liberal arts colleges. According to a recent Generation Lab survey, the overwhelming majority of American college aren’t participating in campus protests. In fact, only 13% of students said that the Israel-Gaza war is a top issue for them. Of greater concern to today’s college students are healthcare reforms (40%), educational funding and access (38%), economic fairness and opportunity (37%), racial justice and civil rights (36%), climate change (35%), and gun control and safety (32%). When asked who they blame for the situation in Gaza, 34% said Hamas, 19% blamed Netanyahu, 12% blamed the Israeli people, and 12% blamed President Biden. 19. But the campus encampments and other protests have understandably gotten a great deal of media attention. Trump and the Republicans are weaponizing and taking advantage of the upheavals to help them win in November. In a remarkable bit of political ju-jitsu, the party that instigated and now justifies a violent insurrection at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 is campaigning as the party of "law and order." The Republicans are repeating Richard Nixon's strategy in 1968. Even though the violence at the 1968 Democratic convention was caused by the police attacks on anti-war protesters (the official report described it as a “police riot”), Nixon blamed the chaos on the protesters, whom he depicted as anti-American. This helped him win the White House. I worry that similar protests over Israel/Gaza at this summer’s Democratic Party convention in Chicago - even if they are not assaulted by police as took place in 1968 - will help Trump and the Republicans win. The presidential election will be won or lost in a handful of swing states - Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada. In each state, the Biden could win or lose by a few thousand votes. If enough liberal and progressive Democrats - particularly young people, including college students - decide not to vote for any presidential candidate, or to vote for Cornel West or Jill Stein, that could swing the election to Trump. The same is true for Arab voters in Michigan. I don't think they've given sufficient thought to the dangers of electing a fascist president, even if they don't agree with Biden on how he's handled the situation in Gaza and US military aid to Israel. 20. If Trump is elected, and the Republicans control both houses of Congress, we will see the most reactionary, racist, anti-union, anti-democratic, anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-LBGTQ, anti-First Amendment, pro-gun rights, anti-abortion, anti-environment, Christian nationalist tyrannical government in U.S. history. Trump will appoint at least one or two more Supreme Court justices, guaranteeing a reactionary court for the next 50 years. Trump will weaken government protections for consumers, workers, and the environment, weaken voting rights, undermine laws against discrimination, and reverse Biden-era policies to reduce student debt, expand health insurance, cap drug prices, and support unions. Every progressive movement will be repressed and put on the defensive. In a second term, Trump will be even more supportive of Netanyahu and Israel’s right-wing factions, making the prospect for peace even more remote, as well as supported of Putin and other despots and bullies, destabilizing the world in ways we can't even yet imagine. Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics at Occidental College
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