On Protest, Part Two

Things Left Unsaid

The impulse to stifle dissent in the name of order and convenience is a dangerous one for Americans to indulge in. That’s not stopping conservatives from advocating even more violence toward protestors nor is it stopping liberals from providing intellectual cover for them. Aspiring badlands warlord Tom Cotton called for the National Guard to sweep up Columbia's encampments, unintentionally invoking the image of Kent State. And maybe that’s a bit extreme, but also House Democrats helped pass an antisemitism bill that defines criticism of Israel as hate speech, so maybe Tom has a point. 

Much of the media attention on the campus protests has a clear goal of not only demonizing student activists but also distracting from the issue that is driving the protests. A recent piece by (actual friend of the blog) Michael Powell for The Atlantic is almost comical in its obvious disingenuousness. 

The most notable part of Powell’s piece is when he mentions being directed to speak with Layla Saliba who was an authorized spokesperson for the Columbia protests. He notes how Layla spoke “at length and with nuance” about the protests but he fails to communicate any of that length and nuance in his piece. He also mentions that Layla is a Palestinian American who “lost family in the fighting in Gaza”. After the piece was published, Layla tweeted at Powell to explain that she hadn’t said her family died “in the fighting”, but rather were innocent civilians who were caught up in the IDF’s collective punishment. Powell essentially replied ‘safe diff’. 

The common through-line in all this centrist scolding is a pathological avoidance of talking about the actual issue motivating the protests and instead focusing on how unappealing the protests are to them personally. This allows them to indirectly frame the cause as illegitimate without actually making that case. They can put words like “genocide” in scare quotes, and speak at length about the conflicting interpretations of “from the river to the sea”, but the word “divestment” is never mentioned. They seem to be unwilling or unable to explain why these students shouldn’t be mad at the mass death and destruction inflicted on the people of Gaza. Horrors that have been funded, in part, by their tuition dollars. 

A lot has been made of how Jewish students are being made to feel unsafe by the subject and tenor of the protests. Given much less coverage are the feelings of Muslim and Arab students on campus. As if their safety and support for their community matters less. To hear that perspective, you’ll have to skip the normal papers of record and go straight to the students themselves. Like Noreen Mayat, a graduating senior and former scheduled speaker at one of Columbia’s graduation events. In an op-ed for The Columbia Spectator, she talks about about her experience:

“I am left with the understanding that to be Muslim at Columbia is to face extreme censorship of your language to appease an audience that doesn’t represent nor respect you. To be Muslim at Columbia is to be racially profiled and doxxed, beg for administrative resources and support, and still receive none. To be Muslim at Columbia is to face Islamophobia on campus—to be spat on and called “terrorists”—and receive no University acknowledgment or recognition. Instead, our experiences are interrogated, as administrators try to poke holes in our narratives, questioning whether they even happened, while others get seats at the table with the University President and the governor of New York, dedicated to making sure they feel seen, heard, and valued.”

In April, The Intercept reported on an investigation by the Department of Education into UMASS Amherst's alleged ambivalence to harassment targeted at Arab and Muslim students. In their coverage of the 49-page complaint, they explain:

“The complaint alleges that a student began appearing at Students for Justice in Palestine and other related off-campus protests, “shouting threats such as ‘Kill all Arabs,’ playing a speaker with a recording of the sounds of bombs and other explosions and attempting to ram student protestors with an electric scooter.” 

The student, whose name is redacted in the copy of the complaint reviewed by The Intercept, also allegedly attempted to intimidate an elderly woman among other people, “while also being extremely racist towards Arabs and Palestinians, stating ‘level Gaza’ and ‘Kill all Arabs.’”

In the previously discussed Michael Powell piece, he couldn’t find the space to give us any of the substance provided by Layla Saliba. But did have the time to talk to a former Columbia student and college professor who had been teaching informal classes at the Columbia encampment. This professor lost his job for what his employer, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, deemed to be antisemitic tweets.

“Zionists are straight Babylon swine. Zionism is beyond a mental illness; it’s a genocidal disease.”

“A bit harsh, maybe?”, Powell offers in response. Within the overall tone of his piece, this reads as evidence that the purported peacefulness and legitimacy of the protest is nothing more than a rapidly dissolving façade, revealing the cruel bigotry that is actually fueling opposition to Israel’s actions.

But at the risk of a whataboutism, I really can’t help but wonder how Powell would grade the harshness of social media posts by Zionists contained in the complaint against UMASS Amherst:

“Some of the posts called the students “classic Islamic barbarism supporters [who] love raping and killing,” and “genocidal barbarian baby decapitator supporters.” One account, named “palisranimals,” reportedly targeted two students, making comments like “where is the best beach in Gaza to build a house next to?! I’ve heard Pali bones make great foundation!” and “every ‘Palestinian’ child in Gaza is actually a terrorist.”

There are other aspects left out of the mainstream coverage, such as the existence of pro-Zionist counter-protests. Protests that feature all of the same vitriol, insensitive slogans, and violence that serve as de-facto indictments against the pro-Palestinian cause. At UCLA, a group of about 50 counter-protesters stormed the barricades of a pro-Palestinian campus encampment. They beat students with improvised weapons, including 2X4s with nails sticking out, launched fireworks at the encampment, and doused protestors with bear spray. 

If you click the above link to the Fox affiliate reporting on that particular melee, pay special attention to the passive wording of the headline “Violence erupts between pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA”, and how it obscures which side started the fight. 

Of course, everyone’s favorite human anti-Semitic trope, George Soros, has entered the chat with the age-old accusation that the Jewish Holocaust survivor is personally funding a disruptive anti-Semitic movement. But it's not just the InfoWars types, Politico is expressing shock at who’s funding the protests. Who’s really behind these college students? Where are they getting their ideas from? Who is giving them all these tents?

We can answer that question right now, it’s just college students.

But what you might not have heard about is the Israeli Intelligence linked group, The Israeli-American Council, who may have been behind the attack against the students at UCLA’s protest. While some like Eric Adams are wondering who is providing pro-Palestinians with $30 tents to camp in, the more interesting question is how counter-protestors were able to erect a huge video screen with which to play graphic footage of the Oct 7th attacks, as well loudspeakers used to conduct psychological warfare against the students by playing disturbing sound effects and loud songs to keep protestors from sleeping at night. 

Police allowed the attack to continue for more than three hours before dispersing the crowd. Twenty-five pro-Palestinian protesters were taken to the hospital for medical attention. This police inaction may seem perplexing given the swiftness they have shown in clearing peaceful student protests elsewhere, until you remember that many police departments enjoy very cozy relationships with the IDF, often training together and sharing equipment and intelligence. 

The Easy Thing

The easy thing to do would be to use these examples of hateful rhetoric and violence, sometimes facilitated by outside groups with direct ties to Israel’s war machine, to make the case that Zionism is an illegitimate cause to protest for. Even if the average supporter of Israel espouses peace and tolerance, those who disrupt order, harass people, use hateful language, and resort to violence in the name of defending Israel’s right to exist have revealed the movement to be an expression of unthinking bigotry and thus it should be shut down. After all, that is the exact argument being made for crushing the pro-Palestinian protests. 

The point I’m trying to make is a bit more lengthy and nuanced than that. What the hang-wringing over campus protests reveals isn't the seedy underbelly of intolerance that animates left protest and political action, but rather which political movement is favored by those with power. And this is just how protests work. One side protests to challenge power, and consequently are labeled agitators and terrorists. Counter-protests formed in reaction and in deference to power are allowed to engage in questionable behaviors.

The Sons of Liberty were seen as heroes and freedom fighters and the Boston Tea Party was treated as a foundational moment in American independence not because they went about their cause the “right way” or sought to have a peaceful dialogue. They are revered because at the time the leaders of their movement included the elite of American colonialist society. People who owned newspapers and thus could make the intellectual case for American freedom while justifying the violence done in its name.

You cannot honestly make the case that disruption and violence only serve to weaken protest movements when this very country was born through violent and disruptive protests. Every successful protest movement in modern history contained within it some elements that were disruptive and violent. You can assert that the violence held back the goals of these movements, that perhaps they would have achieved their projects sooner had people not decided to engage in destructive acts. But we just don’t have the counterfactual example to substantiate that assertion. 

As much as people continue to whitewash the legacy of MLK (although some are beginning to let the mask slip), it's hard to argue that even his brand of non-violent protest wasn’t meant to disrupt the everyday lives of Americans who were content to ignore the plight of Black people under segregation. Maybe quiet and respective dissent, limited to approved areas at approved times, would have been sufficient to make equal rights for Black people, workers, women, and the LGBTQ+ community a reality. But also maybe such deference to the sensibilities of the elite who were actively suppressing them would have made their resistance that much easier to dissipate without a meaningful political solution.

In the end, the only way to end the tensions, disruptions, and violence that are endemic to mass protest movements is a meaningful political solution. This applies not only to the protests but also to the problem of Hamas, itself the direct result of Israel seeking to crush the dissent of the Palestinian people rather than seek a good-faith political solution. For whatever bigotry that one can ascribe to the campus protests by way of provocative slogans and animosity toward Zionists, the fact remains that they have a clear and concise goal and it isn’t the destruction of Israel or the death of Jewish people. They just want their colleges to stop participating in the funding of genocide and apartheid. 

This shouldn’t be a controversial stance. Whether or not you believe the actions of the IDF in Gaza rise to the level of genocide is immaterial. At the very least there is ample evidence that Israel is committing systematized war crimes and collective punishment in retaliation for Hamas’s Oct 7th attack. These include using human shields, posing as medical personnel to infiltrate and assassinate targets seeking medical care, killing people in the act of surrender (including three of the Israeli hostages), torture of prisoners, using bombs to clear tunnels that produce poisonous gasses (which also may have been responsible for killing hostages), the destruction of Gaza's medical infrastructure, destroying sites of cultural significance, the purposeful infliction of mass casualties as to cause demoralization of the populace, the blocking of humanitarian aid (including the murder of aid workers), the killing of journalists, the military strategy of waiting for high-value Hamas targets to go to their homes before bombing them - knowingly killing entire families.  All of these are accompanied by a novel's worth of quotes by the IDF, Israeli government officials, and others substantiating the accusation that their offensive is about much more than self-defense.

These documented war crimes and human rights violations actually make America’s continued military aid to Israel illegal under federal and international law. That students are demanding their universities adhere to federal and international law when their government categorically refuses to do so is more than justified. The use of slogans that some find objectionable does not delegitimize their cause. 

I mean not if you’re being honest. If you don’t care to be honest then it's an easy thing to put the act of protest itself on trial. To cut off America’s nose to spite its face. To foment disgust and derision against the primary mechanism marginalized people have to force entrenched power to the table for true open dialogue and political synthesis. I want people to solemnly remember this moment if Donald Trump regains the presidency in November and Tom Cotton gets to send the national guard after pink pussy hat demonstrators and run over protesters in his cyber truck. 

At some point, we have to recognize that good protest isn’t only the protest we can safely assess in hindsight. That at the moment when the people in charge move to crush dissent with flimsy excuses about preserving order and decorum, they are seeking to inoculate us against the only leverage we have for addressing injustice. When they ignore the violent actions of protestors they like, they are telling you who is allowed to wield violence and who isn’t. We have to realize that protest is not meant to make you comfortable or invite you to a dialogue. You don’t get to feel safe at the expense of others suffering. You may not agree with the goals of any given protest, but that is when you get to exercise your freedom of speech to protest in kind. Make the intellectual case for what Israel is doing. Rally people to your cause, and when some of them jump a bunch of college students and beat them senseless for more than three straight hours, denounce them. Or not, because the goal of the protest is more important than the actions of every single person that supports it.

But what is more dangerous than riots or street fights or mean words, is the idea that people cannot dissent in any way that disrupts the target of their dissent. That condemning the language of the unheard is more important than actually hearing them. Because that is a road to violence on a scale much larger than the drum circles at campus protests, the alienation of people aligned with Israel, or the cancellation of commencement speeches. These violent disruptive outbursts don’t just go away because you crush them with state-sanctioned violence. They survive and fester until they reach a point where political solutions are no longer available. At best they require a constant and repressive police state to hold them in check, at worst they become the Sons of Liberty.

Or they become Hamas.