Hey, I grew up in the Sixties, I was conscious and paying attention back in 1968, when the urgent, divisive cause of the moment – getting America out of Vietnam – seemed unambiguously just, and the radical student protesters appeared thoroughly righteous, even romantic, as they stood their ground and raged against the establishment power-brokers on the other side of the broad generation gap. There was even some nexus between life on the besieged campuses and the South-East Asian war the students deplored: many universities were taking Pentagon money to conduct all manner of general but nevertheless war-related research, and of course many campuses allowed the R.O.T.C. and military recruiters to set up shop, besides which the protesting kids were liable themselves to be drafted the minute they graduated.
Sure, in retrospect, the over-abundance of revolutionary rhetoric and iconography, all those Che Guevara T-Shirts and the like, the simple-minded endorsement of the expansionist, essentially neo-Stalinist thug regime in North Vietnam, and the glamourizing of the Communists’ brutal Viet Cong guerrilla allies, all seem a little, well, dumb-assed. There was no justice in the Communist scheme to conquer South Vietnam, no matter whether there was any real geopolitical, or for that matter moral, justification for trying to thwart it, given the cost in blood. Anyway, if the kids really wanted to do something to end the war, it would have made more sense to protest outside military bases, at the Pentagon, and in front of Congress and the White House (which, to be fair, many also did), rather than seize university buildings and hold the resident Deans hostage, but, geez, cut ‘em some slack, they were young, you know? Who can’t recall getting all worked into a lather when they were young?
Remember these guys?
They presented themselves as freedom-fighters, defenders of the down-trodden, and advocates for peace. Peace is good, is it not? War is bad. Right? Who could argue, and why? We all thought they were on the right side of history.
Yeah, well, I’m an old fuck now, and I’m no longer such an admirer of youthful zeal and utter certainty, which usually translates into infuriatingly simple-minded, black-and-white interpretations of complex situations, utterly lacking in nuance and perspective, often largely devoid of historical knowledge or factual underpinnings, and sometimes (often?) veering into undemocratic, illiberal, intolerant extremism. This was true then (look up the Weather Underground), and it’s sure as hell true now. Just look at what’s been going on at university campuses all across North America.
I know, I know, free speech, the marketplace of ideas, the horrors of the current situation in Gaza, the heroes and villains in the drama surrounding the tragically unrealized dream of an equitable two-state solution, believe me, I’m well versed in the situation. Oh boy, am I well versed. If you’re not a first-time reader of the tortured musings posted weekly to this overwrought blog, you know damned well that I’m fully cognizant of the bigger picture here, and the competing claims of the warring parties for both justice and revenge. The thing is, it’s not so simple. In fact, I can’t think of anything more dauntingly complex and fraught with ambiguity than the current situation in the Middle East, nor any situation less amenable to pat answers and one-sided narratives, and what I’m hearing out of the mouths of the relative babes chanting their sing-songy slogans at places like Columbia and UCLA leaves me somewhere on the continuum between white-hot rage and abject despair.
Look, if you want to be both saddened and frustrated with the endless strife in and around what some folks persist in calling the Holy Land, then join the club. If you want to contend that as a response to the horrifying, murderous ferocity of what Hamas did to 1,200 innocent Israeli citizens on October 7, the Israeli invasion of Gaza is doing nobody any good, and ought to pause, then brother, I’m listening, so long as you also want Hamas to lay down arms and release whatever surviving hostages it still holds captive. If you want to lament the policies of the Netanyahu regime on the West Bank, and plead with the U.S. Government to do more to push Israel back into the diplomacy of an eventual two state solution, more power to you, and I couldn’t agree more. And if you want to set up a tent city on a plot of university property and make all these points as publicly as you can, well, O.K., so long as you’re going to be peaceable and civilized about it; at some point, it’ll be reasonable to expect you to pack up your tents, but for now, fine, we can all be nice and cool-headed and see what happens. Go ahead, too, and show your solidarity with the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people by waving their flag, that’s not anything that needs to get anybody’s shorts in a knot, not in itself.
If it’ll help us to arrive at some sensible ideas about what should come next, let’s even accept that Hamas, one of the ugliest and most implacably evil terrorist organizations ever to befoul the world scene, simply is what it is, like it’s a force of nature, and focus our debate and moral judgment only upon Israeli policy. It’s grotesquely unfair, but as a purely intellectual exercise, let’s imagine that only the Israelis are obliged to behave in accordance with civilized norms. Let’s think long and hard about the Israeli missteps that played their part in setting the stage for the ungodly atrocities of October 7, what Israel could have done better to avoid this horror show, and what the Israelis should now be doing about it, and let’s acknowledge that the human costs of the military operation now ongoing in Gaza are sufficient to upset anybody half-way decent, even if the acts which provoked it were almost incomprehensibly evil, and demanded some sort of response. Let’s deplore violence and think about a way out of this terrible gridlock, accepting, even, that it’s all on Israel to take the leap of faith and make the first move, despite everything.
Do not, however, come at me with this:
This shit is straight-up anti-semitism, and it’s frighteningly, unspeakably vile. “From the river to the sea” is the pro-Hamas chant of those who’d seek a final solution to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse through the eradication of the Jewish state, and, impliedly, the mass slaughter of the Jewish people. The full chant is “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”; the river is the Jordan, and the sea is the Mediterranean, and in between is the little nation of Israel, still fighting, after going on eight long, bloody decades, for its right to exist. One wonders, do these students even know what they’re saying? Do they care? And what are we supposed to infer from a banner that reads “By any means necessary”? What, exactly, is to be accomplished by doing whatever it takes, and what sort of murder and mayhem is thus in the offing? Or how about the van pictured above, which was parked at the entrance to grounds seized by protestors at UCLA? That’s a goddam Nazi swastika nestled inside the Star of David, and the writing spread across the vehicle’s exterior repeats numerous, disgusting, age-old tropes about the supposed international Jewish conspiracy, horrific lies that can be traced straight back to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Here’s the sign they hung out a window shortly after occupying Hamilton Hall at Columbia:
I suppose that to these kids, a new, global Intifada might sound like a glorious campaign of resistance, but in the real world, where actions have consequences, Intifada has always involved terrorist attacks upon unarmed civilians. This isn’t empathetic, humanitarian protest against violence. It’s a call to arms. It’s an exhortation to begin again with the throwing of bombs into restaurants and bus shelters. The ones screaming most shrilly about a Palestinian genocide, which, I must stress for the umpteenth time in this space, is not happening, are themselves coming awfully close to expressly advocating genocide against the Jewish people.
It’s not all talk, either. From the very beginning, reports have flowed of protestors, invariably masked, harassing and verbally assaulting Jewish students and faculty, blocking their access, hurling taunts and insults, all on the deeply racist assumption that all Jews are fully on board with the policies of the Netanyahu government, and fully endorse the military action in Gaza. Then, of course, there’s this:
Sorry, but if you’re going to smash your way into university buildings, then barricade yourselves in, proclaiming yourselves occupiers, you can frigging well take your subsequent well-earned lumps. I’m supposed to feel like somebody’s civil rights were being violated when the police were called in to clear them all out? I’m supposed to think it was some sort of violation of academic norms to respond to the student’s’ Illegal acts with lawful authority? What, the seizure and occupation of university buildings should have been seen as an opportunity to open up a meaningful dialogue, or some such shit? Gee, now that you’ve broken in and taken over our premises by force, let’s have a nice talk and negotiate, each of us imbued with the spirit of compromise?
My ass, frankly.
The students who took Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, who incidentally wanted a commitment from the Administration to supply them with food and drink for the duration (“they want the revolution to be catered?” quipped David Frum), said they were trying to pressure the university into divesting from Israel, and of course felt entitled to smash things and take over real estate when they didn’t get their way. As usual, the demand is simple-minded, and ignores easily understood realities on the ground. Most universities maintain vast investment portfolios managed by third parties, who put the money into all manner of companies, nearly all of which, in one way or another, will have operations in Israel, since almost all major Western businesses do. As was noted in a recent article in Time:
While the concept of divestment from Israel appears straightforward—selling off shares of companies with ties to the country—its practical implications are far more complex. Divesting from Israel would mean universities reassessing their investment portfolios to identify and potentially divest from companies implicated in Israel’s war effort, such as supporting Israeli settlements in occupied territories or supplying equipment used in military operations. Some experts in the financials of higher education say that divesting could be a lengthy and complicated process, since most universities hold diversified portfolios managed by external investment managers that can’t provide easy identification of which companies are connected to Israel.“There’s no guarantee that any fund a university owns has no connection to Israel,” Marsicano says. “It’s a near impossible task, just functionally getting it done.”He adds that it would be particularly complicated for universities to divest from any company that does business in Israel, since nearly every major American multinational company does business in the country. Endowment managers also have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interests of the organization they oversee, which could be a “tough pill to swallow,” Marsicano says.
https://time.com/6974063/divestment-explained-campus-protest-israel/
What exactly does it mean to be “implicated in Israel’s war effort”, anyway? I’m sure the Israeli Defence Forces consume a lot of Coca Cola and the like; should shares in the soft drinks industry get the heave? A lot of military vehicles run on tires, rather than treads – there goes Goodyear, I guess. Wait, do we sell socks and underwear into Israel, and does any of that make its way into soldiers’ kits? I’m not exaggerating with these examples. At various universities, students have called for divestment in Google, because it supplies cloud computing services to Israeli military personnel, and Amazon, which apparently has contracts with the Israeli government. Plus, Israeli military personnel probably use Amazon to buy stuff for around the house when they’re not in the field, so there you go.
It’s all so confoundingly stupid. These people are, legally, adults. Yet they reason like eight-year-olds.
I ran across a very thoughtful post on Twitter a few days ago, written by this fellow:
He went to UCLA in hopes of meeting with the protestors, and seeing if they were open to some reasonable conversation. His conclusions:
I can see how some students, certainly those who are Jewish, or don’t support the protesters and their message, would feel unsafe or intimidated. I felt that tension all around the campus with the masked students and the blocked entryways and barricaded areas – and it was strange to feel uneasy just wearing a t-shirt that promoted peace. Though I want to be absolutely clear: no one attacked me or said anything to me about the t-shirt despite being aggressively eye-mugged by pretty much everyone. Yet, I didn’t feel safe at all to actually have any real or detailed conversations with students about my views, Hamas, Gaza, or pragmatic paths forward. I genuinely feared being jumped by maskless students for simply expressing a view that differed from theirs…There was no room or space for meaningful discussions, engagement, and exploring the building of a sustainable, broad movement with realistic and articulable goals, strategies, tactics, and sophisticated messaging. The slogans, goals, and ethos are based on maximalist, zero-sum aspirations that will never achieve anything for the Palestinian cause. It was clear that a small group of students and organizations developed their platform, and subsequently, the masses are being herded into following it, seemingly mindlessly and without a deep understanding of Gaza, Hamas, Israel, foreign policy, and all the relevant issues.
This from a Palestinian who grew up in Gaza. The full post is well worth a read:
Mona Charon, writing for the sane, centrist-conservative publication The Bulwark, had similar observations about the goings-on at Columbia:
The protesters are disciplined to the point of seeming robotic. Protesting students usually love to spout off to reporters. Not these. When journalists attempt to interview students, they decline to speak and refer questions to the lone spokesperson. Protesting students tend to be an unruly lot. Not these. As the Atlantic reported, dozens of the protesters repeat what the leader says word for word. When three Jewish Columbia students approached the enclosure, the leader, adorned like many at these protests in a black-and-white keffiyeh, announced, “Attention, everyone! We have Zionists who have entered the camp! We are going to create a human chain where I’m standing so that they do not pass this point and infringe on our privacy.”…Some students may be attending these protests because they’re upset by the images coming out of Gaza and want the suffering to stop. But the organizers and many of their enablers are not against violence per se. Not at all. They oppose violence only against certain victims. Not only did they not protest Hamas’s October 7 atrocities against Israelis, some celebrated them. At an October 8, 2023 rally in Times Square sponsored by a local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, while Israelis were still counting their dead, some rallygoers carried signs saying “Decolonization is not a metaphor” and “By any means necessary.” Other pro-Hamas protesters emblazoned their posters with images of the para-gliders Hamas terrorists used to infiltrate Israel. It’s not known whether the Columbia student leaders participated in that Times Square demonstration, but one Columbia protest leader, Khymani James, told a disciplinary hearing that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/gaza-protests-columbia-university
It’s not yet clear the extent to which the students are being led around by their nose rings by “outside agitators”, which is always a convenient thing for those in positions of authority to claim in these situations, though there seems little doubt, by all accounts, that a non-student element with dubious motives is at least influencing the belief system adopted by the protestors. One way or another, it seems certain, well-meaning kids are being led down the primrose path of deliciously self-satisfying rebellion by people with their own agendas, whose primary motivation, I’ll wager, is simply to sow division and strife.
The hell of it is, it’s been so damnably easy to work these students into a righteous fury, almost devoid of all understanding. I don’t know why they’re so readily manipulated, or even, given what I remember of 1968, if this is anything new. Maybe every generation is hungry for a cause, and primed to be swept away in the passion of a certain moment, should that moment present itself. Maybe everything looks simpler and easier to characterize when seen through eyes only 19 or 20 years old, and always has, though honestly, as well as I can remember, that’s not the way it was for me upon my first exposure to post-secondary education. I remember being overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of even the most basic problems of public policy and international relations, studying under professors who knew how to explain the many factors and competing interests at play. I also remember the extremist zealots on campus, handing out leaflets in the cause of easy answers; no word of a lie, back in the day the blinkered idealists had settled upon the peculiarly backwards, isolationist regime established in Enver Hoxha’s Communist Albania as the model society, and Paradise on Earth. I used to argue with them. I felt armed by what I’d just recently been taught to challenge the logical fallacies and factual inaccuracies that underpinned their laughably specious arguments.
Perhaps the education I was receiving was qualitatively different, somehow, maybe a flukey product of its time and place?
It certainly seems as if today’s college students don’t know enough about history and world affairs to place anything in context, or understand anything to the level necessary to form reasoned opinions, and that nobody’s trying to fill them in.
What we have here, seems to me, is a bunch of privileged young people jumping on a bandwagon without any real understanding of what’s going on, and what might come of the rhetoric they’re spouting, eager to feel important, excited to be making what they imagine to be a meaningful impact, swept up in emotion, and swallowing whole whatever bullshit is being fed to them by bad actors acting in bad faith. They’re nothing but a bunch of easy marks, really. They’re loving the spotlight, loving the idea of wielding influence, and desperate to avoid the ugly truths that would make them seem foolish in their own eyes. They’re an embarrassment. Yes, organized protest involving civil disobedience can sometimes be constructive. Sometimes – one thinks immediately of the civil rights struggles of the Sixties – it can be absolutely vital, and as right as right can be.
It can also be fatuous, self-indulgent, and anti-social. When young people march around chanting the slogans of murderous, genocidal terrorists, so sure of themselves and the complete infallibility of their own blinkered perceptions, they’re not acting nobly in support of a noble cause. They’re just a bunch of assholes dabbling in things they aren’t equipped in the least to understand, lacking the humility, and the self-awareness, to know when to shut their gaping traps and learn something before they start kicking down doors. Untroubled certainty when thinking about problems like those presented to us today in the Middle East is nothing but the hallmark of profound, hubristic ignorance.
Oh, and if you’re going to be applauding sentiments like this on university property, as you harass passers-by, and seize buildings:
…then the Hell with you, buddy. They seem to think that paying their tuition means they own the joint, and can do as they please. I’m thinking the time’s come to disabuse them of this grave misapprehension. You won’t hear any wailing around here if they all find out, in the wake of their ridiculous misbehaviour, that they’ve all been booted out of school. Let them go work for a living, see how they like it. I’m done with indulging them, just because they’re young. Honest to God. Look, I was young too, way back when. I can assure you, I wasn’t about to align myself with extremists and ideologues in situations where I knew damned well I didn’t have the most rudimentary understanding of the issues. Not even when I was an 18-year-old naif. If today’s university students lack the intellectual tools to grasp how much it is that they simply don’t know, well, too bad, but no sympathy. If the only way they’re going to learn anything is the hard way, so be it.
Expel them.
Meanwhile, some context:
the needlefish 