Gaza and the turmoil on American Universities
I am no Fareed Zakaria, but I am going to share my views on two subjects, Gaza and the turmoil on American Universities, because why should only local law enforcement have rocks and bottles filled with urine be thrown at them?
I am leaving comment fields throughout because I am certain many of you will think I am either a Zionist or an anti-Semite
or a Hamas apologist or just plain dumb as a brick in the Pyramid at Giza, so please share your view with us.
First, Gaza. The Biden/Blinken approach is the only workable approach.
Hamas must go. Use a scalpel not a chainsaw. Spare civilians.
The corrupt West Bank leadership must go.
Netanyahu must go.
The entire region must be engaged in creating a two-state solution.
The entire region, including much of the Arab world, must be engaged in creating a two-state solution that ensures Israelis feel secure.
In the recent ordinance exchange with Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan both participated in the defense of Israel. Did Hamas instigate the massacre because several Arab nations were beginning to see the benefits of relations with Israel?
The continued horror benefits too many forces in the region and nations beyond the region such as Putin’s Russia and China.
With this approach, the Biden administration, working with all the significant players in the region and pressuring the Israeli government, has chosen the most challenging path forward. A path that rejects generalities and the favored oversimplifications of the complexities of the region. A path that asks Netanyahu and his extreme right government to surrender the only strategy that guarantees their political survival. A path that asks Israel’s Arab neighbors to assist in securing and building a Palestinian state for a people they have only supported with lip service and ordinance when they served as irritants to Israel.
If Gaza and the turmoil on our university campuses are not resolved by the time of the general election in 2024 the Republicans will benefit from the ongoing chaos.
As for the Pro-Palestinian protests on American Universities I like to believe I am a purist when it comes to the first amendment and free speech. Even when it is repellent, save for speech that calls for the violent extermination of a people and can be demonstrated to incite violence.
In the seventies I drew anti-war cartoons. I stood on the sidelines of protests. I was angry and disappointed in my nation’s participation. The outrage expressed by today’s students is familiar and I am grateful they are politically engaged about any issue. I am saddened when I see some do not understand or see the value in civil disobedience.
The Biden administrations has called for respecting the free speech of students balanced with a call for the universities to restore order on their campuses.
This is the balanced prescription. Here the Biden administration has chosen the most challenging path forward.
On the right, Trump, always happy to lie to gin up fear and outrage among his ignorant base, at a recent rally suggested that Biden is inviting Islamic terror into America and that our universities have been infiltrated by anti-American Muslim radicals. It doesn't take a genius to see how attractive these arguments are to his thugs and dolts. And like the issue of immigration, he is skillfully vilifying the "other" and distracting voters from the issue of abortion which is his kryptonite.
In both instances political forces around the world are swinging chainsaws at each other at a time when smart scalpels are required.
In my youth, with two brothers in Vietnam, I opposed our immoral and futile war. What I failed to realize in my naïveté was that America is essentially a plutocracy controlled by radical conservative financial interests. Today these interests subsidize right-wing media and anti-democratic religious fanatics and Trumpian nihilists who all work together to dismantle regulations, control the Courts and statehouses and slash taxation on the wealthy to fund the social welfare state.
I heard a pro-Palestinian activist enthusiastically layout his optimistic vision, citing the anti-war movements protests at the Democratic convention in 1968 as bringing about a dramatic change in the Democratic Party, resulting in the nomination in 1972 of George McGovern running on an anti-war platform.
This old hippy’s head spun like Linda Blair’s topper in the “Exorcist”.
The young starry-eyed Palestinian activist then wrongly asserted that this brought about the end of the war.
Upon reflection from the perch of old age, recalling McGovern was crushed in a landslide by Richard Nixon, I would argue that we young activists handed America over to the reactionary Republicans like Richard Nixon, who ran on a successful law and order campaign.
Vietnam was lost not because of significant domestic opposition, but because we were on the wrong side of history. How significant and self-important we progressives thought we were, convinced we were changing the world for the better. Congress, after more than a decade, simply gave up on funding their support for a corrupt government, a kleptocracy that collapsed and fled from the persistent forces of anti-colonial, anti-imperial nationalism.
And in the meantime, back here at home, the reactionary right exploited the images of our protests to frighten middle-class voters into believing their nation was under assault by its feral children who were duped by the commies.
If my progressive friends would venture over to watching Fox News today, they would see how exuberant the right is about the protests on campuses, which are characterized as “lawless protests led by outside agitators on our woke campuses”. This predictable rhetoric echoes the rhetoric that emanated from the Republican convention in 1968 in response to the anti-war riots in Chicago at the democratic convention. That convention nominated the vile and corrupt Richard Nixon who handily defeated Hubert Humphrey, a great American liberal who was handicapped by his association with the Johnston administration.
The Palestinian protesters calling for universities to end their investments in defense related industries must acknowledge how complicated divestiture is.
In this age of distraction, coupled with the subtraction of traditional mainstream news outlets from our nation’s media landscape, only a very small minority chooses to comprehend the complexity of these issues. A majority on the extremes are happy to be spoon fed generalities they can parrot to each other in order to sound informed and assertive.
Does the average American knows his Gaza from his West Bank?
That not every Arab nation is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause?
That the history of the establishment of Israel in 1948 was complex and violent?
That the entire modern Middle East remains divided into arbitrary borders and divisions that were created by colonial powers that did not respect the tribalism of the people they conquered?
Look as far as the debacle of desert storm to be reminded how ignorant the west is of the complexities of the region.
Does the average American knows that Netanyahu and Hamas have been at each other's throats for over two decades and that both have benefited politically from each other’s fear mongering, and vilification of the other? That this cruel war was essentially inexorable?
Does the average American grasp the simple reality that every action generates a reaction, that a near genocidal assault on an enemy will only breed more terrorists? And that this seesaw back-and-forth can bleed a region for centuries?
That the enmity between the West Bank settlers and the native Palestinians, exacerbated by fanatical forces can only escalate? Once a cycle of violence begins it is nearly impossible to ask a population to renounce blood vengeance, drink the bloodbath and toast peace.
Half a million perished in our own Civil War. Has that conflict been forgotten?
50 million perished in Europe in the second world war. Was Nazism forever vanquished even the annihilation of Germany?
Both left wounds that are salted today by Donald Trump, who nurses the demented spirit of the lost confederacy and has revived Nazi rhetoric, calling for blood retribution.
Biden has chosen the difficult tightrope paths with the trial of the horror of Gaza and the turmoil on American campuses. The word “nuance” is seen by many as the language of weakness rather than strength.
In such perilous times I fear for what this means for the election of 2024 when generalities are so appealing to an electorate.
You are making ENTIRELY reasonable suggestions - I'm sure that will rile all sorts of people up because logic and reason have been sorely lacking in our public discussions.
Comment 3: Thanks. Sometimes in conversation with friends, I suggest that the solution will not only need a scalpel, but also surgical tweezers. I've been to Israel, have friends and family there, have been to the border regions, including near Gaza. I was there the summer that Israel brought their last two settlement colonies out of Gaza. I've been to South Africa, and the overlap with apartheid is evident to me. Our friends and family members have been in streets demanding Bibi GO NOW ever since his "court restructuring" BS.