Weekly Briefing: Imagine the Freedom Riders being accused of hating white people…

Just imagine that during the civil rights protests in the United States, the media had decided to focus on whether there was anti-white racism in the busloads of Freedom Riders, or in Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or in the lunch-counter sit-ins by SNCC.

Crazy, huh? But that’s what is happening now in the mainstream media and the political establishment over the massive protests by young Americans of Israel’s wholesale destruction of Gaza. From Biden to the New York Times to the Congress to the cables, the main issue is, Look at all the antisemitism in these pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

The powers-that-be are coming up with strict rules for How you can criticize Israel. Even as Israel is carrying out a genocide that has killed over 34,000 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, using American weapons.

The New York Times says that it’s antisemitic to criticize Zionism and the concept of a Jewish state, you can only criticize Netanyahu–

Some of the critics of Israel have appeared to struggle to distinguish opposition to the policies of the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and what many Jewish leaders see as antisemitism unleashed over the past six months, which, in their view, has fueled many of the protests. Jewish students have said they felt threatened by the demonstrations on many campuses.

On CNN Dana Bash issues the only-criticize-Netanyahu-rule– and then likens pro-Palestinian demonstrators to Nazis.

Protesting the way the Israeli government, the Israeli prime minister is prosecuting the retaliatory war against Hamas is one thing. Making Jewish students feel unsafe at their own schools is unacceptable. And it is happening, way too much, right now… What you just saw [scene of alleged intimidation at UCLA protest] is 2024, in Los Angeles. Hearkening back to the 1930s in Europe. And I do not say that lightly. The fear among Jews in this country is palpable right now.

While her colleague Jake Tapper says that Jewish students are unsafe at Columbia and Tulane; and on the PBS News Hour, David Brooks says that the Columbia University protests against Israel “are hate-filled and bigoted.”

Meantime, the House passed an “Antisemitism Awareness Act” that labels many criticisms of Israel as antisemitic.

The irony here is that the blue-state base of the Democratic Party, and of the liberal cable stations too, is way more thoughtful than the talking heads.

As Pew reported last month, Democrats by a nearly two to one margin sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis, and by five-to-two, disapprove of Israel’s methods in this war. That’s why the protests are happening, because of Israel’s conduct. That’s why Biden faces “wholesale repudiation” by young voters.

That’s why James Carville says the students speak for the base, and why Bernie Sanders said this week that Biden risks LBJ’s fate in 1968– his own “Vietnam” of political implosion. No wonder the cause of nonviolent boycott and divestment is advancing, no wonder some university administrations are agreeing to discuss their portfolios with the angry students– even as the crackdown on protests has resulted in over 2400 arrests at 43 campuses.

Rashid Khalidi spoke for the liberal/left American street when he addressed his school, Columbia University, after the arrests this week. The school should be ashamed, he said. The students were in a great American tradition, rising to oppose a genocidal war. The student body and faculty are largely on their side, and history will honor them. Khalidi went on (as transcribed by Common Dreams):

This is about a genocide being carried out with American money and with American weapons against a people that has been living under occupation for generation after generation after generation. That’s what it’s really about. That’s what the students were about and that’s what Faculty and Staff for justice in Palestine are about.

This is the conscience of a nation speaking through your kids—through young people who are risking their futures, who are risking suspension, expulsion, and criminal arrest in order to wake people up in this country. It’s absolutely essential.

Public opinion is already with us. It’s just the politicians, the media, and the trustees and administration of this university who are blind, deaf, and dumb to the demand of a moral imperative coming from our students.

Many see what Khalidi sees. And that is why this movement is building, despite the smears.

Thanks for reading,

Phil Weiss

h/t Donald Johnson for Jim Crow analogy, and Terry Weber.