16.05.2024 Author: Abbas Hashemite

Student Protests: A Test for US Democratic Values

Student Protests: A Test for US Democratic Values

The United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany are considered among the staunchest supporters and accomplices in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has committed numerous war crimes in the occupied territory. More than 34500 Palestinians have been killed in the persistent Israel-Hamas war. Israeli forces have even targeted and attacked workers of welfare organizations working in the occupied territory. Due to these war crimes, the apartheid state of Israel is facing global criticism from people belonging to almost every stratum of life – including the Jewish community. The United States has continuously been supporting the war crimes of the IDF, remorselessly. It is responsible for almost 70 percent of supplies of arms and weapons to Israel, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The US has vetoed the UN resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza multiple times.

This sparked global criticism and backlash against the Biden administration’s policies. The Biden administration was already under severe pressure due to its failed Ukraine policy and Russian successes in Ukraine. The US presidential elections are merely six months away, and growing resentment among US citizens against Joe Biden is the biggest impediment to his re-election as the US president. According to a poll conducted in December 2023, almost 57 percent of American citizens disapprove of the incumbent president’s handling of the Palestine issue. Moreover, a recent poll published by CNN shows that 81 percent of the American youth is against the Biden administration’s policies on the Israel-Hamas war. The Michigan state primary has already raised solemn concerns for democrats and Biden over his reelection. Young Democrat voters have also warned him that his re-election will be in jeopardy if he does not change his policies on issues including the Israeli war crimes in Gaza. In March 2024, almost 100 donors of the American Democrat party have also warned Biden of similar threats. They held that the burgeoning anger among people against his policies would help Trump in the 2024 Presidential elections.

Youth, irrespective of their ethnicity and religion, have long been protesting against the genocide of innocent Palestinian civilians by the IDF in the US and all around the globe. American youth in universities have recently taken the lead by protesting against the US support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Many American universities are seeing huge protests in support of the innocent civilians in Gaza, demanding a ceasefire and divestment of these universities in pro-Israel companies and firms. Moreover, the students are also demanding the universities to divulge the list of the firms in which they have invested. These protests are reminiscent of the American protests which helped in concluding the Vietnam War. The Biden administration and the American media’s policies towards these protests have once again exposed the so-called liberal values of the self-proclaimed champions of human rights in the world.

The Biden administration is dealing with these protests reminds of a dictatorship. More than 2500 peaceful protestors have been arrested by the US police from different universities. Biden is fallaciously and shamelessly accusing the peaceful protestors of spreading antisemitism and threatening the Jewish students on the campuses. The Western media is also playing its part in misrepresenting the demands of the peaceful protestors on the different university campuses of the United States. The US media outlets are endorsing the Israeli war crimes by uttering the same rhetoric that the Biden and Netanyahu administrations are using against the Palestinian and the student demonstrators in the US. The mainstream media is blaming the student demonstrators for using hate speech, restoring antisemitic libel, and endorsing terrorism. The Western media seers consider the student demonstrators as “terrorists in training,” “antisemites at work,” and “Nazi mobs in making.”

This does not only reveal the truth about the independence of the Western media, and its compliance with the democratic values, it also exposes the Israeli influence over the Western media. However, this misrepresentation of the facts by the Western media is creating an adverse impact on the Israeli narrative. It took the Zionist state months to steal the Semitic identity. The Western media and pro-Israel leaders always portrayed the Zionist state as a victim by labeling anyone speaking against its atrocities in the occupied land as antisemitic. They even tried to exclude Arabs from the Semitic group by propagating a fallacious narrative that only the Zionists are Semitic. However, it is imperative to make it clear that only Zionists, not all the Jewish people, as the orthodox Jews are against the idea of the creation of the state of Israel, are to be blamed for stealing the Semitic identity. The current media campaign of labeling the student protests as antisemitic has exposed the reality to the Western people that speaking against the atrocities of the Zionist state is not antisemitism. It has debilitated the conflation of Semitic identity and Israel.

Now, more people are aware of the lies and propaganda being spread by the Western media. Moreover, these protests have sown the seeds of a resilient generation that will keep haunting the supporters of genocide for the rest of their lives. In addition, this generation would also hamper the military operations of the US forces against civilians in other countries of the world. These protests have once again exposed the reality of democratic values in the United States. It is not only about the incumbent US president. History posits that almost all US presidents have been following a similar policy regarding Muslims and diverging ideologies. However, Biden and the Democrat party will have to face solemn consequences for their harsh policies towards the student demonstrators and the American support for the killing of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, including women and children.

 

Abbas Hashemite – is a political observer and research analyst for regional and global geopolitical issues. He is currently working as an independent researcher and journalist, exclusively for “New Eastern Outlook”.

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