NEW YORK – It is easy to ridicule the college protesters in the United States calling for a free Palestine “from the river to the sea.” Students at some of the country’s most expensive and prestigious universities don Palestinian keffiyehs, “liberate” campus buildings, as though they were freedom fighters, and, in the case of at least one young protester, demand food and water from the college authorities as “basic humanitarian aid.”

To be sure, all political demonstrations are a kind of theater. Certainly not everyone protesting against the killing of large numbers of innocent civilians in Gaza is worthy of derision. Using violence against them, whether by the police, or, as happened at UCLA, by mobs, is unconscionable.

The problem is that the “anti-Zionist” cause gaining ground on college campuses is often incoherent. Its ideological underpinnings tend to see everything as interconnected: police brutality against African-Americans, global warming, US imperialism, white supremacy, the history of American slavery, European colonialism, trans- and homophobia (“Queers for Palestine”), and now the Israel-Hamas war. In the words of a Cornell University student, interviewed by the New York Times, “climate justice” is “rooted in the same struggles of imperialism, capitalism – things like that. I think that’s very true of this conflict, of the genocide in Palestine.”

QOSHE - The Privileged Gaza Protesters - Ian Buruma
menu_open
Columnists Actual . Favourites . Archive
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close
Aa Aa Aa
- A +

The Privileged Gaza Protesters

109 0
07.05.2024

NEW YORK – It is easy to ridicule the college protesters in the United States calling for a free Palestine “from the river to the sea.” Students at some of the country’s most expensive and prestigious universities don Palestinian keffiyehs, “liberate” campus buildings, as though they were freedom fighters, and, in the case of at least one young........

© Project Syndicate


Get it on Google Play