DON’T DISMISS PALESTINE PROTESTERS
The pro-Palestinian encampment at George Washington University was quiet Monday morning — no bullhorns, no speeches, no chanting. The night before had been loud, as students removed barricades blocking the entrances to University Yard and added dozens of tents to those already there. The useless metal barriers were piled in the center of the quad with a Palestinian flag planted on top.
A handful of campus police officers watched from the periphery. Washington, D.C.’s police department — having declined a request from university officials early Friday morning to forcibly clear the area — had a significant presence in the surrounding neighborhood but mostly kept a low profile. Many of the tents were unoccupied. A few protesters, books in hand, appeared to be cramming for finals.
The hateful antisemitism that has animated some of the campus protests across the nation is outrageous and appalling. I saw none of that during my brief visit to the GWU campus. I also saw no acknowledgment that Hamas had started the Gaza war with a terrorist attack on Israeli civilians — the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. And I saw no displays of sympathy for the scores of brutalized hostages, including five Americans, that Hamas still holds. The student protesters are selective in their outrage.
But don’t ignore them. Don’t dismiss them. The tent cities will eventually go away, one way or another, but I have the feeling that this passion for the Palestinian cause will endure.
I think what we’re seeing may be a generational shift in attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These protests and occupations are happening not just at Ivy League universities such as Columbia and Harvard, but also at public schools such as Ohio State University, Indiana University, Arizona State University and Cal Poly Humboldt. Twelve protesters, most of them students, were arrested Saturday night as police cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. There have been at least 900 arrests so far across the country.
As Buffalo Springfield sang in 1966: “There’s something happening here, but what it is ain’t exactly clear. … Young people speaking their minds are getting so much resistance from behind.”
Those words were written at a time when student-led protests against the Vietnam War were growing nationwide. As Mark Twain is reputed to have said: History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. There are obvious differences between then and now. But there are echoes of that earlier era in the fervor of the pro-Palestinian protests and in the generational divide they illustrate.
A poll conducted in February by the Pew Research Center found that 33% of U.S. adults under 30 said they sympathize more with the Palestinians, while just 14% said they sympathize more with the Israelis. Another 21% said they sympathize equally with both sides. By contrast, all age groups over 30 sympathized more with the Israelis.
A Harvard Public Opinion Project survey conducted last month found that adults under 30 who support a permanent cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war outnumber those who oppose a cease-fire 5 to 1. The poll also found that more young adults believe Israel’s response to the horrific Oct. 7 Hamas attack was unjustified than believe it was justified.
Is antisemitism responsible for these attitudes? Clearly, it plays a role. At some of the campus protests, the word “Zionist” has been used as an epithet in a way that denies the state of Israel’s right to exist. In some cases, Jewish counterprotesters or bystanders have been insulted, treated roughly and even spat upon. All of this is completely unacceptable, and if the pro-Palestinian student movement does not cleanse itself of antisemitic elements, I hope it quickly perishes.
But I don’t think the students in their tent villages are all antisemitic. Many do seem ignorant of important historical events. My father and all of my uncles served in the military during World War II. The Holocaust happened before I was born, so it is history to me — but it is ancient history to the current generation of students. I am also old enough to remember the important and supportive role Jewish allies played in the civil rights movement that delivered African Americans from second-class citizenship.
The students do know some truths, though: that Palestinians were dispossessed of their homes and property; that Israel is strong and the Palestinians are weak; that the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shows no interest in a just peace; and that tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.
Young adults grow up to be middle-aged adults with money and authority. In coming years, the Palestinian cause is likely to have more powerful supporters in the United States than ever before.