Pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have rocked American campuses for weeks appeared to be running out of steam Friday after being dispersed by police and mass arrests of participants. The US government later issued a warning to the protesters, but there are also indications that this wave of outrage and protest over the war in Gaza could pose a serious problem for Joe Biden in the November election.
Early in the morning, the police smoothly broke up a protest camp at New York University (NYU), at the request of the university. And on other campuses, the police have intervened in recent days, such as at Columbia University in New York and at UCLA. According to the American media, almost 2,000 people were arrested in total.
Beginning on April 17, a wave of protests in support of the people of Gaza swept across American campuses from the Atlantic coast to California, recalling, albeit on a smaller scale, the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s. that they call for an end to the conflict in Gaza, these students ask the universities to cut ties with Israel and to withdraw from all investments related to this country.
They also denounce the almost unconditional support of the United States for its Israeli ally. Israel is engaged in a massive offensive in the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attack.
In a brief speech Thursday, President Joe Biden, who has long been silent on the protests, insisted that “order must prevail.” This brought him both criticism from the right, who considered him “too complicit”, and indignation from supporters of the demonstrators.
Biden’s chances for another term could be hurt
“There is a right to protest, not a right to cause chaos,” said the American president, candidate for a new term in the presidential elections in November. According to CNN, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona sent a letter to university leaders saying he was “incredibly concerned about reports of anti-Semitic hatred toward students on some campuses.”
The demonstrations reignited the debate in the United States, already tense and even violent since the Hamas attack, on freedom of expression, anti-Zionism and what constitutes anti-Semitism.
On the one hand, students and professors accuse their universities of trying to censor political speech; on the other hand, several personalities, including members of Congress, claim that the militants fuel the fire of anti-Semitism. This issue could affect Joe Biden’s race for the White House.
“This could be Biden’s Vietnam,” Sen. Bernie Sanders warned on CNN. “I’m really afraid that President Biden is putting himself in a position where he’s alienating not just his young people, but a large part of the Democratic base,” he added. Bernie Sanders is known as a former opponent, but also a friend, of Joe Biden and for his positions slightly to the left of the generally extremely conservative American political class, including the Democrats and Joe Biden, until now a moderate conservative president.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump described the demonstrators as “radical left-wing lunatics” who must be “stopped now”. Trump is known for inflammatory rhetoric on the subject and for calling all his Democratic political opponents “neo-Marxist radicals”.
The mobilization inspired pro-Palestinian activists from all over the world, both in France, at the prestigious Parisian school Sciences Po, and at McGill University in Canada and UNAM in Ciudad de Mexico.
Editor: Adrian Dumitru
Tags: Bidens Vietnam Chaos mass arrests American campuses change dynamics election
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