by Richard Mellor in California
It is heartwarming to witness students at Yale, Harvard, Columbia and other US universities protesting the Biden regime’s arming and overall support of the horrific genocidal war against the Palestinian people and particularly in Gaza, where some 34,000 Palestinians have been killed with US weapons paid for by the US taxpayer. The same taxpayer that needs to borrow money for health care.
The US mass media is attempting to paint the protests as antisemitic. The New York Times and USA Today makes the point that protesting the Gaza genocide or criticism of Israel is an attack on the Jewish people and their religion; according to these sources, Jews are in fear of their lives on College campuses. “The pro-Palestinian student movement has disrupted campus life, especially for Jewish students. Many have said they no longer feel safe in their classrooms or on university quads as the tone of protests at times has become threatening.”, writes the pro-Zionist New York Times.
But there is no evidence of this. This argument has been debunked by Jewish students, many of who are in the leadership of the protests. Simone Zimmerman, a co-founder of ifnotnow, aJewish organization that opposes the Israeli Apartheid regime and calls for a Cease Fire in Gaza wrote on X:
“Spent the first night of Passover at the student seder in the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia. The Jewish flank of the Palestine solidarity movement is growing and it is so beautiful to behold. Judge for yourself how unsafe these Jewish students look.” Students at Columbia responded to the mass media’s efforts to portray their protests as antsemitic at a live broadcast today.
A great grandfather in the 1905 Russian Revolution
As a retired union activist and socialist, it is wonderful to witness these developments. I was very moved watching the live press conference that the Columbia students held today.
One young Jewish woman talked of her Jewish ancestors and her great grandfather, who was in the Russian Revolution of 1905, fighting against the oppressive Tsarist regime that forced Jews to live in a certain area (the Pale). She also talked of the Jewish Bund. She called it the Labor Bund. I was surprised, as very few young Jews other than leftists have a clue what the Bund was.
The Zionists do not teach about the Bund, which played such a huge role in Jewish life in Europe before the betrayal of Stalinism and the rise of Nazism. Most Jewish workers belonged to the Bund. I’ve met Jewish Israeli tourists in the US, and when I mention the Bund they have no clue what I’m talking about. Joshua Freeman’s book, Working Cass New York, touches on the Bund’s role here in the US.
Another young woman, an Iranian Jew, was very powerful in her remarks and how her Jewish faith drives her to do what she is doing as part of the protests. It was so uplifting for me to watch it. One of the speakers, I can’t recall which, explained how “Jewishness lives on with solidarity with the Palestinians”
Things are happening so fast it’s difficult to determine what will happen next. Columbia University’s administration called the police on protestors and hundreds were arrested, and 120 were arrested on Monday at NYU. However, faculty have come out to defend students and there is increasing anger at what is considered an assault on academic freedom.
Efforts being made to portray protests as ‘antisemitic’
The efforts of the Biden administration and the US body-politic to portray these protests as anti Jewish or antisemitic is not faring well, made difficult by the fact that so many young American Jews are in the forefront of the movement. While in these initial stages, it seems that some Ivy League universities are ahead of the game. One wonders at what point public universities with a more working class base or community colleges might enter the fray.
The prospect of a wider student movement arising is a major concern for the US Congress which is overwhelmingly pro-Zionist for the reasons I have stated many times. The Zionist regime is the only reliable ally the US has in the Middle East, and any defeat for the Zionist regime is a blow to US imperial power and influence, already under threat from China. The US support for Israel has nothing to do with a love for Jews or preserving the Jewish identity; the US ruling class is rife with antisemites.
Having said all this, it is without question that there are antisemites, Jew haters, that will use the movement in support of the Palestinian cause and non-Jews in the movement in particular must give them no quarter. We must take them up in the strongest manner possible. But the students and young people protesting at Columbia and other universities, many of them Jewish, are on the right side of history and their demands include disinvestment from Israel, and amnesty for the students and faculty disciplined or arrested from the demonstrations.
Billionaire Zionists pulls support from Columbia University
These developments have undoubtedly caused concern in the halls of Congress and among the US ruling class in general. The owner of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, himself a Zionist, has pulled his support for Columbia University. “I am deeply saddened at the virulent hate that continues to grow on campus and throughout our country,” Here again, we witness how equating Zionism with Judaism serves the interests of people like Kraft, who is worth about $12 billion.
Great social upheavals tend to open up the class divisions in society and that’s what we are witnessing here. Kraft no doubt has lucrative investments in the Middle East, probably in Israel and Arab states. Fortunately, through the sacrifice of the Palestinian people, and the response to their resistance in Gaza by the Zionists, claiming that the protests are ant-Jewish or that criticism of Israel and the Zionists is antsemitic doesn’t work any more.
As the students on the university campuses take the lead here we should recall that the same situation existed in 1968 when the French students opened up the floodgates of protests. Before long, some ten million French workers ended up occupying their workplaces in what we know as the French General Strike. There was at that time a possibility of a genuine socialist transformation of French society leading to a wider movement to end capitalism.
Inevitable labour battles with capital in the future
I am not saying that is happening here, but the student protests will undoubtedly have an effect on the working class and our organizations. As they occupy campuses, the United Auto Workers union, is attempting to organise more workers at the non-union plants in the US South. I think the International Longshore Workers’ Union is still in negotiations, though we wouldn’t know it with the media blackout and the ILWU leadership’s silence on the matter. But organised labour will not be left out in the inevitable battles with capital that are on the horizon.
Yes, we are a divided country in many ways, as the right wing has made serious headway over the past period, in my view due to the failure of the left to respond to the offensive of capital with an offensive of our own. The trade union leadership, the Dogs That Never Bark, as I call them, have disgracefully done little to change the situation and will no doubt campaign for Biden in the next few months.
It is inevitable that there will be turmoil within the ranks of organised labour at some point in time as the anger that simmers beneath the surface of US society breaks rises to the top.
Let’s give our support to the students on the front lines.
[YouTube video top is from an Al Jazeera report on US campus unrest over Gaza]
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original can be found here.
