Contemporary protests are significantly different than those from, say, the Civil Rights Era.
What passes for protest these days is little more than a public temper tantrum, displayed as performance art. These seem less about the subject and more about the performance. Thanks to shadowy enabling organizations that provide funding, there is significant professional staging, professionally printed signage and pamphlets, and I have even seen official coms and PR people designated.
If it seems the current “Pro Palestine” protests are losing steam – they are.
Unlike Occupy Wall Street protests targeting corporate “greed,” ANTIFA protests "fascism", and BLM protests racism, the college radicals on campuses today are protesting Israel.
The difference is where in the OWS, ANTIFA and BLM situations, the protests were against greed, fascism and racism, all faceless entities.
During the fight for civil rights, the KKK was the face of racism.
Israel also has a face, and the Israeli people have a history of trying to accommodate their enemies to the extent those actions did not put Israel at risk. They have given up land for peace, have integrated Arabs and Muslims in Israel’s society, economics, and government.
Israel exists in a very tough neighborhood and faces terrorist movements on all sides that expressly state their goals include the eradication of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Just because there are people in the US who do not support a secure border does not mean that the people of Israel should follow suit. Israel would not exist if they did not deal harshly with their enemies who refuse to consider peace.
And no matter how much the global support of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran tries, there was no war in Gaza until Israel was attacked on 10/7.
Time has a way of blunting raw emotion and replacing feelings with facts and evidence. The more time passes, the more difficult it is to deny facts right in front of you and eventually the air temperature around an issue falls as reality begins to replace manufactured outrage.
That is what is happening now, the hot air is being let out of the antisemitic “Free Palestine” balloon.
Now that the students have had an “Oh, shit!” moment and realize they are risking graduation, internships, and even future careers, they want to do an Emily Litella “Never mind!” as they fade to black.
That is why the student protesters are negotiating to avoid suspensions, expulsions and further sanctions the universities or communities might enforce. They want to melt back into the student body and disappear to avoid punishment.
That is nothing less than an admission of failure of a “cause” that never caught fire because it was based on fake outrage and an alternative reality.
Of course, there will always be hard core resistance. There will always be those who refuse to recognize the facts on the ground or simply have invested too much in a position from which they cannot back away.
Unfortunately for them, truth cannot be reengineered.
As they say, “Truth will out.”
This is that.
There is a basis for the protests with regard to the Israeli conduct of this now 7-month war. They have largely targeted civilian infrastructure, you might say 'genocidal', rather than Hamas itself. Yes, the people support Hamas as the only ones standing up for THEM. They may not support all of Hamas' tactics either, but those tactics, no matter how heinous, cannot be construed as 'genocidal'. YET!
The campus protests/riots are just a further extension of Me-Tooism and the acting out of the radical Marxist elements that too frequently populate academia. Thus they are deserving of being crushed as peacefully as possible.
I hope that each and every one of these cretins are expelled and no accomodation of any kind is made for them. Many need to go to jail.
Since when is Death to Jews and Death to America not hate speech and/or incitement to violence.
The administration of Columbia needs to be severely sanctioned, as well.