Pro-Palestine protests at multiple US university campuses show no signs of slowing down. Protestors have set up tent encampments at various prestigious universities in the US including Columbia, Harvard, Berkley in California, Yale, Ohio State University, Emory in Georgia, etc.
The protests which reportedly started at Columbia University last week have spread to colleges and universities across more than eight US states. Pro-Palestine protestors camping on university campuses, creating camp sites that they call the “liberated zones”, taking over sections of university campuses, bringing academic life to a halt, and disrupting the lives of students, faculty members, and other staff who are not a part of these protests.
The template seems familiar, doesn’t it? The anti-CAA protests and the farmers protests in Bharat followed the same template, albeit on a much larger scale. Camping in public spaces, blocking public infrastructure like roads and highways, on occasions even vandalism of public property, and above all, a complete lack of faith in the democratic institutions and processes. The ongoing pro-Palestine protests in the US are structured along a similar woke template of anarchy and lawlessness.
Such woke protests often market themselves as non-violent voices of resistance against oppression. But the reality is these are organized through the collaboration of all sorts of radical outfits and organizations that have no faith in democratic institutions and processes. The pro-Palestine demonstrations at the UCLA campus turned violent recently after demonstrators breached the physical barrier, as per various media reports. There are numerous media reports of clashes between the police and demonstrators. At least 500 protestors have been arrested so far, according to media reports. Different media outlets report different figures. Some stick with a modest figure of 200 arrests, while others report the figure to be much higher. A recent report by Hindustan Times says that 900 protestors have been arrested across US universities in the last 10 days.
The youth has always been a potent tool for the leftists. The communists have time and again used the anger, rebellion, and anti-establishment stance of the youth to further their own agenda and establish oligarchies and dictatorships. The youth often have no idea what they are fighting for. The desire to be seen as cool and rebellious takes over all rational judgment. Before they know it, the youth slip down a vicious dark hole from which there seems a no return point.
During the anti-CAA protests in Bharat, most protestors had no clue what was CAA all about. A lot of them probably genuinely thought they were doing their bit to save the citizenship rights of Bharatiya Muslims by protesting. The CAA had nothing to do with Bharatiya Muslims, as facts make it evident. Yet, a protest ran on a bunch of white lies and vicious propaganda for such a long time; it received wild coverage from the western media who rhetorically defined the protests as Bharat’s coming-of-age movement for saving democracy and the rights of minorities.
That’s how the woke leftists manufacture discourses. They create emotional clickbaits or the starry-eyed and the “itching for rebellion” youth. Those who fall for the propaganda become convenient tools to be used and dispensed with. Remember Riddhi Patel, the Bharatiya American pro-Palestine protestor who was arrested for threatening to “murder” Bakersfield city council members.
28-year-old Patel was arrested and charged for giving severe threats to a mayor and city council members at a Bakersfield City Council meeting in California. Riddhi Patel’s violent outburst came during the public comment section of the meeting; she threatened to murder Republican Mayor Karen Goh and the council members for not backing a ceasefire resolution against Israel. She also lashed out at them for installing increased security measures at the government building in view of the ongoing anti-Israel protests.
Riddhi Patel’s case is a classic example of activism one too far. The radical organizations that probably groomed her distanced themselves, ironically enough, distanced themselves from her comments. Patel’s former employer, The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPF) sacked her over her remarks. The United Liberation Front, a pro-Palestinian organization also distanced itself from Patel’s actions. The group issued a statement clarifying that the violent language used by Patel and the threats issued to officials by her failed to represent their organization’s stance.
This is not to garner sympathy for Riddhi Patel, far from it but I gave the example to show the kind of brainwashing the radical woke organizations are subjecting the youth to. Ms Patel is an extreme case of radical brainwashing; she probably did not doubt for a minute that her violent and ludicrous comments threatening council members would get her widespread adulation and support from the pro-Palestine lobby. But alas, she was wrong. All other pro-Palestine demonstrators distanced themselves from her remarks to save their own skin.
An article published recently in the Wall Street Journal gives an in-depth insight into the backdrop of anti-Israel and pro-Palestine protests hijacking US universities. The piece titled “Who’s Behind the Anti-Israel Protests” argues that the pro-Palestine protests on US university campuses are mostly supported by terrorist organizations with demonstrators openly claiming support for terrorist organizations like Hamas, “burning the American flag and waving Hezbollah’s”. It says that terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, etc. are grooming activists in the US and other western countries.
The article argues that the pro-Palestine protestors in the US university campuses can be heard chanting “Down with the USA” and the “Al-Qassam are on their way”, a reference to the military wing of Hamas. The article gives a plethora of evidence to demonstrate the links between the narrative of the protests and terrorist organizations like Hamas. It says that the protestors are not just influenced by the ideology of Hamas but that such terrorist organizations are controlling the whole protest narrative.
“Major terrorist organizations have expressed support for these protests and disruptive actions, which have long been a key part of Hamas’s plan to win hearts and minds in the West. As early as a decade ago, during the July-August 2014 Israel-Gaza war, Hamas’s Interior Ministry issued guidelines to social-media activists on framing events for a western audience. It is no coincidence that official statements by Hamas and major jihadist groups about the protests are nearly identical. The statements seem like talking points for pressuring US and western decision makers. They appear to be working. On April 4 President Biden, under massive pressure for supporting Israel, warned Israel of major changes to US policy if it didn’t ease its military campaign in Gaza. Hamas seized on the US-Israel dispute with a statement calling on ‘all free people of the world’ to protest”, says the article.
The article gives numerous examples of pro-Palestine protestors disrupting countless political, religious, national, and sports events, and burning the American flag. It further argues that the demands of the leaders of the pro-Palestine protests in the west aren’t merely restricted to the demand for a ceasefire, but they are calling for young Americans to stand united for armed resistance against the west.
Ever since Israel retaliated to the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, western countries have become the site of pro-Palestine protests. These demonstrations have mostly been mostly ridiculously biased and one-sided with none of the pro-Palestine protestors condemning the horrific terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas and the brutal torture, kidnappings, and killings of innocent Israeli citizens by the US. The protestors have not only demanded an immediate ceasefire by Israel, but they want a complete annihilation of the state of Israel. Many such demonstrations have exhibited violent and dangerous antisemitic rhetoric endangering the safety and security of Jewish students on US university campuses.
Amid the increasing harassment, threats, and violence being directed at Jewish students in the US, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) along with its partners at Columbia/Barnard Hillel, Hillel International, and UJA-Federation of New York has called on universities and their leaders to keep Jewish students safe on their campuses. Amid the ongoing protests, a Jewish Columbia University student has reportedly filed a proposed class action lawsuit against the school, saying it failed to provide a safe, in-person learning environment.
According to the complaint, the encampment set up by pro-Palestinian protestors at Columbia University has ‘been the center of round-the-clock harassment of Jewish students, who have been punched, shoved, spat upon, blocked from attending classes, and moving freely about campus, and targeted by pro-terrorist hate speech’.
An orthodox Rabbi at Columbia University, Rabbi Elie Baucher also recently issued a stark warning to Jewish students on campus about the risks to their safety in the wake of rising antisemitism at the university. He advised the students to leave the campus for their safety. Ever since the radical pro-Palestine protests rocked the US civil society and academia in the wake of Israel’s retaliation to the horrific October 7 Hamas attack on its soil, many Jewish billionaires have suspended donations to Ivy League universities like Harvard over their inability to address rising antisemitism on their campuses.
A recent report by the New York Post claiming to uncover the funding sources of the pro-Palestine protests on the US university campuses puts things in better perspective. The report says that the radical anti-Israel protests that have hijacked US university campuses are being sponsored by the leftist billionaire George Soros and his aides.
The report further adds that the organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the main organization responsible for organizing these protests is being indirectly funded by Soros’s Open Society Foundation.
“The SJP parent organization has been funded by a network of nonprofits ultimately funded by, among others, Soros, the billionaire left-wing investor. At three colleges, the protests are being encouraged by paid radicals who are “fellows” of a Soros-funded group called the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR). USCPR provides upto $7,800 for its community-based “fellows” in return for spending eight hours a week organizing “campaigns led by Palestinian organizations”. The radical groups received at least $300,000 from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2017 and also took in $355,000 from the Rockfellers Brothers Fund since 2019”, says the report.
The report further gives a plethora of evidence on the links between various organizations behind the pro-Palestine protests that have gripped the US university campuses and the bunch of NGOs run by George Soros.
It’s incredible that despite so much evidence available regarding the direct involvement of Hamas and various other terrorist organizations in orchestrating these protests, a huge section of media is still writing ridiculously biased and simplistic protests besotted with the protests, as some starry-eyed teenager, as it were, and defining the ruckus and mayhem as some kind of pinnacle of freedom of expression and the highest expression of human conscience against tyranny, oppression, etc.
The protestors, it seems want to literally gag people into believing that Israel and by that extension Jews, have no right to exist. The logic being given by most is the logic of numbers. That, the number of Palestinians dying in Israel’s retaliation greatly outnumbers the number of Israelis who lost their lives during the October 7 Hamas attack. But can human life be really evaluated by this number game? If a community is a minuscule minority, like in the case of Jews, having suffered mass-scale historical persecution, does that mean their lives don’t matter and that they can be conveniently annihilated further because they are a minority? The far left uses the politics of minority rights whenever it suits its purpose. It keeps the narrative of minority rights going when it comes to a country like Bharat. But conveniently drops its supposed concern for minorities when it comes to the Jews. The rights of Jews apparently don’t matter because they are essentially Jews and if any Jew happens to condemn atrocities inflicted by the likes of Hamas on people from their community, they are labeled as Zionists. How very convenient!
Many Bharatiya “intellectuals” have also gotten into the pro-Palestine movement sponsored by the woke leftists and Islamists. A few Bharatiya-origin students studying at US university campuses also seem to have fallen victim to woke activism. Achinthya Sivalingan, a Bharatiya-origin student at Princeton University in the US has reportedly been arrested due to her involvement in the unauthorized pro-Palestine protests. Another student named Hasan Sayed was allegedly also arrested alongside Achinthya amidst the rising wave of pro-Palestine protests across various US university campuses.
Even though one hasn’t seen many pro-Palestine protests happening in Bharat as such, the social media is full of rantings of Hamas sympathizers and admirers from Bharat. Amidst the woke intellectual circles of Bharat, news glorifying the pro-Palestine protests in the US universities is routinely shared subtly insinuating such a mode should be followed in Bharat as well. In these woke circles of Bharat, the crackdown of US authorities on the radical protestors is being seen as an “assault on academic freedom”. The point is, whether such radical protests happen in Bharat or the US, the toolkit is the same and the masterminds behind the toolkit are all interconnected.
