Occupy Ivy League

Students protesting in American universities are asking the US government to rethink its policy towards Israel

- Seema Guha

A wave of pro-Palestine demonstrations is sweeping across American campuses, with protests spreading to European colleges in Paris, Geneva, Berlin and London. Not since the Vietnam War, and the student movements of 1968 and the early 1970s, has a war in a foreign land whipped up so much anger in the US. Will the student unrest, which is now morphing into a similar larger movement, force the US administration to change track? It is too early to say if the anti-war movement can garner widespread public support. In Vietnam, the US was directly involved and body bags were coming in every day on military flights from Saigon. A majority of Americans wanted the troops back home. The students and the general public were on the same page on Vietnam. It is not the same now as a majority of Americans support Israel.

The US is not fighting the Gaza war with boots on the ground. Yet, as Israel’s main backer and an iron-clad supporter of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, students believe the US is as responsible for the “genocide’’ in Gaza. President Joe Biden is arming, funding and providing political and diplomatic support to Israel in its almost genocidal attack on the people of Gaza as collective punishment for the Hamas strike inside Israel on October 7 that shocked the world.