Protesting the Wrong Target

Spectator

By Stephen Tuttle | May 11, 2024

American college campuses have been a protest in search of a cause for a very long time. It is nearly a coming-of-age tradition.

Some would place the start of college campus protests at the “Free Speech Movement” at the University of California, Berkeley in the mid-1960s. That movement was about Berkeley lifting its ban on student protests and political activities and is considered the first significant act of civil disobedience on college campuses as it spread nationally.

But that certainly was not the first protest or act of civil disobedience. We were protesting before we were even a country. Some would argue those early protests, including the famous Boston Tea Party, were what helped us become a country.

We protested immediately after our revolution, and then there were some protests around the War of 1812. We protested against the right to drink alcohol and then for that right. We protested for the right of women to vote. We protested against wars and for civil rights and women’s rights. We were born in protest and we haven’t really stopped.

We’re oddly selective about what we protest and for whom. We angrily protested police violence when George Floyd died with a policeman’s knee on his neck, but we’re quiet when cops are killed in the line of duty. This spring the protests started with the righteous indignation of protesting a Supreme Court decision and subsequent legislative reactions to that decision. That faded as attention refocused on a war in Gaza.

The pro-Israel demonstrations in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks of October 7, killing 1,200 and taking another 200 hostages, were countered by pro-Palestinian demonstrations almost immediately—the encampment at Columbia began October 14.

We loudly protest Israel’s deadly response but less so the long history preceding it. We should, the protesters shouted, stop supporting Israel, divest all investments from Israeli companies, and stop selling them military equipment.

As Israel waged a mid-20th century war of demolition in a 21st century full of social media, the protests against it grew larger and louder. Students, or those who we were told were students, began to take over small sections of college campuses. Agree with their message or not, the protests started in the best tradition of such things: loud, self-assured, nonviolent, non-destructive, and with a mandatory list of demands. Then, as seems to be the case more often than not these days, things got uglier.

Protesting against Israel’s hyper-aggressive response to Hamas in Gaza was, unfortunately, too ripe an opportunity for the antisemites who gleefully joined in with a variety of hatred. Pro-Palestine chants too quickly devolved into anti-Jewish chants. It’s not completely clear they understood all of what they were shouting, though “Death to all Zionists” was pretty clear. “From the river to the sea” was also a favorite and would result in the total elimination of Israel.

The non-violence was actually gaining a bit of traction—administrations at both Brown and Northwestern agreed to speak with student leaders and address their concerns, including a vote of their trustees on future investments. Unfortunately, we can’t have protests without knuckleheads, so vandalism and some acts of violence, especially directed at Jewish students, started to occur. At Columbia, “students” broke into a building and barricaded themselves inside, necessitating a police intervention. It turned out almost half of those occupiers weren’t even students or had any other connection to Columbia.

The real problem is not the naivete of some student demonstrators but that they’ve chosen the wrong target. They should ignore Israel and even the terrorist groups perpetually attacking them and focus more clearly at home where the real source of the problem starts. If there are explosions and death in the Middle East, there’s a pretty good bet we provided the devices doing the exploding and killing.

We continue to be the largest arms dealer in the world by far and we aren’t slowing down one bit. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, we’ve increased our arms sales by 17 percent since 2019. And we’re doing our best to keep those Middle East fires burning, since Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar are our three largest arms customers. Israel comes in at a fairly modest 11th biggest customer. (Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have both been involved in attacks on Israel, likely with arms we sold them.) Why there are no protests against our arms merchants is a mystery.

Righteous protest is older than our country. When laser focused with staying power and a just cause, there are sometimes impressive positive results. The Civil Rights and Voting Right Acts were largely the result of years of nonviolent protest action. But the Gaza protests will change little. Universities won’t likely divest, and we won’t abandon the only democracy, and our only ally, in the Middle East.