The Common Ills

Sunday, April 28, 2024

OFFICE HOURS: Breaking Down the Pro-Palestinian Campus Protests (04/28/24)

Gaza

Leaked internal memos from both the State Department and the U.S. agency tasked with providing civilian foreign aid reportedly warn that Israel is breaching a White House directive by continuing to block U.S. aid into Gaza ― a violation that legally requires President Joe Biden to suspend military assistance to the country whose offensive in the Palestinian enclave nears seven months.

In February, Biden issued National Security Memorandum-20 (NSM-20) after a growing number of Democratic lawmakers began questioning whether Israel was adhering to international law while using U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza. Under NSM-20, Israel and other U.S. weapons recipients are required to provide assurances that it would not violate international humanitarian law, including restricting humanitarian assistance. Israel made that pledge on March 25.

Though NSM-20 imposes no new legal requirements, it also asks Secretary of State Antony Blinken to report to Congress by May 8 on whether he believes Israel has complied with the assurances.

But an internal State Department memo ― obtained by Reuters and published Saturday ― was jointly submitted to Blinken, and included four bureaus who said they do not find “credible or reliable” the Israeli government’s pledge that its military is using weapons supplied by the U.S. in accordance with international humanitarian law.

The senior officials reportedly cited eight examples of Israeli military action in the memo that could be considered such violations ― including the repeated bombing of protected sites and civilian infrastructure, a massive level of civilian harm, the lack of accountability for those who cause significant civilian harm, and the killing of journalists and humanitarian workers. The bureaus also cited nearly a dozen instances that the Israeli military would “arbitrarily restrict humanitarian aid,” according to Reuters.

The US government dithers and lies and minimizes as people are dying. No wonder the students in the US step up to the plate and we should all be grateful to them for doing so.

While THE NATION, IN THESE TIMES and THE PROGRESSIVE continue to ignore the protests, they were a topic today on FACE THE NATION (CBS):

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, went up to Columbia University this week. You had four Democratic lawmakers, all Jewish, who went, they said in solidarity with Jewish students there, and threatened to withhold federal funding. Is that kind of political involvement helpful, or is it putting fuel on the fire?

ROBERT PAPE: It is putting fuel on the fire, because it's so one-sided. If Speaker Johnson had gone together with Hakeem Jeffries with an actual plan to bring calm, and we'll talk about what that might look like, then this is a different story. But by come- making it a surprise, by making threats, you know, if you don't do X, we will fire Y and we're going to do X, and this is all a surprise, this is actually not helpful for crowd control at all. So, I also study the actual violent part of this. And the number one thing when you have protests that are building, is don't do a surprise. In Portland during the George Floyd protests, you might remember DHS surprised Portland, that escalated things. This is a very bad idea. So you need to have a more thoughtful approach to calming tensions that go beyond crowd control, and that are not simply, one side is right, everybody else is wrong. And we're going to hammer it through until we win.

Maybe the overpaid staff at THE NATION could look at just that exchange and weigh in? Would that be too much work for them?

At COMMON DREAMS, Howard Winant writes:

The student-led movement for a free Palestine is not antisemitic. Thousands of Jewish students have joined it. Hundreds of rabbis and cantors too, as well as leaders of Jewish organizations and prominent Jews across U.S. society and beyond. Despite fervent attempts to stigmatize anti-Zionism as anti-Jewish, despite strident efforts on Israel's part to merge its national identity with Judaism itself, or indeed with Jewish culture and ethnicity, despite the wildly inappropriate calls from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the U.S. to crack down on student protest, Israel does not represent all Jewish people or types of Jewishness. So the movement for a free Palestine is not a movement to destroy Israel and expel Jews. Everybody knows that the Israeli Jewish population is not going anywhere, any more than the Palestinians are. The phrase "from the river to the sea" is frequently used both by both Palestinians and Israelis. The movement for a free Palestine and the Israeli peace movement (small but important) should demand that that language be rearticulated so that it applies to both peoples.

Efforts to repress the student movement for a free Palestine will never succeed. It is too big and too broad. It is part of a worldwide struggle for justice. It is a working-class and poor people's movement. It is an anti-racist movement and a feminist movement. It is an anti-colonialist movement, connected to the long struggle against European empires and the U.S. empire. It closely resembles the movements against South African apartheid and the Black Lives Matter movement, among many others.

It is not an accident that attacks on the movement have concentrated on repressing student voices. As they have so many times before, students have shown that they are our leaders in struggles for freedom, equality, and democracy. As has been true so many times before, opposition to the movement is concentrated among the wealthy and the right wing. It is wealthy donors who play the most significant role in opposing freedom for Palestinians, pressuring universities to prohibit pro-Palestinian speech and seeking to curtail nonviolent student protests. It is right-wing politicians who have become the new "snowflakes," madly canceling students and faculty for the "antisemitism" of criticizing Israel. Not just the students, but the university itself is their frequent target.

Notably, universities were already under sustained attack before October 7, indeed long before that awful day. Universities are one of the most central institutions in society. They have not yet effectively been brought under the control of the wealthy, of anti-democratic governments and political parties, of racist and sexist power structures, and of repressive religiously based groups. This is because universities are institutions where knowledge and culture are produced, where democratic debate happens, where the wisdom of the past is preserved and studied, and where youth are able to develop their ideas and skills. Even though attacking universities is attacking their own children and destroying the futures of their own country, U.S. holders of wealth and power are willing to carry out those attacks, because they feel threatened by their own children's views of the world. They fear the future they themselves are creating: one of permanent warfare, global heating and ecocide, and planetary apartheid. They hate being reminded, especially by their own kids, of their hypocrisy and violence.

The movement for freedom in Palestine shows us what a different future looks like. The movement demands university divestment from the Israeli warfare state and from Israeli apartheid. It calls out the oligarchs who threaten their own type of divestment, threatening to withdraw their funding from Penn, or Harvard, or the University of California, my own professional home. Let them go! Let them support Bob Jones University or Bari Weiss' ridiculous University of Austin. Let them subsidize notorious political hacks like Christopher Rufo and political poseurs like Rep. Elise Stefanik (D-N.Y.). By and large rich donors' funding is based on a hunger for prestige, not on any commitment to education. They seek tax write-offs. They subsidize their businesses through their donations. They hardly care about poor or working-class students, and even less about the humanities, arts, and social sciences, which are the fields where most undergraduate students major, and where the future of civilizational knowledge resides. Higher education is a public trust; it cannot be entrusted to the rich. As elsewhere in the world, it should be financed by the public, not greedy and blind billionaires.

At TRUTHOUT, Frances Madeson writes:

As the Palestinian death toll in Gaza and the West Bank mounts daily, campus protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continue to spread across the U.S., where students and faculty often face police crackdowns. Student activists from Pomona Divest from Apartheid in southern California, The Coalition for Mutual Liberation at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and Resist WashU in St. Louis, Missouri, told Truthout the blows landing hardest are the ones from their own chancellors and deans. The activists say university administrators are waging an asymmetrical campaign of enforcement against students demanding an end to their schools’ complicity in the slaughter of Palestinians.

“We see Pomona for what it is: serving capital and empire. And we know the way to win our demands is to disrupt their flow of cash, disrupt their reputation,” said Amanda Dym, a 21-year-old humanities student at Scripps College, one of the five colleges in the Pomona consortium. “We won’t allow our administrators who facilitate and defend investments in an apartheid state to go about their work undisturbed.”

Dym was among 20 students arrested by cops in riot gear during a sit-in outside Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr’s office on April 5.

“A televised genocide live-streamed on our phones is obviously unlike anything that’s happened in our lifetimes,” she said. That’s why Dym and others were moved to demonstrate, but she says when Starr called in the riot police, the president put them in a whole other category of risk.

“Obviously, it was a scary day, to watch 30-plus riot cops from three cities come in and start bringing my comrades out, one by one,” Dym told Truthout. “The cops were in full gear with automatic weapons, bigger guns than some of us had ever seen. They were yanking students up off the ground, zip-tying their hands so tightly they were losing circulation.”

At ZNET, Saurav Sarkar writes:

Students at more than 40 universities and colleges in the United States and around the world have lit a fire under the Palestine solidarity movement by setting up encampments on their campuses. They are demanding that their universities end their complicity with Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine more broadly.

While the first and longest-running student takeover has been at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, it was Columbia University that lit the fuse for a widespread student movement and drew global attention. The administration’s decision at the elite New York City school to sic the repressive New York Police Department on peacefully protesting students led to a global movement and gave hope for the first time in months to countless people. As of April 26, student occupations extended to France and Australia in addition to dozens of campuses in the United States.

Police repression at other sites besides Columbia has been fierce as well. At Emerson University in Boston, Massachusetts, the Boston Police Department was livestreamed manhandling protesters in the early hours of April 25. At Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, the police threw Caroline Fohlin, an economics professor who attempted to intervene in arrests of students, to the ground, her head hitting the concrete. The University of Southern California allowed officers to fire rubber bullets at students, and the University of Texas–Austin had local and state police on motorcycles, horseback, and on foot arresting students.

But the police didn’t always have the upper hand. At Cal Poly Humboldt, students successfully barricaded themselves in a building. And, at the City University of New York’s City College, protesters pushed the police back and maintained the integrity of their encampment.

Through it all, students have grounded the protests in what matters: conditions in Gaza and their universities’ ties to Israel. Even as establishment figures hemmed and hawed in the face of the student uprising—President Joe Biden tried to link them to “antisemitism”—two mass graves were uncovered in Palestine, which was from the aftermath of terroristic Israeli raids on two hospitals in Gaza. About 400 doctors, patients, children, and others were found dead, in some cases buried alive.

The higher-ups on campuses, in boardrooms, and in presidential palaces around the world appeared to have nothing new to say about Israel’s horrifying and murderous tactics. The Zionist state’s genocide in Gaza has already reached its 200th day, with at least 34,000 dead and an invasion reportedly imminent in Rafah, the southern city and place of last refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

See, it can be done. Just, apparently, not at THE NATION, THE PROGRESSIVE and IN THESE TIMES.

Anna Lamche and Ido Vock (BBC NEWS) report:

At Northeastern University in Boston, over 100 protesters were arrested for trespassing on Saturday by the Massachusetts State Police after refusing to clear their tents from college grounds, according to a police statement. The camp was cleared by police.

Northeastern University wrote on X that "demonstrations had been infiltrated by professional organisers" with no connection to the university. Antisemitic slurs had been heard, it added, saying: "We cannot tolerate this kind of hate on campus." Protest leaders strongly rejected the allegations.

At the University of South California, pro-Palestinian demonstrators returned to campus days after police were called to clear a protest at the university's Alumni Park. The protest was reportedly mostly peaceful but the university administration reported "vandalism" to campus property after Saturday's protest.

The university said the campus had been vandalised "by individuals who are part of the group that has continued to illegally camp on our campus", adding that a statue and fountain had been damaged. The campus would be temporarily closed to non-residents, the university said.

Twenty-three people were arrested at Indiana University on Saturday.

On Sunday's FACE THE NATION, Brennan also spoke with UNICEF's Catherine Russell:

MARGARET BRENNAN: The UN says every 10 minutes a child is killed or wounded in Gaza. I mean, that just hits you in the chest when you hear that.

CATHERINE RUSSELL: That's a shocking number.

MARGARET BRENNAN: It's horrific.

CATHERINE RUSSELL: It is what's happening.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And the US called this week for an investigation of this mass grave that was just found in Gaza, of hundreds of people. Were there children there? What do you know?

CATHERINE RUSSELL: You know we don't- UNICEF doesn't know much about that, honestly. I think that I would say a couple things. One, there needs to be a full investigation of what happened. And I think that, at some point, will certainly, I hope, take place. And second, to me, it argues, again, for the importance of having international press in Gaza. I- I- I say this over and over again because you have disputes about what has actually happened, what's going on. And I think not- you know, look, there are incredibly brave Palestinian reporters and press people there who are doing an incredible job. Many of them have- have suffered so much, people have been killed. I think having the international press in there is also really important. And I hope that that gets that- that changes sometime soon and international press folks can get in, really make their own assessments of what's going on.

Gaza remains under assault. Day 205 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza death toll reaches 34,454, with 77,575 wounded" Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:

April 11th, Sharon Zhang (TRUTHOUT) reported, "In addition to the over 34,000 Palestinians who have been counted as killed in Israel’s genocidal assault so far, there are 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza who are missing, a humanitarian aid group has estimated, either buried in rubble or mass graves or disappeared into Israeli prisons. In a report released Thursday, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said that the estimate is based on initial reports and that the actual number of people missing is likely even higher."

As for the area itself? Isabele Debre (AP) reveals, "Israel’s military offensive has turned much of northern Gaza into an uninhabitable moonscape. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells." Kieron Monks (I NEWS) reports, "More than 40 per cent of the buildings in northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to a new study of satellite imagery by US researchers Jamon Van Den Hoek from Oregon State University and Corey Scher at the City University of New York. The UN gave a figure of 45 per cent of housing destroyed or damaged across the strip in less than six weeks. The rate of destruction is among the highest of any conflict since the Second World War."

The following sites updated:

Kristi The Dog Killer Noam

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S MEGA DUB & THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS & THE COMMON ILLS -- THE KOOL AID TABLE

ADULTERER KRISTI NOAM IS FACING BACKLASH OVER REVEALING IN HER NEW BOOK THAT SHE KILLED HER 14-YEAR-OLD PUPPY CRICKET -- SHOT IT DEAD.

"YEAH, I DID IT," SHE BOASTED TO THESE REPORTERS -- MUST CREDIT BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S MEGA DUB & THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS & THE COMMON ILLS -- "AND I'D DO IT AGAIN! I HATED THAT DOG. I REALIZED I HAD TO PUT HER DOWN."

NOAM THEN BEGAN LAUGHING. THESE REPORTERS ASKED WHAT WAS SO FUNNY?

SHE REPLLIED, "I JUST REMEMBERED HOW MY DAUGHTER KENNEDY GOT HOME AFTER AND WAS ALL 'HEY, WHERE'S CRICKET? WHERE'S CRICKET?' IT STILL MAKES ME LAUGH. WHERE'S CRICKET?"

TOLD THAT VOTERS MAY BE APPALLED BY THE KILLING, NOAM INSISTED, "IT COULD BE WORSE. I COULD HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT THE TIME I SHOT GRANDMA WHEN SHE BURNED THE SUGAR COOKIES. BUT I JUST WINGED HER."

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Sabreen al-Sakani has passed away. Her life was brief, not even one week. Born last Sunday after her mother was killed, she seemed a 'survivor' of the assault on Gaza. BBC NEWS explains:

Baby Sabreen al-Sakani was delivered by Caesarean section in a Rafah hospital shortly after midnight on Sunday.

Amid chaotic scenes doctors resuscitated the baby, using a hand pump to push air into her lungs.

However she died on Thursday and has been buried next to her mother after whom she was named.

Baby Sabreen was among 16 children killed in two air strikes in Rafah last weekend. All were killed in a bombardment targeting the housing complex where they lived.

[. . .]

Sabreen's mother, also called Sabreen, was seven-and-a-half months pregnant when the Israeli air strike on the al-Sakani family home took place just before midnight on Saturday as she, her husband Shukri and their three-year-old daughter Malak were asleep.

AP also covers the death but gives the baby's name as Sabreen Jouda. Earlier this week, the United Nations noted:

Sabreen al-Sakani: one name among the more than 34,000 people killed in Gaza since 7 October. Sabreen was 30 weeks pregnant when she died after sustaining terrible head injuries in an Israeli airstrike in the south of the enclave.

Thankfully, her baby daughter lived after being delivered by emergency Caesarean section, at a hospital in Rafah last weekend. With more on this story - and the latest on the war in Gaza that was sparked by Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel – UN News’s Daniel Johnson spoke to Dominic Allen, from the UN sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA.

She was thought by some to have been a sign of hope but on Thursday she became another sign of reality, another child dead as a result of the actions of the Israeli government and their never-ending assault on Gaza. Sabreen al-Sakani is one more child in the growing number of over 14,000 dead as a result of the Israeli government.

And yet some wonder why US students are protesting the assault on Gaza. If you're one of those wondering, the many reasons why are staring you in the face if you'd only open your eyes.

Last night, the editorial staff of the student newspaper THE COLUMBIA SPECTATOR observed:

President Shafik, one week ago, you authorized the New York Police Department to clear Columbia’s South Lawn of student protesters. We watched police officers zip-tie and arrest 108 of our friends, classmates, and coworkers. In response, students have mobilized in the hundreds at Columbia and campuses across the country, defending their right to peaceful protest for divestment from Israel. Now, police battalions surround campus, students enter and exit through security checkpoints, NYPD correctional buses circle the block, helicopters drone overhead, reporters probe students for front-page quotes, and communication from the administration has all but disappeared—with the exception, of course, of ominous late-night emails.

Columbia has become a national spectacle. Instead of defending your students’ right to free expression or engaging publicly with activist organizations, you and other administrators are scrambling to save face—granting campus access to select media outlets, the founder of a hate group that is as rabidly Islamophobic as it is antisemitic, and the occasional opportunistic politician—while abandoning the rest of campus. As tensions escalate here and elsewhere—Yale University, Harvard University, New York University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Michigan, and Brown University, to name a few—we question whether you understand the impact of what you have done. President Shafik, this is your legacy: a president more focused on the brand of your University than the safety of your students and their demands for justice.

Her legacy is in tatters and her actions last week, her resorting to lies (the peaceful students were no clear and present danger) and bullying tactics did more to grow the movement than anything else. This will remain her legacy.

What she can't grasp, the US Secretary of State does. AFP quotes Antony Blinken speaking of the campus protests this morning while he was in China, "It's a hallmark of our democracy that our citizens make known their views, their concerns, their anger, at any given time. I think that reflects the strength of the country."

CNN notes, "A wave of pro-Palestinian campus protests is rippling across the US, with hundreds of people arrested at universities throughout the country this week." Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Jennifer Hassan, Richard Morgan and Karin Brulliard (WASHINGTON POST) add, "Arrests at pro-Palestinian protests that expanded Thursday to colleges across the country brought the total number of people detained in a week of demonstrations to more than 500, with officials struggling to quell the unrest by clearing encampments and closing buildings." The US has seen this before. Michael Albert (ZNET) explains:

I went to MIT, class of 1969. It is now 2024 not the late sixties, but rebellion for change is again in the air. I think it is just getting revved up. I can feel it. I’ll bet you can feel it too. And maybe, hopefully, it will not crescendo any time soon but will instead persist. And perhaps, hopefully, it will seek more than immediate changes. And maybe, and I think I can feel this too, it will be much smarter than we were back then, back in 1968.

The rebellious events at Columbia last week have spurred rebellions of students and sometimes others at a rapidly enlarging community of campuses, including at my personally much-despised alma mater, MIT. [Note, I am not unbiased about campus rebellion or about MIT. The former undergirds mass change, over and over. Have at it. The latter is an instance of elite, academic, grossly rotten business as usual. When I was president of MIT’s student body, during steadily growing and intensifying rebellion, among the epithets I used for MIT was “Dachau on the Charles” because of its war research. Some on campus were too literal or too dense to see why I named it thus. For them, I would acknowledge the main difference, which was that MIT’s victims were not local, like Dachau’s—no, MIT’s victims way back then were half a torn-up world away in Vietnam enduring American carpet bombing. And regarding Dachau, MIT’s victims were not hanging like burned out lightbulbs in MIT’s corridors nor lying breathless like fish out of water gassed in MIT’s labs. And now, 56 years later, MIT’s current victims are way off in Gaza enduring Israeli carpet bombing (but with American bombs). They are not being forcefully exiled from MIT’s classes, dorms, playing fields, and clinic—not yet, anyway. My point: history sometimes repeats, sometimes with ironic differences, sometimes with healthy differences.

Phil Helsel (NBC NEWS) reports:

A number of people were arrested at Ohio State University in Columbus after demonstrators refused to leave part of campus Thursday night, a university spokesperson said.

The number of arrests was not immediately available.

“Well established university rules prohibit camping and overnight events. Demonstrators exercised their first amendment rights for several hours and were then instructed to disperse,” spokesman Ben Johnson said in an email.

“Individuals who refused to leave after multiple warnings were arrested and charged with criminal trespass,” he said.

The Columbus Dispatch newspaper reported that its reporters witnessed at least a dozen people being taken into custody.

CBS NEWS adds, "In Philadelphia, more than 100 students at Temple University walked out of class and marched from campus to City Hall, CBS Philadelphia reported. The protesters were also joined by students from Drexel University."

From yesterday's DEMOCRACY NOW!

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza have rocked campuses from coast to coast over the past week amid an intensifying police crackdown. At the University of Texas in Austin, school officials called in local and state police, including some on horseback, who violently broke up a student encampment on campus. At least 50 people were arrested, including at least one journalist. Some faculty at UT Austin are going on strike today to protest the police crackdown.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University continues a week after over a hundred students were arrested in a failed attempt by the university administration to clear the demonstration. University President Minouche Shafik had said on Tuesday — had set on Tuesday a midnight deadline to reach an agreement on clearing an encampment, but the school extended negotiations for another 48 hours. On a visit to campus Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson called on Shafik to resign.

SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: I am here today joining my colleagues in calling on President Shafik to resign if she cannot immediately bring order to this chaos. As speaker of the House, I am committing today that the Congress will not be silent as Jewish students are expected to run for their lives and stay home from their classes, hiding in fear.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined in New York by Sarah King, member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest. She is Jewish, one of the students arrested at the encampment last week who’s now suspended. We’re also joined by Joshua Sklar, a graduate student at University of Texas Austin, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace Austin, who was at Wednesday’s protest.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Josh, there were more than 50 arrests at UT Austin. If you can respond to the House speaker, who’s saying that these encampments around the country are antisemitic and pro-Hamas?

JOSHUA SKLAR: It’s absolutely ridiculous. I was there with a contingent of Jewish students, and we were received very warmly. There were even Jewish Zionists there, and they were not harassed at all. In fact, I would say that they probably felt safer than the majority of protesters.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sarah King, if you could describe what’s happening now at Columbia University and your own position? You were suspended?

SARAH KING: Yes, I was one of the over 100 students who was arrested as part of a peaceful protest in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, and I’m one of the student who’s been suspended, as well, so I’m currently not allowed to be on campus. And I have to say it’s — the camp itself is very beautiful. It’s been a real place of interfaith celebration and solidarity, in support of the people of Gaza, who are now at over 200 days of genocide. But, you know, the threat is really coming from Columbia University, which has sent the police on hundreds of its students who are entrusted to its care.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk, Sarah, about what’s happened, how you got suspended and your treatment? I’ve been talking to a number of Columbia and Barnard students who said that some of them were given 15 minutes to get out of their dorm, and your meal card canceled, as you’re banned from campus, as well.

SARAH KING: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I’m one of the lucky ones, because I live off campus. But many students live in Columbia housing, and so they were evicted from their homes or locked out from their homes, probably illegally in many cases. We’re looking into it. And they lost access to their normal food. I had an undergraduate who is low-income and was staying with me, because she was evicted with no notice and lost access to her meal plan.

And it’s really very concerning the way Columbia uses the threat of — initially it was just — “just,” quote-unquote — the threat of housing, the threat of loss of food to try to — you know, as a cudgel to get students into the correct political line that is best for its pocketbook, its investment portfolio. And now they’re threatening to set the National Guard on us, risking another Jackson State, another Kent State, where students have been killed because the National Guard were set on students. And they’re willing to risk the threat of violence at their hands because we’re not, you know, consistent with what’s best for their board of trustees or for their portfolios.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Sarah, what about your response to Mike Johnson being invited to speak at Columbia University on campus yesterday?

SARAH KING: Yeah. I mean, first, I think it’s shameful that he was allowed there. Like, I myself am not allowed on campus. I’m, you know, one of many talented and promising students with bright futures who have been banned from campus, but Mike Johnson, who is an open racist and white supremacist, along with people like Gavin McInnes, the head of the Proud Boys, they were welcomed on campus yesterday.

And to me, that really tells the story of what’s at stake here, which is that, you know, the students fighting for Palestinian liberation are part of an interracial coalition — so many Jewish students, Muslim students, Black, Brown, Arab students — working together for the cause of freedom, on one side, and then, on the other side, you have political opportunists, like the House speaker, who, you know, will take any excuse they can get to come after that kind of interfaith, multigenerational coalition fighting for freedom. And right now it happens to be under the guise of something like antisemitism. But, you know, there’s no substance to it at all. And I think anybody who came to campus and saw, the worst prosecution that the Jewish students on campus are facing is from Columbia University. We were disproportionately banned by Columbia because so many of us are part of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment trying to prevent a genocide in our name.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Joshua Sklar, wrote a piece in The Austin Chronicle. “We need a ceasefire now,” it was called, the subtitle, “Anti-Palestinian violence is not 'on the other side of the globe.' It’s here in Austin, too.” If you can talk about that and how protesters were treated yesterday? You had riot police on horseback?

JOSHUA SKLAR: Yeah. I think that there’s been this narrative that there’s been rampant antisemitism. And this simply is not the case. The people who are being targeted are Muslim students, Arab students, and especially Palestinian students. Police came in on horseback, and they attacked protesters. I heard from other students that during an earlier part of the protest, they were clearly targeting Brown people and women. I wasn’t there personally, but this is what I heard.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Sarah King a final question. We have 10 seconds. And that is, 48-hour extension goes ’til tonight. What are the plans? Ten seconds, Sarah.

SARAH KING: You know, I think most of the people at the encampment have already agreed to risk arrest, and they won’t move unless moved by force or until Columbia concedes to our demands, which are for divestment, amnesty and financial transparency.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you both for being with us, Sarah King, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and Joshua Sklar at UT Austin. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

As Mike has said repeatedly at his site, "I stand with the students." The students have taken action because elected leaders have failed to lead. For over 200 days, this active genocide has taken place and the best the US can offer is Joe Biden say, "I'm not kidding, Israel, you calm down or I'm pulling this car over." Joe does nothing except give the government of Israel -- a corrupt and brutal regime -- millions and billions of US tax dollars -- $26 billion just this week, he just signed it this week. There are no consequences for the War Crimes. Joe continues to turn a blind eye. That's why the students have to lead -- because officials have failed and the body count grows higher and higher each day that this assault continues.

Rather than address that truth, college officials and politicians call for the students to be attacked.

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