The arrests of the Columbia Pro-Palestine activist will not save the Israeli image | Israel-Palestinian conflict
In April 2024. Students across the United States mobilized to demand the end of the comprehensiveness of their universities in the genocide in gauze,
I wrote An article explaining why I saw the appearance of these protests, and especially those at the New York City Campus University of Columbia, as a turning point in the global movement for Palestinian rights and release.
Now, almost a year later, the federal government fiercely breaks these protests and punishes brave souls who played a leading role in them, to protect Israel from surveillance and conceal its undeniable copies in its genocide.
This month, Trump’s Government, led by his newfound multi-agencical working group to fight anti-Semitism, announced Cancellation of approximately $ 400 million federal scholarships to Columbia University of what considered “the failure of the protection of Jewish students from anti -Semitic harassment.”
Furthermore, Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio has promised to revoke “visas and green tickets to Hamas supporters in America so that they can deport them” – “Hamas’s fan” in this context is, of course, only the code word for all who support Palestinian rights and objections to Israeli repeated misdemeanors of international law.
Rubi’s statement was not an empty threat. Earlier this week, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate at Columbia University, who played a prominent role in last year’s Gaza protests, was arrested by immigration agents for immigration and implementation of the customs implementation (ICE) in his apartment on Manhattan, ahead of his US wife, who is an eight -month pregnant. Despite holding a green card, he is now threatened with deportation. The Homeland Security Department (DHS) accused the former student “leading activities aligned with Hamas”. He is unclear whether he is facing any actual charges or charged with a crime that could justify this treatment.
The information available to us about the case of Mahmoud Khalil indicates a gloomy reality: Washington is ready to deport the legal permanent resident to play prominent roles in protests that were critical and disturbing Tel Aviv.
It seems that the current administration is so dedicated to the pleasant contract of Israel and the demolition of students to the genocide that she is a willing and eager for seal to fundamental American rights, values and freedom.
But this unprecedented suppression also indicates the success of these protests. Trump is willing to risk so much that he silences the cry against the genocide coming from American universities, because these protests have been rejected as meaningless “noise” in campuses separated from the wider society-to successfully demolish the critical pillar of the Israeli Israeli good establishment Public relations West strategy.
Student protests put a Palestinian struggle at the top of the national agenda and encouraged many Americans who are usually forgotten about the events in the Middle East and strictly get their news and comments from Pro-Israeli sources, to pay attention to what is happening in Gaza.
As they started paying attention, many realized that Israel was not a democratic oasis in the region full of war barbarians that had long been pretending to be, but a colonial exit, an aparthey state that currently brings genocide to the captured population.
As people turned to the sources on the ground to understand what students in the US campus were so passionately protesting, an imaginary image of Israel as moral forces “just defended herself from terrorists” fell apart. This is not just feelings. In the gallop poll Published this month, American support for Israel surveyed all the time, and the sympathy of the Palestinian trouble was all over. A continuous American administration during the student protesters testifies to her despair to save this decay facade.
In his efforts to silence Israel on American campuses, the US administration follows a well -worn book. Taking his signs from Tel Aviv, he associates anti-nationalism with anti-Semitism, and then claims that he must abolish anti-nationalism just as it acts on the abolition of anti-Semitism, on behalf of public security and “common values”.
This scenario has gained an increased towed in Congress from the beginning of the Gaza genocide. In December 2023, a Republican representative of the MP brought a measure (resolution of the house 894), which rejects “a drastic increase in anti-Semitism in the United States and around the world”, and then continues “clearly and firmly” that “anti-nationalism is anti-Semitism”. By doing so, it classifies any criticism of the state of Israel and its actions as an attack on the Jewish people.
The efforts to associate anti-Semitism with anti-nationalism to silence the pro-Palestinian activism and abuse of those who support Palestinian rights as hatred are also obtained at universities in the midst of a conflict of Trump administration.
In January this year, faced with two lawsuits that accused him of not doing enough to prevent anti -Semitic harassment in his campus, Harvard University agreed to adopt a wide definition of anti -Semitism in order to come up with a settlement. This definition – a product of an international federation to remember the Holocaust (Ihra) -Considering certain cases of anti-national or anti-de-draft criticism as anti-Semitism. Many universities facing similar lawsuits or just scared to attract the anger of Trump’s administration and loss of federal funding, they are expected to follow that.
But none of this proves enough to prevent people in the West to recognize the truth about Israel.
For many years, Israel has been able to sell himself to the American public as a small but proud democracy, heroically rejecting existential threats. But the slaughter took place in Gaza forced the Americans – and the Western world – to count with the frightening truth behind that story. The non -select shelling of the Israeli army and ground invasions laid down waste as a whole gauze, decimating family and turning schools and hospitals into ruins.
Far from the small standpoint of “civilization” in the “barbar” region, Israel is a ruthless nuclear force with one of the most sophisticated soldiers in the world, attacking indigenous people to hold them closed in a small corner of their own country. Uses US Arsenal regularly “mow the lawn“In Gaza and the west coast, stole more land by expanding your illegally settlementsAnd holding gauze under the mainland, air and sea blocks.
As Gaza genocide has taken place in the last year and a half, photos of divorced children filled with time deadlines as protesters across the US, and especially in university campuses, put a tragic reality of life under the Israeli interest under the center of attention. What remained of the carefully curved image of Israel began to fall apart.
Politicians who support the association of anti-nationalism with anti-Semitism claim so in the fight against hatred. Still, we see, over and over, how these same forces are silent when Jewish activists expelled from the protest or face police violence for standing with Palestinians. If their true concern was anti -Semitism, they would be equally dedicated to defense of the rights and security of Jewish people who align with the Palestinian cause. Instead, they use a mere whisper of “anti -Semitism” to smear the entire protest movements, and as long as the drugs are Billions In the help of a foreign government that systematically denied the Palestinians their humanity and statehood for more than seven decades.
It is true that student activists in Columbia – like those at countless other universities – did not invite oppression or orchestrated a hate campaign. They advocated Palestinian human rights. They called on their institution to stop profitable or neglecting the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza. In turn, the federal government punishes them and their school savage anger, ensuring that no academic institution dares to repeat their protest without risking financial devastation.
But the efforts of the administration obviously returned. The wave of pro-palestinian activism that originated in Columbia only greatly increased the administration action and the raw images of human suffering from gauze.
