In a way, the black-and-white Palestinian scarf draped over Hannah Sattler’s shoulders this week and the tie-dyed T-shirts of 1968 are woven from a common thread. Like so many college students across the country protesting the Israel-Hamas war, Sattler feels the historic weight of the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the 1960s and 70s. “They always talked about the ’68 protest as sort of a North Star,” Sattler, 27, a graduate student of international human rights policy at Columbia University, said of the campus organizers there.
That’s exactly my feeling as well. This is Iraq War media manipulation/propaganda all over again. Like it’s not a coincidence that nearly all the politicians and nearly all the mainstream media just seem to mistakenly imply there’s violence going on. Maybe one reporter got mistaken information, but all of them? All at the same time? And no politician had any ability to just talk to a respected person on campus to hear the protesters’ view?
They’re all willing to briefly mention some platitudes about the right to protest, but studiously avoid talking about why they are. Do we even know where the various political figures stand on university divestment from Israel? That’s the main demand. We’re hearing a lot about their concerns about antisemitism and violence and the rule of law (usually without examples, just “trust us it’s happening”), but no one’s willing to address their actual cause. At least during BLM they’d say “Black Lives Matter” before saying the same crap about violence and outside agitators and whatnot.