Students On The Front Line For A Free Palestine

The Gaza protests are moral, brave, and part of a much broader struggle.

by Richard (RJ) Eskow, The Zero Hour Report

It’s beginning to look like the rallying cry of 1960’s-era student radicals – “Bring the War Home!” – is becoming a reality on many American campuses.

I visited the University of Maryland on Tuesday, as students protested the genocide in Gaza and their university’s role in it. The big news story that day was the police crackdown at Columbia University. Today, protests and crackdowns are occurring across the country. Predictably, the news coverage has been heavily skewed toward alleged antisemitism, downplaying the students’ moral stand and the horror they’re protesting.

students protest on UC Berkeley's campus

That’s no accident. These students are on the front line in a conflict between global forces, a conflict that most of us have yet to fully grasp. Israel’s assault on Palestine is the tip of the spear for the Global North’s attack on those nations and peoples it sees as a threat. That has always included people inside the Global North who oppose its militarism.

The parallels can be striking. A phalanx of armed police in Texas looks like an occupying army. The barriers and checkpoints surrounding Columbia echo the ones enclosing Palestine. And in a faint but haunting echo of the horror in Gaza, the University of Minnesota has reportedly cut off the water supply to buildings used by demonstrators.