By Kareem Raheem
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
Students at Columbia University by standing up against Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians have ignited similar protests on other U.S. college campuses and around the world.
The Columbia students when the university to stop doing business with and divest itself from anyone company dealing with Israel. They want the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) to pull out of Palestine and for the parties to come to the table to negotiate a ceasefire, peace, the release of the Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and a two- state solution.
The Columbia students will enter the second week of their protest tomorrow. More than 100 Columbia students were reported arrested by the New York Police Department (NYPD) and many have been suspended for protesting and speaking out about the inhumane war on Gaza condoned and financed by the Biden administration and carried out by Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Because of the Columbia students’ diligence to continue even after the arrests students at other colleges including New York University (NYU), Harvard, George Washington, City College of the City University of New York (CUNY), the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and others have joined the protests. The demonstrations have spread around the world.
The President of Columbia University Minouche Shafik was called to Washington, D.C., by the Republicans where she was grilled. The are the same Republicans, mostly of whom continued to support Donald Trump after he incited a mob to seize the U.S.government.
The campus protests began the same day as Columbia President Shafik’s testimony. She has been widely condemned including by Columbia faculty for calling in the NYPD to suppress the protests. The students however returned and set up a new encampment on another part of the grounds on Columbia’s campus.
There has been a chorus of false accusations of anti-semitism against the demonstrators including by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson who visited the Columbia campus and by the un-indicted war criminal Netanyahu.
Even New York City’s embarrassing African American mayor Eric Adams dropped the anti-semitism card. He should worry about the sexual harassment accusations against him and the federal investigation over campaign financing.
Speaker Johnson even spoke of bringing in the National Guard as if opposing genocide translates into anti-semitism. Prominent Jewish Americans like Senator Bernie Sanders and former commerce Secretary under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, have denounced this libelous accusation. The students are all shades of Americans—white, Jewish, Black, Arab and of all religions. The protest organizers have denounced anyone who threatens Jewish students and they also want everyone to keep in mind the more than 32,000 people who have been killed in Gaza, mostly children and women, including with 2,000 pound bombs.
This all comes at a time when Congress just passed legislation allowing the U.S. to send $26 billion worth of more weapons to Netanyahu’s killing machine. Ironically some corporate media insinuate that the young protesters support “terrorism” while the Biden administration finances Netanyahu’s terror on Gaza.
Students have always been on the forefront of change and admirably they are picking up the mantle from earlier generations. They marched for Civil Rights and equality, they opposed the Vietnam war, they fought against Apartheid in South Africa, now they are fighting to end Genocide in Gaza and to birth the state of Palestine.
