“Campus Panic” Over Gaza Protests Obscures Israeli Genocide

UPDATE: The police riots on college campuses are aimed to smear the student protest movement by associating it with violence and chaos. That is what happened at UCLA where pro-Israel thugs threw explosive devices and used weapons to physically assault students. That is what happened at Columbia where riot police broke into a dormitory and violently evicted peaceful protestors arresting 100. The administration has declared they will be expelled (not suspended). This is another attempt to turn non-violent students into law-breakers in the eyes of the public.

There are now over 70 120 Gaza encampments or protests at US universities, in addition 20 campuses internationally. Besides demanding an end to the war in Gaza and criticizing US support for it, students also are pressuring their institutions to divest endowments of companies which benefit from Israeli occupation. In some cases, they are also calling for the end of educational partnership and study abroad programs with Israeli universities. Many of the issues raised in these protests are familiar. Students and faculty have for years sought divestment and opposed Israeli occupation.

There is a major difference in these new protests. They have become an organized nation-wide movement amplifying many-fold the power of the message. Prior activism did not have clear, sharp focus provided by the Gaza war. It did not have a unifying message or rallying cry as it now does. Even if this movement loses momentum once the academic year ends and students leave their campuses, this movement will have established a model for future activism.

Gaza and “Campus Panic”

Because of the power and success of this anti-war movement, power elites including the Israel Lobby, GOP, law enforcement, Wall Street, and university administrators have rallied a backlash that Samuel Catlin calls campus panic. It is related to “moral panic,” defined as:

A moral panic is a widespread fear, most often an irrational one, that someone or something is a threat to the values, safety, and interests of a community or society at large. Typically, a moral panic is perpetuated by the news media, fueled by politicians, and often results in the passage of new laws or policies that target the source of the panic. In this way, moral panic can foster increased social control.

Moral panics are often centered around people who are marginalized in society due to their race or ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality, or religion. As such, a moral panic often draws on known stereotypes and reinforces them. It can also exacerbate the real and perceived differences and divisions between groups of people. Moral panic is well known in the sociology of deviance and crime and is related to the labeling theory of deviance.

The current moral panic ginned up by the Israel Lobby aims to exert a form of political control. It seeks to divert the narrative of Gaza protest and genocide and reinstate the dominant narrative of pro-Israelism. It attempts to undermine the campus movement to end the genocide in Gaza; and to shift the nation’s gaze to manufactured issues like public order, anti-Semitism, violence, vandalism, etc. These are all issues which the public understands clearly, while those related to Gaza and the Middle East are more complex and require deeper thought. Ultimately, campus panic aims to regain control of the narrative and reassert its dominance in social discourse.

These pro-Israel counter-forces desperately need to obfuscate the issue of Gaza. They need to protect their threatened interests which include Congressional weapons appropriation for Israel, research and funding for joint projects with Israeli universities, investments in Israeli and US technology companies benefiting from affiliations with the IDF, and exchanges between US and Israeli military-law enforcement, etc.

To do so, they have sought to criminalize the encampments, transforming them from legitimate acts of non-violent protest to law-breaking, disruptive acts which violate the decorum of the university. This national movement, dedicated to ending the war and promoting Palestinian rights stands accused falsely of espousing anti-Semitism.

The anti-Semitism canard

The latter is a powerful canard used by Israel and its domestic lobby here to weaken legitimate criticism of Israel. It was used successfully to destroy Jeremy Corbyn’s term as Labour Party leader. It is deployed in a $100-million Lobby campaign to defeat Democratic progressive candidates critical of US military weapons shipments to Israel. These Congressional candidates are falsely accused of supporting Hamas, being terror supporters, etc. Slogans like “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which support the national rights of the Palestinian people; become anti-Semitic chants advocating the elimination of Israel.

“Iran has their military proxies like Hezbollah, and Iran has their campus proxies like these groups, like Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace.” -Jonathan Greenblatt, Anti-Defamation League pic.twitter.com/JOMBeDZCSu

— Waleed Shahid 🪬 (@_waleedshahid) April 25, 2024

The ADL is a leading force in policing discourse around Israel (including on campus).  It’s boss, Jonathan Greenblatt recently associated (above) Hezbollah with Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, calling them Hezbollah’s “campus proxies.”  I’d argue this is explicitly libelous since not only is at false, but Greenblatt knows it is false.  If he has a brain in his head, he would know it is ludicrous to portray either, but especially JVP as having any affiliation of any kind, direct or indirect, with Hezbollah. Further, this inflamed rhetoric could easily incite an Islamophobe or white supremacist to take matters into their own hands.  We’ve seen far too many examples of such anti-Muslim terror attacks. Greenblatt’s ADL is the exemplar of the campus panic.

The longer the Lobby promotes these divisive views, the more universities call in cops to destroy encampments; the more students are arrested, suspended or expelled; the weaker the ultimate mission of the movement. At least this is the strategic thinking of those engaged in the backlash.

Israel Lobby-MAGA-Billionaire alliance

Those rank-and-file pro-Israel advocates may believe the views they espouse, but they are part of an organized campaign devised by political strategists among the Israel Lobby groups (American Jewish Committee, Aipac, ADL), their billionaire donors (Bill Ackman, Jeffrey Yass, etc.), and allied with GOP politicians (Elise Stefanik, Mike Johnson, etc.) and consultants. University administrators have become accessories to this Lobby campaign after being made sacrificial lambs by the GOP political class.

After two Ivy League presidents were “cancelled” by the Congressional auto da fe, other presidents saw the writing on the wall. They knew that if they didn’t toe the line, they too would be burned at the academic stake. Columbia’s Mouniche Shafik’s craven performance before the GOP inquisitors and her summoning of armed riot police to rid her campus of student protest, is an example of such a response. All this is yet another form of “social control.”

The anti-war movement threatens the gravy train of the Israel Lobby–i.e.billionaires who fund it–along with the Congressional aid pipeline for tens of billions in US weapons exports to Israel. These weapons are a critical component of the Israeli war machine. Without them, Israel could not engage in genocide. It could not fight the sustained six-month war as it has.

University as Battle Ground

The Lobby also sees the “University” as a battleground for the hearts and minds of American youth.  Here their views are shaped; their intellectual development is nurtured. Here they confront a diversity of ethnicity, religion and ideas.  The campus is (in their view) a hotbed of anti-Israelism.  A place in which the pro-Israel version of the culture wars is fought.

Pro-Israel foundations like Shusterman spent tens of millions creating and maintaining the Israel on Campus Coalition; and campus institutions like Hillel are tasked with inoculating Jewish students against views purportedly hostile to Israel;” Their combined mission is to to combat anti-Zionism (aka anti-Semitism) and Arab-Muslim activism on campus.

To fight the battle, the Lobby has enlisted an array of right-wing political forces. Most notably the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.  Politicians like Reps. Elise Stefanik, who single-handedly destroyed two Ivy League presidents and frightened another into turning her campus into a police zone.

There is an accompanying trend in the so-called left which attacks the campus movement for is angry, unreasoned outbursts. Norman Finkelstein and Ryan Grimm exemplify this:

Finkelstein [offered] his views on organizing a politically effective movement, emphasizing the importance of slogans that “are going to unite and not divide,” leave “no room for misinterpretation,”

He then critiqued the use of the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in favor of the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestinians will be free,” as less ambiguous and harder to intentionally misconstrue.

…Another student questioned Finkelstein’s critique of the phrase, expressing concern about potentially “repressing the human and emotional part of the protests” by changing language…

…For the people of Gaza, one has to exercise maximum responsibility, to get out of one’s navel, to crawl out of one’s ego…

Finkelstein’s statement drips condescension.  He essentially asks students to modify their public statements in order to avoid imagined sensitivities: not a view that resonates with these activists, nor should it.

It is not the role of journalists or academics manque like them to advise the student movement on appropriate behavior. It determines its strategy, tactics and activism. Solidarity demands that we support them (unless they are violent or engage in hate speech). They are on the front-lines fighting the good fight.