After US President Joe Biden remained silent for a long time regarding the student movement in American universities against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, he said in a speech last Thursday that it was necessary for “order” to prevail on university campuses, adding: “We are not a tyrannical nation where we remain silent.” People or we crush the opposition… But we are not a state outside the law… We are a civil society, and the system must prevail,” stressing that “protests cannot be allowed to hinder the regularity of classes and graduation dates for thousands of students on university campuses across the country.”
He added: “There should be no place on any university campus, nor in any part of the United States, for anti-Semitism or threats of violence toward Jewish students.” Biden said that the developments put to the test two basic American principles: the first is the right to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and having people’s voices heard, and the second is the rule of law, as “both must be supported.” The US President stressed that “there is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans.” Biden’s speech was widely criticized by his Republican opponents, as well as by supporters of the Democratic Party itself, especially from its far left. The duality of freedom of expression and anti-Semitism has always been on opposite sides, and the charge of “anti-Semitism” has always been used to silence voices critical of Israel from academics and media professionals, and to intimidate critics of Israel’s practices. Some accusations of anti-Semitism are no longer, in the eyes of many, acceptable, due to the exposure of their political and ideological fragility.
In theory, the students exercised their right to freedom of expression by peacefully demonstrating opposition to American support for Israel in the war in the Gaza Strip, which led to the deaths of more than 34,000 Palestinians, the destruction of infrastructure in the Strip, and caused a mass displacement and humanitarian crisis. The student demonstrators saw that these practices were neither militarily nor morally justified, especially since a number of them were Jews and from Jewish organizations that rejected Israeli policy. The American political scene appears confused and contradictory. With American society recognizing the right of students to express their political opinions based on the constitutional rights of the right to expression and the right to protest and demonstrate, comes the use of the police to break up the protests and arrest the protesting students. Thus, the student protests represent a major dilemma for the administration of President Biden, especially since the United States is on the verge of presidential elections. There is no doubt that the last thing Biden and his advisors wish for is that the situation in Gaza will be ravaged during the election season, and that the president’s positions will be reflected in his Democratic Party, and that the size of the divisions in the divided party will deepen. On himself since the start of the Israeli war.
The position of the US administration will be reflected in the position of voters, especially students, young people, and the more liberal Americans, who form a major part of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition. All of them are increasingly critical of the official American position that is tolerant, if not supportive, of Israeli actions in Gaza.
The Biden administration’s position on the opposition student movement will be directly reflected at the ballot boxes, if the administration does not rush to contain the damage after the consequences of the war in Gaza reached the campuses of major American universities, from Harvard in the northeast to the University of Southern California in the far southwest of the country, placing the administration America is in a political dilemma; The student movement has exceptional importance in America, and has a history of revolutionary awareness in addressing humanitarian and political issues, inside and outside American borders.
*Emirati writer
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