The landing of the political class in the pro-Palestinian protests, together with the emergence of students' demands in the lives and agendas of important congressmen, deepens the broadest mobilization in US universities since the war broke out in Gaza and , probably also, since the effervescence of the campuses over Vietnam. The president of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, the country's third-largest authority, visited this Wednesday with representatives of his party from New York the Columbia campus, where hundreds of students are still camped in solidarity with Palestine. Columbia is the epicenter of a massive mobilization, from coast to coast of the United States.
Johnson, who is an evangelical Christian—his confession unswervingly supports Israeli hawks—has met with Jewish students on campus who say they feel unsafe because of the rallies and has taken the opportunity to call for the resignation of Columbia's president, Nemat. Minouche Shafik, for not knowing how to manage, in his opinion, a mobilization that began in October and that, like a fireball, also threatens to take its toll on President Joe Biden among the youngest voters, with just a few months left before the elections.
During a tense news conference repeatedly interrupted by students, who booed Johnson several times, the House speaker said: “We cannot allow this type of hate and anti-Semitism to flourish on our campuses, and it must be stopped in its tracks. Those who perpetrate this violence must be stopped. I am here today, joining my colleagues and asking the president [rectora] “Shafik should resign if he cannot immediately bring order to this chaos.”
Johnson's risky move, his incursion into a Democratic enclave – and also on a war footing – like Columbia, can also be read internally, since the president of the House faces an avalanche of conservative criticism and a handful of coreligionists , led by Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, threatens to impeach him. The amplifying effect of the protests provides Republicans with a new weapon against Democrats in the middle of the election campaign.
His visit came hours after a massive sit-in outside the home of Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate and the highest-ranking elected Jew, ended late Tuesday with more than 200 arrests. The protest, organized by the progressive group Jewish Voice for Peace—whose activity was banned by Columbia last year, in the first days of the mobilization—demanded that the United States stop providing military aid to Israel: this is now the main demand of the activists. The name of the umbrella that brings together more than a hundred Columbia student groups, Columbia University Apartheid Divest—which claims to be “a coalition that sees Palestine as the vanguard of collective liberation”— , also includes another capital demand from students: that universities withdraw their investments from companies linked to Israel. Furthermore, and as a condition for giving up their protests, they demand that those expelled or disciplined for their participation in them be readmitted.
Those responsible for the university that has become the epicenter of the protests have extended the deadline for negotiations with the protesters by 48 hours to try to peacefully dismantle – that is, without the intervention of riot police, as happened last week – the camp, while the students agreed to remove “a significant number of tents,” according to a statement from the rectorate, not confirmed by the organizers of the camp. Columbia confirmed this Wednesday that final exams will also be virtual.
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Protests increase pressure on Biden
Among the pro-Palestinian protesters, it is no longer even necessary to ask for a ceasefire, a demand also assumed by the White House, although with a small mouth: by its abstention, Washington allowed the adoption of the first ceasefire resolution at the UN , but immediately neutralized it, calling it “non-binding.” Biden's change of position towards Israel after the tens of thousands of punishing votes received in the Democratic primaries – mostly from voters of Arab and Muslim origin, decisive in states like Michigan – is theoretically clear. This is confirmed by his repeated warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that an invasion of Rafah would be a humanitarian disaster of incalculable proportions, or his request that Israel allow more aid access to the Strip. But the protests on campuses, which do not stop despite police evictions, increase the pressure on the Democratic candidate for re-election. Especially when he receives friendly fire, such as speaking in support of progressive Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's students Tuesday at the University of Minnesota.
Politics also runs through the demonstrations around the campuses. At the meeting held on Tuesday night at one of the entrances to Columbia, with the subway entrances closed, an endless battery of fences and more riot police than participants, representatives of thirty groups spoke, mostly from the Arab and Muslim community in New York, as well as a minority of Jews. Some speakers had no ties to the university, but expressed support for the campers. “This is not only a fight for Palestine, it is also a fight for the United States, for our civil rights and for our freedoms. “It is a fight for freedom of expression and against authoritarianism,” said one of them. At the end of the rally, the slogan that many Jewish students consider anti-Semitic for supposedly inciting the expulsion of Jews from Israel was chanted: “From the river [Jordán] to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
The repression of the protests at Columbia and many other American campuses, from Yale to New York University or those in Berkeley, Ohio or Texas – where this Wednesday special troops dispersed the students – is seen by those involved as an outrage. constitutional; also by hundreds of teachers, who have come out to support the students. “I was horrified to see Columbia calling the police to arrest non-violent students protesting in solidarity with Gaza. University campuses should be a space for freedom of expression and academic research,” explains Bassam Khawaja, professor of law. “Bringing in riot police to remove students camping on the grass, suspending them en masse without due process, and evicting them from their homes are draconian, over-the-top reactions. “I am also deeply concerned that this administration is treating Palestinian human rights defenders especially harshly.” The police had not intervened in Columbia since 1968, in the midst of the response to the Vietnam War.
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