Weekly Briefing: ‘Thank God for the students’

What an incredible week this has been. For six months we have been waiting for a forceful moral response in America to the genocide. For people to rise up as a movement to condemn U.S. complicity in Israel’s murder of civilians in no uncertain terms. And while there have been many inklings in the polls that show anger toward U.S. policy in the Democratic base, and in the uncommitted vote, and in large demonstrations, we have not seen a broad movement that mobilizes masses and speaks angrily against war crimes.

Now we have. The student encampments that are sweeping American universities are truly inspiring. Students have reminded Americans of their best self in an upswelling that recalls the Vietnam protests. They are speaking up for the victims. They see right and wrong clearly and they have put their bodies on the line. They have called out their schools and government for complicity in slaughter. They have listened to their elders but taken their own power in generational terms.

And immediately, of course, Israel and its friends have sought to smear the students as antisemites. Netanyahu called them Nazis and urged the U.S. to take harder action. “What’s happening in America’s college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities. They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty. This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s.”

The leading Israel lobby organizations echoed Netanyahu’s lies while endorsing legislation that characterizes the protests as spawned by foreign agents. Biden signed it. As he pushed through billions of fresh aid to Israel, hailed as a political coup by establishment Democrats on the cables.

The center does not hold– there is no center on this issue. You are either for arming a genocidal state or for accountability. The student encampments have announced their presence as a political force of unpredictable force with an unequivocal message: No to genocide.

I visited the encampment at Penn and was humbled by its vigor and idealism and strength. They are honoring Palestinian martyrs — for instance, the library in Refaat Alareer’s name — and speaking calmly as American actors. There was no antisemitism to be seen, just Friday night shabbat service.

Here is Nick Wilson, who was suspended at Cornell for leading an encampment, saying that something has been unleashed in his generation:  

Our movement is international, with university students of all stripes across the world standing for an end to genocide. For each of us silenced by Cornell, untold masses on this campus and others will be compelled to take our place in the encampments. Around the encampment, I have already met countless students who said they had never come to a protest or political action on campus before — our movement grows by the hour and each new participant is just as much a part of what we’re building as I am. I could not be more confident in the capacity of my peers — who are immensely talented, principled and brave — to pick up the slack in my absence. This administration does not understand the massive swell of support virtually guaranteed in the wake of our suspensions.”

No one can say where these protests will lead. I was a kid when the anti-Vietnam war protests swept campuses. And yes this upheaval is reminiscent, but it has its own character. What is clear is that a vital moral voice is demanding to be heard in the U.S. debate. The student says that Palestinian human rights must not be ignored, as they routinely have been by our political leaders. I reflect that I was at the BDS conference at Penn in 2010 when Sarah Schulman told us, You are a vanguard movement. Others will join you. Don’t be egotistical about your getting there first. Don’t impose litmus tests on them.

Well here they are. Others have joined us and are seizing the mantle of leadership. “Brave” is the word, as Nick Wilson says. They are just trying to stand in the way of more babies being killed. Let the politicians who have rationalized these acts shake in their shoes.

Susan Abulhawa, the Philadelphia writer/doctor/activist, got back into Gaza this week and offered a hosanna to the students from the ruins of Nasser hospital.

“Edward Said once said, ‘thank God for the students.’ I just want to echo those words from this tortured place. Really, thank God for you guys. Every place here is tinged with so much death and destruction it beggars belief. What’s being done to life here is difficult to fathom or to contain in words,” Abulhawa said.

So let us echo the echo. God bless the students. You carry the future on your shoulders, you have the power to bring killers to account. Let us make way.