Muddying the Water on US Student Protests

Alastair Crooke

Seyed Hassan Nasrallah, as the spokesman for the unity of Resistance Fronts, has made clear that the aim of the Resistance is to exhaust "Israel".

Many of the incumbents of the leadership posts in Institutional America are either liberal Zionists or Evangelicals. Such a situation should be no surprise. The Washington Post, for example, asked Matthew Brooks, the CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), whether he planned to fund electoral challengers to the twenty House Republicans that voted against the Bill giving aid to the Israelis:

“The RJC is gearing up to spend upward of $15 million in what will be the largest targeted effort toward the Jewish community in critical battleground states across the country … We have a long-standing history of speaking out against folks who are anti-Israel, whether they be Democrats like “the Squad” and the progressives on the left, but also against folks who voice anti-Israel sentiments on the Right”. 

“We were the group that was responsible for defeating Congressman Steve King. We’re spending over a million dollars in Indiana this election cycle, to beat former congressman John Hostettler, who was one of the most anti-Israel voices in Congress during his tenure”. 

“Question: Twenty other House Republicans voted against the Israel bill. Do you plan to endorse challengers running against any of them?”

“Brooks: If there’s a credible challenger [on the ballot] to any of those people - we absolutely will be involved”.

Against this background, it should not surprise that as Edward Luce writes in the Financial Times, the US Institutional leaders are tied in knots over the campus protests. The angst in no small part hinges around the undoubted power of AIPAC and the RJC to make -- or break -- Congressional aspirants:  

“In practice”, Luce says, “adults from all walks — Republicans, Democrats, the media, and university administrations — are exhibiting the traits of hysteria and dogmatism they deplore in the young. It should come as no surprise that the protests are getting angrier. Students have every right to protest even with speech that many of their peers find abhorrent”.

Luce asks:

“At what point does anti-Zionism become antisemitism? The line is blurry. But most people — except to those in charge, apparently — can tell the difference between lawful protest, and calls to violence”.

But just to blur the distinction further: 

The US ‘House’ is advancing a Bill to codify the contentious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. The definition is contentious because most of its examples of antisemitism involve criticism of t"Israel", including calling "Israel" a “racist endeavour”. The Bill’s passage would mean the definition would apply when officials adjudicate Title VI complaints alleging campus antisemitism. The Bill passed 320 – 91 in the House.

“There is however another factor behind the Congressional hysteria: the protests have sparked fears of a repeat of 1968. Like then, the unrest began at Columbia University. As in 1968, this year’s Democratic convention will be held in Chicago. The 1968 convention was also a disaster because Chicago’s mayor, Richard Daley, sent his police into pitched combat with the protesters. The street battle dominated the media’s attention”. 

Luce however, draws a sharp distinction with 1968: “The chief driver of these protests is humanitarian” (as was not the case in the VietNam war).

But then, Luce resorts to the old canard: 

“Some of the demonstrators consciously subscribe to a Hamas worldview that would wipe Israel off the map. At what point does anti-Zionism become antisemitism ...?” 

This is where the issue is being muddied. Wiping "Israel", qua Zionism, off the map does not imply wiping it away by violence (though there is a legal right of resistance for those living under occupation).

Seyed Hassan Nasrallah (as the spokesman for the unity of Resistance Fronts) has made clear that the aim of the Resistance is to exhaust "Israel" -- and to drive it to a state of defeat and despair -- such that Israelis begin to recant the claim of special rights and exceptionalism, and become content to live ‘between the River and the Sea’ with others  (Palestinians), sharing in a parity of rights. That is, with Jews, Muslims and Christians living on a common territory. There would then be no Zionism.

Seyed Nasrallah explicitly foresaw the possibility of such an outcome emerging -- without major war. 

It is ‘sleight of hand’ therefore to cast the Hamas ‘worldview’ to be one of ‘wiping Israel off the map’ as if that implies ‘exterminating’ or killing Jews. "Israel" would be ‘off the map’ in the sense that a future state would not be exclusively Jewish in nature -- but multi-faith.

The Hamas ‘worldview’ sly imputation of antisemitism is  a calumny almost on a par with the slogan ‘Hamas is ISIS’. (ISIS had Hamas officials on their death list).  Hamas’ worldview cannot be stripped from the context of the hatreds ignited by the war in Gaza.

Most of Luce’s article relates to the issue of antisemitism -- but Islamophobia is growing at an accelerated pace, too.  It is important to de-bunk the ‘Hamas is ISIS’ meme in the West, lest such falsities slide us into yet another ‘war on terror’.