06 May 2024 1.40pm
After the start of every protest there is a watershed moment, when the authorities decide how to respond. When they choose repression or outright rejection of the protesters’ reasons, they usually fuel the protest rather than extinguish it, and can help transform a limited demand into a broader social movement. It could happen again this time with student protests on the campuses of dozens of universities in the United States in support of the Palestinian people.
There have been cases, such as that of Brown University, in Rhode Island, in which the protesters reached an agreement with the university administrators, who committed to discussing and putting to a vote the proposal to cancel investments in companies linked to the Israeli military apparatus. But the repression at Columbia University in New York, the epicenter of the protest, has increased activism throughout the country. At this point it is possible that the student movement ends up at the center of the debate and comes to influence the political dynamics at various levels.
A first level, the most visible, concerns the balance in view of the presidential elections. Polls conducted before the protests began show that Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip is not at the top of the minds of most Americans, even younger ones. But the developments of the last few days – the arrest of more than two thousand people and violent police repression on some campuses – could increase solidarity for the protesters’ cause.
They certainly put the Biden administration in a very complicated position, which for months has been worried about the loss of support among younger and minority voters. On May 2, the president made his first public statement about the protests, saying that “order must prevail” on campuses, then adding: “But we are not an authoritarian country that silences people.” In recent years the Democrats have presented themselves as the guarantors of stability in the face of the destructive slope of the Republicans (a notable reversal compared to the tradition of the two parties), and also for this reason they have done well in all the last three elections. Now the Republicans have an easy time in overturning this narrative: they accuse the left of having raised a generation of intolerant extremists that they are now struggling to keep at bay (putting emphasis on the many incidents of anti-Semitism on campuses) and ask for the intervention of the national guard in the universities to restore order.
The White House’s difficulties on the domestic front are intertwined with those in foreign policy, and feed on each other. The agreement for a ceasefire in Gaza is stalled, and Israel still says it wants to invade Rafah, where some 1.4 million Palestinian civilians have taken refuge. The New York Times wrote that the president is not particularly alarmed by the situation: “Biden’s advisers say the issue is unlikely to significantly harm the president in the election. The situation in Gaza remains very fluid, as US officials continue to work towards a ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel, and the war may not have the same political resonance when voters go to the polls in November. In the coming weeks, students will leave campus for summer vacation, which many believe will help dampen the intensity of the protests.”
But there is another, deeper level, which concerns the orientation of public opinion on relations with Israel. For months we have been discussing the possibility that the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip, which has so far caused the death of more than thirty thousand civilians, could change relations between the two countries, and now we are wondering whether the protests on campuses could contribute to this dynamics.
The alliance with Israel has been one of the cornerstones of US foreign policy for almost seventy years, also due to the role that American Jews had in building the post-war United States. Polls today show that sympathy for Israel is declining among Americans under thirty. This is a fairly small part of the electorate, which is probably not able to influence the outcome of the next elections. But the shift could produce long-term effects, as there is a generational change in institutions and politics.
This text is taken from the Americana newsletter.
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