Why the State Can't Compromise with the Gaza Solidarity Movement
«… thanks to occupiers who have been willing to risk arrest, police brutality, defamation, doxxing, and expulsion.
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When the Los Angeles Police Department joined fascists in attempting to evict the Gaza solidarity encampment at UCLA, protesters with helmets and shields held them at bay for eight hours.
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The basic demand to see Palestinians as human beings is incompatible with the agendas of the United States government and universities.
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This explains the unification of Democrats and Republicans in opposition to the protests as well as the intense repression that the authorities immediately meted out. It also explains the incredible rhetorical acrobatics on display from media outlets as they excuse police for beating large numbers of demonstrators—many of whom are Jewish—in the name of combatting anti-Semitism.
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Likewise, although many of the protest encampments represent the most successful voluntary collaboration between Muslim and Jewish students taking place anywhere in the world today, the administrations have claimed that it was necessary to destroy them in order to keep the peace.
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Accusations of anti-Semitism are cynical lies coming from administrators and politicians who have already showed that they could not care less about protecting students from actual white nationalists.
The same university administrators who used “free speech” as an excuse to vilify and arrest students for protesting against white nationalists speaking on campus are now attacking and brutalizing anti-Zionist Jewish and Palestinian protestors in the name of protecting Jewish students from anti-Semitism. Free speech and student safety are both false pretenses: the truth is that university administrations and police will seek to destroy any force that actively challenges their power. This explains the previously unthinkable alliance between Republicans who refuse to disavow white nationalists in their own party, Democrats who champion genocide in the name of resisting anti-Semitism, and university administrators.
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We should read the violent repression and media slander as a sign of the rigidity and vulnerability of those in power.
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The war machine killing Palestinians is an essential part of the war-making institutions of the US empire, which includes not only universities and weapons contractors, but the economy itself. All of these are interconnected with other governments and colonial projects around the world. Stopping the genocide of the Palestinians means challenging every aspect of the prevailing world order.
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… the oppression of the Palestinian people represents a blueprint for a possible future for all of us. In fighting for a free Palestine, we are fighting for our own future, as well. Acknowledging this should strengthen our resolve to put an immediate stop to the genocide.»