What is more surprising is that more Americans aren't openly protesting.

But that aside there a huge number of students with Palestinian heritage on college campuses. They hate Israel, peace or war, and so this has been an opportunity to vent those feelings. Yes, there are non-Palestinians who have taken part who also resent Israel while ignoring the crimes of its Arab neighbors.

Where According to the US Office of Palestinian Affairs, there were only 485 Palestinian students of all ages in the whole country in 2022. They are not what's driving the current protests, and your response here is not only wrong, it's highly bigoted by assuming every one of them hate Israel, peace, and ignore Arab aggression against Jews.

Because that's what you're doing. Imagine if I said something like, "Protests are being done by people of Jewish heritage, who hate all Arabs and peace. " or "Those Black people protesting hate white Americans and peace." Good God, I can't believe you've doubled-down on your bigotry in response.

I know. I went to college with a woman whose grandparents emigrated after they were driven off their land by Israeli settlers. I dare say she would be, or may be, among the protesters.

Arabs are in solidarity with Palestinians. Also South and East Asians are in solidarity with Palestinians. We also have Latinos, Native Americans and the overwhelming majority of African Americans are in solidarity with Palestinians. Then, you got all sorts of white people who want to support friends who are POC.

The war is being framed as white people wiping out brown people. It's being framed as Tulsa race riots on steroids, it's being framed as a ME version of the Native American genocide. (One NA group, who had never heard of Gaza prior to this, have abandoned their own causes for this one) It's all about a cause for justice for people who have been treated unjustly and this war is a microcosm. I don't agree that it is the same as everyone's struggle, but I can't control how people feel, think etc.

If and when the war ends, it isn't going to change much for the majority of people protesting. If there is a major change in the ME, it will impact Jewish and Arab communities here. As someone who lives in a Latino community, the ME has very little impact on the Latino community.

there have been 40,000 dead Palestinians and 260 dead Israeli soldiers. Of the 260, we don't know how many of them were killed as the result of enemy action. That is much like the "War" fought at Wounded Knee. I sometimes wonder if the goals of the American wars against the native Americans isn't more like the current war in Gaza than different.

at what's going on in Gaza and wish to hurt Pres. Biden in the upcoming election to get Been-A-Dick Donald reinstalled in the WH.

I know its simplistic and I could, probably am, wrong, but that's my opinion.
The rhetoric on both sides needs to be tamped down and Israel and HAMAS need to work out a viable agreement where both sides can live side by side in peace, if not true peace, than a workable cease fire.

Not sure it's true, but it does seem like a possibility

that promotes BDS (boycott and divestment) heavily in several locations around the country. They've been around for 20 some years, growing online and with boots on the ground at campuses. They have several affiliated groups, including a coalition of liberal churches.
They were ready for protests on 10/8/23.

I'm currently putting together some info on the organizations and will post an OP on them in a few days. There is A LOT to look into when tracing them and it takes a little time to sort them out and condense the info into OP size.

Very well organized protests, at that.

There was a large protest the day after in Seattle which shut down I-5. Interesting too is how many kept their faces covered.

I had Morning Joe on and Scarborough asked why college students were not up in arms about the genocide, actual genocide in Sudan? One million people killed. I believe he also wondered about Hamas calling for the extinction of Jews, which is a call for genocide.

I don’t claim to understand it all, but I do believe two things can be possible at once: That Israel suffered a horrific attack by Hamas on October 7 and that the response by Israel is killing innocent people.

funding of Israel's execution of the war.

That said, I hope for peace and some reason in the conflict soon. It's a nightmare.

...I don't think you're wrong about that at all.

And I suspect the flames are being fanned by more than one source, and with more than one objective in mind.

Young people spend hours on social media every day and are constantly seeing images of dead children, badly injured children, and lots of kids with no limbs, food, water, hospitals, schools, houses plus nowhere to wash and a few outhouses for thousands of people - thousands now sleeping on dirty rugs on the floor of tents. And, we are watching the tents with sleeping children being bombed & adults carrying these mutilated children running & down the streets. It’s f..ing horrific & if people can’t understand how upsetting this is to the young or most people - I’m just baffled!!!

That we are supplying the bombs to do this is not going over well. Seeing little children being pulled out from the rubble is something I never ever saw in my whole life before & these kids are inundated with these images.

We protested when we were young but we didn’t see the wars we were protesting in real time - day after day. Lots of people in Gaza photographing in real time because some still have phones.

Also, the kids are all connected on their phones. Jewish Voices for Peace can put out a notice - “everyone go to Grand Central now” - and thousands of kids will respond within the hour as we saw.

I live outside of a small town with 900 people. We have a group of mostly older & senior adults called “Resistiendo” - to fight corporations wanting to make our area a utility & toxic pipeline area. We can call a meeting tonight on our phones and get a good percentage of the town to show up.
If we can get 100 old people from a single post, young people in cities can mobilize in thousands in minutes.

It didn't take me long to decide that I don't want to be associated with people screaming "Genocide Joe has got to go" and yelling at Jewish Americans to "go back to Poland."

It doesn't take much information to recognize that the best way to further peace - for Palestine and everywhere else - is to reelect Joe Biden, not Trump.

Pretty soon we saw it day after day on TV. That's when protests of Vietnam really ramped up, 1968-70. Sure, it was the draft, but it was also when it began being called "The Living Room War." Seems like it was right about then that Walter Cronkite came out against it too. These kids are seeing it on their phones as opposed to the TV, but same deal.

Its been on their phones since the day it started two years ago.

They are simply joining with other protesters here and around the world against the killing and imposed starvation.

Just like the students in the '60s and '70s they are becoming citizens of the world beyond the narrow confines of "America love it or leave it", "USA!", USA!" "America, right or wrong" and other forms of right wing nationalism.

The protests are world wide and getting larger.

Good.

Sudan being an example. What makes this different?

ISRAEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Atrocities were being committed in many places. America is deeply involved in the Gaza conflict by supplying arms to Israel that end up killing thousands of civilians. The Gaza atrocities are more visual and reported on than the other conflicts. Of course it and the ensuing protests are going to get the most attention. It is impossible to ignore and brush off as just another conflict.

Even now, here, on a left-wing site you are seeing a people calling up the usual mythical Bogymen of "Outside agitators", "secret funding", and other conspiracy theories. Instead of questioning who's funding the protesters we should be questioning why America is funding the killing.

receive from Iran?
I look forward to your thread on that, but I won't hold my breath waiting for it.
Again, hypocrisy much?

Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, and other Progressive pols and citizens are.

America has funded many terrorist organizations and anti-democratic regimes and still does. Are you protesting that?

Hypocrisy much?

receive from Iran, I never said anything about the funding Israel receives from the US, that seems to be well taken care of here at DU.
So, again, I look forward to your thread condemning Iran for its role in funding terrorist groups bent on the destruction of Israel, can we expect that anytime soon?

You?

Yet Uganda is committing horrific human rights violations, including literally executing gay people. These atrocities are visible to anybody who cares to read the news.

Why are Uganda's atrocities being ignored?

and their outrage against Palestinian deaths is genuine.

The antisemitism and Jew hate must also be genuine.

Are some of the protestors anti-Semitic? Probably. Most certainly not a majority. Are the Jews participating in the protests anti-semitic?

The same diversions were used back during the civil rights and Vietnam protests.

Were there Communists in the civil-rights and anti-war movement? Sure. Were they a majority of the protesters? Nope. Were they controlling or funding the protests? Nope.

Do I believe peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is possible. I believe that killing, starving, hurting other people is wrong.

Does that make me an anti-semite?

I do believe it is possible. As I have often stated previously, I believe a separate Palestinian state is the way to ending the conflict. I did not claim you are an antisemite nor that all protesters are antisemitic.

What I do not support is attacking Jews around the world because "Israel". I can say that with qualification or deflection.

Just as we have reached agreement. I think that Israel and Palestinians can do likewise. They don't to love each other to just get along.

Hell, I'm from an Irish American family and I'm still surprised that they've stopped killing each other and get along despite the hatreds of the fringes.

There are some left wing DUsers, but, overall, it is a "centrist" site in the right wing American body politic.

...so I don't have much experience on the evolution of DU through the years, but I can say that I joined specifically because of the discription in the TOS that states DU members are expected to have generally PROGRESSIVE opinions.

That being written, my experience since joining has shown a very different reality to the actual posts, in that I find a surprising number of members who choose to engage in discussion to be more "centrist" than I expected (by which I mean more the very right edge of the Leftist population), which, as I mentioned, I wasn't expecting from what the TOS says.

People are amazingly silent on those.

Hypocrisy much?

Students are going to cause changes in policies. Good.

And now we also have images going around the world of out of control police arresting & attacking older women teachers.

Any man with superior strength - police or not - throwing peaceful protesters - especially women to the ground is abhorrent to me. Big man -taking down the little women - can’t just handcuff them but have to to throw them to the ground & many cops seem unable to control themselves.

And these people have decided to organize in an effort to make that stop. It's pretty straightforward.

I don't think these kinds of protests help. I think they're self-indulgent performative virtue signaling. I also think they're deeply hypocritical. And I think the current blip of pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish hysteria on college campuses is driven and fed by outside influencers and plain old resentment of Jewish people. A lot of people who ought to know better are making fools of themselves screaming antisemitic crap while ignoring lots of other horrible things. I guess it makes them feel important.

So, no. I don't plan to organize a self-indulgent public spectacle to hurt Joe Biden's reelection.

What "outside influencers"? Back during the Civial Rights movement and Vietnam protests we were accused by the government and right wing of being "outside agitators" or being used by "outside agitators". I'm still awaiting my money and medals from Moscow, Beijing, Havana, and Hanoi. Conspiracy theories about protests are rubbish.

From our bombs! You think a kid is going to think - hey !! how does SA fit into this?

Where are the protests to divest from Uganda?

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/29/africa/uganda-life-for-lgbt-community-intl-cmd

Perhaps Gaza is just the beginning of a pattern of nationwide social unrest that reflects an underlying dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs in general. Something feel good capitalism can't fix.

elsewhere so any concern about these atrocities is, somehow, not to be taken seriously.

How heart-breaking these threads always become.

This thread is about the performative protests and many of us are questioning how they help. IMO they are very unhelpful because their spokespeople are encouraging people not to reelect Biden. I can't imagine anything worse for global peace than another Trump presidency.

I'm deeply opposed to atrocities. I think it's essential to reelect Biden in order to prevent more.

And I also think once something picks up steam on social media it becomes trendy. That explains a lot of it, that and misplaced priorities, given that we’re still fighting to keep authoritarianism out of this country. That seems like an ancillary priority to demonstrators who have an inflated sense of what they can actually do from here. The reality is there is the demonstrators have basically no power to affect change in Israel’s policies. And even if the US stopped providing a small percentage of Israel’s military capability the war would still go on. It’s naive to think otherwise.

Unlike the peace demonstrations in the 70s, realistically the US has little control or power over Israel and its actions

are on tv every day and night, much like the Viet Nam war became at one point. The college students are seeing what we are seeing - unbearable destruction and suffering and learning about the deaths and famine. It is horrible.

more people would be outraged. It’s talked about but I don’t see the areas completely in rubble. Now what’s on TV are the protests.

Watch Al Jazeera on YouTube and if you really wanna see gore, watch Al Jazeera Arabic. There are also lesser known Arabic stations on YouTube. You don't need a TV to watch. Just a cell phone.

ETA: Just checked both AJ's. They're covering Blinken, protests in US, Israel etc, IDF. Didn't see as much Gaza footage as in the past.

Found college campuses ripe for Goliath v David propaganda. It’s not only Israel/Gaza, there is a contingent supporting the aims of 9/11 now. Putin has sought to splinter the left for some time, goals coincide with Bin Ladin and his surviving ilk.

Amazing that Jews who fled Europe lest they be exterminated, were kicked out of Arab nations lest they be further oppressed, found safety in the US and in Israel as really the hospitable places on Earth for themselves, are now deemed white supremacists.

The white supremacist rabbit is particularly a crowd-pleaser.

And this is precisely what the protests by young people.

They aren't conditioned to accept mass murder of epic proportions being so common.

Good for them.

Many of the demonstrations are suggesting divestment of Israeli stocks

Students did the same to send a message of non-support to South Africa in the last decade or so of apartheid

Most universities have moved away from individual stocks, to funds. While a university can invest in a fund, it doesn't control what the fund invests in. Plus, Universities are entities of education. Getting good returns on their investments benefits mankind

Laws can be written to punish persons or groups of persons who violate that law.

But Congress can't pass a Bill of Attainder that goes after a person or specific group of people, can it?

I'm from a generation that was raised on the notion that you cannot serve god and mammon, too. So I"ll admit bias in my thinking on that notion.

I do think colleges and universities have some obligation to make morally sound investments, whether that refers to climate friendly investments or avoiding immoral politics.

Young people are not bound by the past. The Palestinians have been suffering settle colonialism for years. The pressure cooker that is that area has finally gone off. Why is the US supporting this? You would think that our history of taking the lands of the Indians would cause American to think. Just joking.

Are driving it. Like the televised Vietnam War showed Americans how horrible war actually was, TikTok and other social media platforms are reaching college-age kids and showing them what the war in Gaza really looks like.

The question that I have is, who's putting out these videos? Is it ordinary Palestinians? Is it Hamas? Or another actor like Iran with influence in the area?

Also, if they're so upset about genocide, why aren't they out protesting what's happening in Sudan and Congo? Or Ukraine? Maybe the Sudanese need to make some TikToks.

The protesters don't seem to get the reality that the U.S. can cut off all funds, everybody can divest their holdings and Netanyahu will probably keep his war machine going. Flights are going into Tel Aviv every day. The protesters should take their show on the road and stop terrorizing American Jews on American college campuses.