While the ongoing pro-Palestinian student protests have many superficial similarities to the student uprisings of the late 1960s, only the latter envisioned a new political movement to ameliorate the ills of their time. The current protesters' goals are far more modest, which makes them all the more tragic.
LJUBLJANA – These are crazy times. Biblical disturbances in nature, such as the repeated torrential rain in Dubai or the mass fish die-off in Vietnam’s overheated reservoir, seem to mirror our overheated politics and social environment.
At such moments, it is crucial to keep a cool head and analyze all the weird phenomena as closely, objectively, and dispassionately as possible. And few phenomena nowadays are weirder than the protests surrounding Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza in response to Hamas’s terrorist attack last October.
We should acknowledge the rhetoric from some politicized Muslims, such as those who recently demonstrated in Hamburg, Germany, chanting “Kalifat ist die Lösung” (“Caliphate is the solution”). And we should concede that, despite the massive presence of Jews among the protesters, there are at least a few true anti-Semites among them (just as there are some genocidal maniacs in Israel).
LJUBLJANA – These are crazy times. Biblical disturbances in nature, such as the repeated torrential rain in Dubai or the mass fish die-off in Vietnam’s overheated reservoir, seem to mirror our overheated politics and social environment.
At such moments, it is crucial to keep a cool head and analyze all the weird phenomena as closely, objectively, and dispassionately as possible. And few phenomena nowadays are weirder than the protests surrounding Israel’s bombardment and invasion of Gaza in response to Hamas’s terrorist attack last October.
We should acknowledge the rhetoric from some politicized Muslims, such as those who recently demonstrated in Hamburg, Germany, chanting “Kalifat ist die Lösung” (“Caliphate is the solution”). And we should concede that, despite the massive presence of Jews among the protesters, there are at least a few true anti-Semites among them (just as there are some genocidal maniacs in Israel).