In the United States, tensions have increased on dozens of university campuses, where demonstrations against Israel’s military actions in Gaza have been organized since mid-April.
This week, the police have made mass arrests, especially on the campuses of Columbia University, City College and Fordham University in New York. The protest at, for example, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) campus has also begun to be broken up.
In total, more than 1,700 people have been arrested during the protests in different parts of the country.
Columbia University has asked the New York Police Department to remain on campus for the next two weeks.
The UCLA campus, for example, saw violent clashes on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, when pro-Israel counter-demonstrators attacked the protest camp of Gaza supporters. At least 15 people were injured.
We interviewed two researchers familiar with the United States, who tell us what the campus protests are about.
What do the protesters want?
Demonstrators on campuses demanded a ceasefire with Gaza and universities to cut ties with Israel.
Young people in the United States have a fundamental difference of opinion with the politics of the state administration, Professor of North American Studies at the University of Turku Benita Heiskanen says.
In addition, according to Heiskanen, the earning logic of universities in the US is based on investment activities and cooperation with companies. Because of this, the students feel that they are indirectly involved in the genocide.
– Students are protesting universities’ connections to companies that are linked to, for example, the arms industry or that finance Israel’s war campaign in Gaza, says Heiskanen.
Why is the Gaza war raging on campuses in the United States?
The war in Gaza has become an identity political issue, researcher at the Foreign Policy Institute Maria Lindén says. There are many people of Jewish, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim background in the United States.
– Such things easily expand into the question of whose country the United States is. There are many people who identify with the Palestinians in Gaza. If it seems that the president Joe Biden care about the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza, they may ask if their lives matter too.
– In the same way, the American Jewish population may think that the president is not doing enough to eradicate the growing hatred of Jews.
Professor Benita Heiskanen says that the background of the protests is also a broader thought against colonialism and US interventionism.
According to Heiskanen, the protest movement is extraordinary in scale, and it has echoes of the civil movement against the Vietnam War.
How will the protests affect the presidential election?
For Biden, who is running for another term as president, the situation in Gaza is very problematic, says Maria Lindén, who studies US domestic politics. This is because the war in Gaza is very strongly dividing both the politicians of the Democratic Party and its voters.
– In the United States, it has traditionally been thought that the interests of the United States and Israel are closely connected to each other, and that the United States has, as it were, a direct moral obligation to support Israel and the Jews in particular, says Lindén.
– And then there is also a seemingly growing group of potential voters of the Democratic Party who think that supporting Israel in the Gaza war is wrong.
According to Lindén, there are people who voted for Biden in the election in 2020, but no longer intend to do so because of Biden’s Middle East policy.
Campus protests have political influence as they manage to keep Israel’s military operations in Gaza in the headlines.
Biden has hardly commented on the protests – he can’t afford to anger either side, supporters of Israel or the Palestinians. But this is also a problem.
– The more this issue is in the news headlines, and specifically as an internal political issue, the more blatant is Biden’s silence, says Lindén.
– The more these protests are, the more we see statements from other politicians.
For Biden’s opponent For Donald Trump, who lost the previous election against Biden, the situation is much more favorable. In the protest movement supporting the Palestinians, there is almost no core electorate for Trump.
However, Lindén points out that foreign policy issues are not the most decisive for the majority of voters. Because of this, it is easy to exaggerate the Gaza issue.
– On the other hand, the elections can become extremely tight, so the matter cannot be ignored either.
Sources: CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post