Tensions spill across universities like Columbia and Harvard as students on each side accuse the other of a kind of bloodlust
To one side, Columbia students stood silently, wrapped in the blue and white of Israel as they gripped pictures of the murdered and abducted. Across the grass and brick divide, a slightly larger cohort of students chanted “Free, free Palestine.”
The faultline between the two ran along the claim by each that the other was pursuing a kind of bloodlust – a charge that has divided university campuses across America in the wake of the bloody Hamas attack on Israeli communities and Israel’s ongoing military assault on Gaza.
Reactions within US universities to the killing of at least 1,300 Israelis and the abduction of about 100 more have swung from celebration of the Hamas assault as a legitimate act of resistance to occupation to condemnation along with a demand that it not be used to ignore the deaths of Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliation on Gaza.
I’ll tin foil hat for a second. It really feels like there’s a coordinated effort to push this as a really divisive event where you either completely support Israel or you’re a monster. Is that actually happening? Probably not, but it sure does feel that way.
You’re not wrong: that’s what propaganda is all about. If you keep people angry, they are not going to be thinking critically or using higher cognitive skills – and they’re also not going to much notice or care that the rights they want taken from others are also being stripped from themselves.
That is absolutely what is happening, and exactly why I do not watch video news, and why I select my written news very, very carefully. Even WaPo is taking an obvious pro-Israel side. So far I go with BBC News and a select few others that seem to be able to report without obvious calls to emotional response.