Throughout world history, adult fingerprints have always been in younger people’s revolutions.
Examples of manipulative attempts include the infamous rebellion in China where youngsters went violently after their seniors including teachers and parents.
There have been, however, cases in which young generations were motivated rather than manipulated.
For instance, young Americans protesting against the Vietnam War practically asked the older generation to handle its own mess. The latest example is also transpiring in America.
Again, adults’ hands are pushing the restless university students in the United States.
The mass killings in Gaza where a large percentage of victims have been innocent children and women have resulted from political policies at the highest levels. It’s adults’ big, tragic, political and religious mess.
The students have been fighting for a cause. They don’t want their institutions to be involved even indirectly with the slayings.
They want their universities to stop doing business with Israel, although Israeli money has been supporting endowments or lab activities.
It’s an egg in the face of the White House, which has supported Israel through several measures including exercising its veto right at the United Nations.
When politice began tearing down the barricades outside the UCLA encampment early Thursday morning and detaining pro-Palestinian protesters, people were shocked but quickly came to understand why.
Adults are doing what they do best. Charges of anti-Semitism are being cooked up. President Joe Biden is talking about law and order, saying democracy and lawlessness have to be different things.
Student placards asking for the bombing and shooting to stop are giving way to Jewish students feeling threatened.
Biden mentioned disruptions of class, rights of other students to celebrate graduation that have been taken away, of “violence” being committed by protesters.
Of course, all these are happening in America. And, of course, the “adults” would not have made it that harsh had the protesting students were saying that the Palestinians deserved to be killed.
Since the encamped students who ignored class and graduation plans were totally against the adults’ policies, what have been seen in video footages were
police in riot gear with helmets, gas masks, zip ties who were getting their batons ready as they entered the encampment. Screams were heard from behind the barricades, CNN reported.
The coverage also mentioned that some protesters were kneeling on the ground with their arms zip-tied behind their backs as officers detained them and continued bringing more protesters outside the encampment.
This is the “land of the free” treating youngsters who didn’t want any more women and children to be killed in Gaza or their nation to support the killings in any way.
Make no mistake, the students did not support the Hamas. Adults’ videos are overshadowing the students’ ones which state that they are opposed to all kinds of killing but Israel’s military campaign was getting out of hand.
With violence having surged in the West Bank in the months since Hamas’s attack on Israel from Gaza in October, the BBC said it has also found evidence of war crimes committed by Israeli troops.
The word “War crimes” has been in the news for quite some time, but it may have just been amplified by the US students.
For “lesser” incidents reported by the BBC, Palestinian homes have been vandalised with graffiti and Palestinian civilians have threatened with weapons and told to leave the territory for neighbouring Jordan.
Pictures of Palestinian parents grieving their children’s unexpected and gruesome deaths have become all too common to be published by the mainstream media every day.
According to one BBC investigative story, one eight-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead while he and his friends were looking apparently awkward with the presence of an approaching group of Israeli soldiers.
Hundreds have reportedly been arrested in America, but the crackdown may just add more fuel to the fire and could be exactly what the protesters wanted.
It looks like the rebels are gaining public and even global attention now, after an uplifted support from various liberal groups.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrations are not limited to American universities now. They are threatening to catch fire at schools in Europe and Australia.
Again, those opposed to the protests, especially American politicians, said the youngsters were being manipulated by outsiders with ill intentions.
Some university leaders, state officials and politicians have called them “anti-Semitic”. This is despite the fact that, according to Aljazeera, many Jewish activists and some Orthodox Jews joining the ranks.
“As a child of Holocaust survivors, it disturbs me to my core to see my own people perpetrating something that we’ve been through,” Jewish antiwar protester Sam Koprak told Al Jazeera at a campus gathering.
The Biden administration is looking increasingly awkward these days.
Being too harsh against the students flies in the face of “democracy” preached by Biden every other day, but being too lenient would not stop it in addition to angering the Jews who have intertwined economic and political ties with the American adults.
Doing nothing is also a bad idea because the phenomenon seems to be catching fire from Kuwait to Egypt and Lebanon as well as certain parts of Europe.
After all, rebellion without a cause can die quickly. Ones with truly common goals spread.
Tulsathit Taptim
