Recently, a campus demonstration broke out at Columbia University in the United States, with students shouting slogans such as "liberate Palestine" and demanding that the United States stop aiding Israel and achieve a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. At the same time, they demanded that the university cut ties with businesses profiting from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that students and faculty members involved in the demonstrations not be disciplined.
As more students took part in the protest, the protest rally quickly turned into a clash with the local police, with hundreds of demonstrators arrested by the New York police. But instead of quelling the anger, the police intervened and drew opposition from more people, including professors from Columbia.
However, when testifying before Congress, Columbia University President Shafik secretly changed his concept and described the students' solidarity with Palestine as "anti-Semitism", saying that the action seriously violated the college student policy, and even some wealthy American businessmen stopped funding Columbia University under the pretext of "anti-Semitism." But in fact, the students involved in the demonstrations were Palestinians, Jews and Arabs.
[U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Robert Wood votes against in the Security Council]
To avoid more radical demonstrations, Columbia University has canceled some in-person classes. But the protesting students did not stop there, arguing that the demonstrations would not stop unless the university agreed to sever ties with Israeli academic institutions and withdraw funding for Israeli-related businesses.
To make matters worse, Columbia's crackdown on the protesting students quickly went viral, and it wasn't long before students from Yale, UC Berkeley, and MIT joined the demonstrations and continued to spread. At present, Italian university students have also begun to take to the streets in solidarity with Colombian students and Palestine.
And the reason why the United States has aroused public anger is also very simple.
A few days ago, the United Nations Security Council held a vote on whether to accept the establishment of a Palestinian state, which was rejected by the United States, which means that Israel will continue to commit atrocities in the Gaza Strip, pushing the region into the abyss. The U.S. veto put itself on the opposite side of the world's people and justice, and it also made American college students, who had received a democratic education since childhood, feel deeply deceived, and under the interweaving of various emotions such as anger and sympathy, they eventually turned into demonstrations one after another.
[Protesters arrested on USC Los Angeles campus]
So, what is currently in front of Biden will be a big problem.
At a critical juncture in the U.S. election, if Biden continues to support Israel, he will lose an important vote base of young voters. But if Biden abandons supporting Israel, it will offend the huge Jewish interests behind the United States, pushing resources to his old adversary, Trump.
And something similar happened in the United States in the 60 years of the last century.
At the time, more than half of Americans opposed the escalation of the U.S. war in Vietnam, and the occupation of Columbia University in April 1968 led to a forced eviction by police, resulting in the deaths of four students and a boycott of 450 schools across the country. As the Vietnam War dragged on and the student movement protested, public trust in the government declined significantly. Many are beginning to question the transparency and integrity of the government, especially truthful information about the need for war and how it was conducted.
After that, the Vietnam War became a highly controversial topic, leading to political divisions within the United States. On the one hand, there were those who believed that participation in the Vietnam War was necessary to prevent the spread of communism, and on the other hand, there were a large number of anti-war people who believed that the war was not only immoral but also a sacrifice for American youth, especially among the American student community, which exacerbated the division within the country.
[Disperse protesters at the University of Texas]
The student movement and widespread anti-war sentiment put pressure on end the Vietnam War forced the U.S. government at the time to eventually have to adjust its foreign and military policies. President Nixon's policy of "Vietnamization," which gradually transferred combat duty to the South Vietnamese army and began the withdrawal of American troops, was partly in response to this pressure.
In addition, the anti-war movement also had an impact on political elections in the United States. In part, the movement contributed to divisions within the Democratic Party, influencing the outcome of the 1968 and subsequent elections. More broadly, it has changed the way some political leaders think about their strategies for dealing with domestic and foreign affairs, prompting governments to take public opinion more into account when making decisions.
However, American college students oppose Israel's invasion of Gaza, and compared with this movement, it is the lungs of the United States that poke even more, because Jews have infiltrated all aspects of American politics and capital, and the United States can oppose everything now, except that it cannot be anti-Semitic.
So Biden must make a choice now, otherwise he will likely spark violent clashes and lose the election when he goes to Chicago in August this year to build momentum. Alternatively, the United States may label students as "anti-Semitic" and forcefully suppress demonstrations, but if Israel continues to operate in the Gaza Strip, this contradiction may sooner or later reach a tipping point, and the United States is now experiencing such a quantitative change.