As I watch the latest round of riots roil the campuses of major universities throughout the United States over the past few weeks, I am once again stunned by the idiocy of it all. The pretext for these various protests, lockdowns, occupations and/or riots is, of course, the ongoing Israel/Hamas war. But most of the people involved in these operations are not directly involved in, nor directly affected by, the conflict. Most of them have never been to, and will never go to, the region. Their knowledge of the conflict, and the region, is limited to what they’re told to think on social media and manifests as jingoism. They shout things like “From the river to the sea” and “apartheid” and “genocide.” But what do those terms even mean? And do those thousands of people marching on the streets, camping out in green spaces, and occupying various structures throughout our country even know what they’re protesting for (or against)?
The answer, of course, is “no.” Most of the protesters out there have no idea that “from the river to the sea” and “eliminate Zionism” means the elimination of the state of Israel and the extermination of millions of Jews. They are hard pressed to explain how the state of Israel is “apartheid” or to understand if Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, based on the post-1947 Palestinian population explosion alone Israel is the worst “genocider” in world history.
Some of the protesters battling police, intimidating their classmates do understand what those slogans truly mean and they truly mean it when they shout them. And that is truly terrifying. But most do not. The most recent evidence of this is a video of a young woman who claims to be a student at Columbia University who is on the scene of a protest at New York University. When asked why she’s there by an off-camera interviewer, she mutters something about “supporting Palestine” before stumbling over her words and admitting “I honestly don’t know.” Then she recruits a comrade to answer the question, who similarly fails spectacularly. Watch:
I have long held a hypothesis that one of the reasons there are so many people on the streets over so many different things that don’t involve them directly is because we, as a nation, have so few things to genuinely worry about. People, especially young people, and most of all young people whose lives have no real meaning, will look for the “good fight.” And there are plenty of people willing to take advantage of that predisposition and motivation.
At the end of the day, most of these activities are performative. Just like the Occupy Movement, BLM, George Floyd, and so many other fancies of the political left, these protesters will move on to the next shiny object
I am not unsympathetic to the plight of thousands of people in the region who are affected in so many terrible ways by the ongoing conflicts in the area. But action without understanding usually just ends in chaos; that’s what the protesters are doing, and what they are “accomplishing.”
American citizens were killed and kidnapped on October 7th, 2024. I often wonder why more people aren’t out on the streets, and in the classrooms, demanding a reckoning for THAT.
But I think we all know the answer. And that is a topic for another day.
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Scott Faith is a veteran of a half-dozen combat deployments and has served in several different Special Operations units over the course of his Army career. Scott’s writing focuses largely on veterans’ issues, but he is also a strong proponent of Constitutional rights and has a deep interest in politics. He often allows other veterans who request anonymity to publish their work under his byline. Scott welcomes story ideas and feedback on his articles and can be reached at havokjournal@havokmedia.com.
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