Nearly seven months after the Israel-Hamas war began, demonstrations that have disrupted college campuses across the U.S. have been a rallying cry for the protection of free speech and support for Gazans, as well as for what some Jewish Americans have called anti-Semitism. It exposes new tensions within the Democratic Party over how to balance the concerns it raises.
From New York and Los Angeles to Atlanta and Austin, a growing student movement appears to be manifesting itself in protest camps and other demonstrations, leading to massive police crackdowns and sometimes attracting outside agitators. The protests have also emerged as the latest flashpoint in the Democratic Party’s internal debate over the war.
As scenes of campus chaos unfold across the country in the final days of the school year, this moment also carries political risks for political parties that have used promises of stability and normalcy to win recent key elections. is facing an uphill battle for leadership. Government in the fall.
“The real question is, can Democrats once again portray themselves as a stable figure at the helm,” said Dan Sena, a veteran Democratic strategist. “This kind of national turmoil makes it even more difficult to achieve that goal.”
Sena and other Democrats argue that Americans have good reason to associate their opponents with chaos. Former President Donald J. Trump is facing multiple criminal charges. The House Republican majority, which is in the minority, has its own divisions on Israel and free speech. Some Republicans are pushing for the National Guard to be deployed to college campuses. And Republicans have faced criticism of anti-Semitism within their own ranks for years.
But disputes over U.S. policy toward Israel have become particularly pronounced on the left since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the Israeli military’s response killed more than 30,000 people, according to local officials. .
Many Democrats support free speech, condemn anti-Semitism, and say they believe criticism of the Israeli government is fair play. But the debate over how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-Semitic speech has been turbulent as we seek to address an intractable conflict characterized by conflicting historical narratives. It is full and has reached its climax on campus.
For some lawmakers who visited the encampment or participated in the demonstration, students are part of a long tradition of campus activism, and their free speech rights are at risk. They argue that anti-Semitic incidents do not reflect a broader movement that includes many young progressive Jews.
Representative Greg Cassar of Texas visited the University of Texas to show solidarity by linking the protesters’ efforts to those of students protesting the Vietnam and Iraq wars.
“History often vindicates those who seek early peace,” he says. “I think we’re going to see more and more members of Congress starting to come to these events and start asking more about where the students are coming from.”
Asked about examples of anti-Semitic language used by protesters across the country, Casale said: “Those people are the worst.”
“They are not part of the peace movement,” he said. “Anyone who is motivated by hatred, whether it’s racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, any form of hatred, is not peaceful.”
But for other Democrats, instances of intimidation and harassment by some Jewish students have become a hallmark of the campus movement.
Nowhere are these tensions more evident than at Columbia University. The university has been the epicenter of the protest movement.
Democrats, including President Biden, House and Senate leaders, and prominent Senate candidates such as Rep. Adam Schiff of California and Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona have criticized anti-Semitic harassment in the Columbia area. I’m blaming.
Other Democrats have sought to directly show solidarity with Jewish students who say they feel unsafe. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Florida, recently visited the campus along with several other Jewish members of Congress.
He said some within the party downplayed the hardline nature of some of the demonstrations.
“Some people are peaceful and some are not,” he says. “But my friends on the left reject this view: ‘Everyone is peaceful and anti-Semitism doesn’t exist.'”
He declined to name names, but he and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sparred on social media. New York’s Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, one of several progressive lawmakers who visited the Columbia encampment, also condemned the “horrible people” roaming outside Columbia’s campus who espouse “toxic anti-Semitism.” did.
But broadly speaking, some on the left rightly criticized the anti-Semitic chants of “Aryan-looking white men with tiki torches” who held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Moskowitz argued that the US appears reluctant to denounce threatening speech from liberals. Leaning American.
“I have never felt such anger,” Moskowitz said. “It’s politically inconvenient right now.”
New York state Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a longtime Jewish lawmaker, has also expressed concerns about anti-Semitism. But he said that, in contrast to many of his fellow Republicans, his party has consistently criticized bigotry, citing Charlottesville. (Mr. Moskowitz also shared that assessment of the Republican Party.)
“Democrats have been active in calling out anti-Semitism wherever it is, and there has certainly been anti-Semitism on campus,” Nadler said, but he is not sure how representative the student body was at the demonstrations. He questioned whether he had done so.
“While Donald Trump has proudly stood with white supremacists and encouraged violent repression of peaceful protesters, Biden defended the First Amendment, saying it “strengthens protections against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”
In Georgia, where demonstrators at Emory University were violently suppressed, state Rep. Ruwa Romman said, “There is no place for anti-Semitism in this movement.”
But she warned against focusing on “a small number of agitators” rather than “the thousands of students who believe in and welcome a multiracial, multicultural, multifaith world.”
“When you lose young people, you’re not just losing at the ballot box,” said Lonman, a Palestinian Democrat. “We’re losing them throughout the electoral system.”
Meanwhile, some Republicans are trying to paint the Democratic Party as a whole as extreme and overly sympathetic to the concerns of Ivy League protesters.
Democrats are “showing they are listening to a very small, very radical, very online constituency that is not representative of the broader electorate,” said the House Republican Campaign Office. Spokesperson Jacques Pandol said. -A shirt that hints at blasphemy against Hamas.
Former Rep. Steve Israel, who led the House Democratic campaign arm, said Republicans may see an opportunity to send a message, but it’s too early to tell whether it will be effective in November. Told.
“Typically, campuses are empty in the summer, so the energy around this issue can dissipate, and the question is whether they’ll come back in the fall,” he said. “The answer isn’t here. It’s the Middle East.”
