U.S. Universities Can Function Today Only By Either Divesting From Israel OR By Expelling Students Who Demand Divestment from Israel; There's No Middle Choice.
Just as there's no middle choice from leaving the rich in power or removing them from power
Students demanding their school divest from Israel do so because of totally justifiable moral outrage at Israeli genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza. These students—to their credit!—are not going to stop demonstrating in violation of restrictive university rules, not as long as they remain students. And if mere demonstrations don’t win divestment from Israel then they will do things such as taking over buildings as Columbia students have done. Either the schools will expel them or the students will keep at it.
It seems that Columbia has chosen to arrest and no doubt expel the demonstrating students.
University administrators have only two choices if they want to keep their schools functioning as schools:
Choice #1. Make the school friendly to the pro-Palestine students by implementing their just demand for divestment from Israel and by expelling students who violate university rules to protest this decision.
Choice #2. Make the school friendly to the pro-Israel students by refusing to divest from Israel and by expelling students who violate university rules to protest this decision.
There is no middle choice. That is what school administrators are currently discovering.
The reason there is no middle choice is because when it comes to supporting or opposing oppression there is no middle choice. When it comes to keeping the oppressive rich haves, who treat the have-nots like dirt, in power or removing them from power there is no middle choice—not in practice there isn’t, only in the wishful thinking of people divorced from reality. And when it comes to opposing genocidal violence or supporting it there is no middle choice.
There will be student strikes in support of the pro-Palestine students when cops arrest them to remove them from buildings they are occupying
The question is whether or not the strikes in support of the arrested students will shut the university down and force the administration to divest from Israel in order to get it up and running again, or the strikes will be too weak to accomplish that.
Unfortunately, the strikes will be weakened by the fact that there are a substantial number of pro-Israel students who oppose divestment from Israel. Why are there so many such students? It is not because there are many Jewish students.
Jewish students would support divestment from Israel if they knew the truth that is totally censored: the true purpose of Israeli violence against Palestinians.
The true purpose of the Israeli government’s violence against Palestinians has never been for the purpose of making Jews safe from antisemitic violence. On the contrary, this Israeli violence for more than seven decades has been for the purpose of making Palestinians a bogeyman enemy that the billionaire rulers of Israel pretend to protect Israeli Jews from and thereby get away with severely economically oppressing Israeli working class Jews and getting rich off of them.
I prove this true anti-working-class—including anti-JEWISH-working-class!—purpose of Israeli violence in my articles here (about how Zionist violence against Palestinians is for making a bogeyman enemy that the rich Israelis use to oppress Israeli working class Jews) and here (about how—and why—Israel’s government for decades has been funding HAMAS and working to keep it in power in order to make the Palestinian bogeyman enemy maximally frightening), and here (about how the early Zionist leaders who became Israel’s leaders opposed rescue efforts of Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust because these rescue efforts didn’t advance the Zionist leaders’ goal of obtaining a Jewish working class of their own to get rich and powerful off of in Palestine.)
Sad but true
The pro-Palestine students don’t know the true purpose of Israeli violence; they ONLY know it is immoral. As a result, they don’t say that the pro-Israel propaganda assertion—that Israeli violence is to make Jews safe—is false. Instead they say,
“We don’t CARE if Israeli violence against Palestinians is for the purpose of making Jews safe; we STILL say it is immoral.”
Sure, many students—including some Jewish students—will agree with this stance that Israeli violence is immoral no matter its purpose.
But many other students won’t agree. They won’t agree because—to their credit!—they won’t support a movement that is opposed to Israel doing what they believe is for the purpose of making Jews safe.
The pro-Palestine students would have MUCH more support if they told people what the true purpose of Israeli violence against Palestinians was.
Unfortunately, the LEADERS of the U.S. (Western) anti-Zionism organizations refuse to tell the truth about this, as I show here; they refuse to refute the Zionist Big Lie about Israeli violence being for the purpose of making Jews safe. Read about why this is happening here.
Yes, the moral outrage is abundantly clear and justified. Time to BDS these universities!