PROTESTS IN 2024 & 1968

In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty. ~ Phil Ochs  

Do 56 years make a difference? Perhaps. Despite the magnifying effects of social media, I do not believe the current 2024 pro-Palestinian protests at dozens of US college campuses will be nearly as consequential as the anti-Vietnam war protests that happened in 1968.

One recent count states that 90 colleges among the 5,999 in the nation have had protests with about 2,300 total arrests. Curiously, unlike prior ones the protests at UC/Berkeley have yet to draw many headlines. One recent example protest in the news involved some of the 663 full-time students at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Granted, the current protests are not finished and there is much talk about them continuing for another 100 days until the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago that begins on Aug. 19. Talk is far easier than undertaking the significant efforts needed to make that actually happen. It is more likely they will peter out in the next several weeks, and then attempt to re-assemble for the DNC in mid-August.

I wonder how these college-based protests can be sustained after commencement season that is now in full bloom and will end within a month. The challenges facing demonstration organizers include how they can keep students focused on a protest without schools in full session. Naturally, any time local gendarmes over-react at a protest, the activists become revitalized. Indeed police have at times over-reacted, including stationing combat-ready sharpshooters on the roofs of nearby campus buildings at one of my alma-maters.

Nevertheless, the media’s attention has already begun skidding behind the actual conflict in Gaza. Whatever they may be worth, recent polls indicate only one-quarter of American people support these protests. At this point these antiwar protests now seem to be slight compared to the big bang of anti-Vietnam protests that I played a very minor part in that befell our nation and the DNC in Chicago 56 years ago. The media’s attenuated comparisons between the far larger anti-Vietnam protests and the Gaza protests reflect slender similarities.  

The Gaza protests are focusing on tragic events in the Middle-East that were initiated by Hamas’ dastardly attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 and killed more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, including at least 35 US citizens. Hamas and other compatriot groups seized 253 hostages. A total of 112 hostages taken prisoner during the attacks now have been freed. The fates of the remaining 141 hostages remain a mystery because Hamas refuses access to them for anyone. The Israelis have forcefully retaliated causing significant destruction and loss of life, as shown below.  

Gaza destruction from Israeli shelling.

The Gaza protestors, like those at Columbia University, are demanding that their colleges divest from companies that “publicly or privately fund or invest in the perpetuation of Israeli apartheid and war crimes.” US firms that the protestors have cited for colleges to divest from include Amazon, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Starbucks and McDonalds.

What results do protestors desire from disinvesting specific equity holdings like Hewlett-Packard or McDonalds from a college endowment because it sells computers or Big Macs to Israel’s government and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)? Is this act supposed to change the Israeli government’s actions against Gazans and Hamas? American college endowments cumulatively are sizeable, but represent just a shard of international financial assets. If a college were to sell its endowment’s positions in these stocks, how much influence would it then have to possibly persuade these firms to change their global strategy with respect to Israel? None.

What would be the next set of endowment holdings that other protestors would want removed? Perhaps US Treasury bonds because our government has provided significant financial aid to Israel. In fact, since the end of WWII Israel has received more US foreign aid than any other nation on Earth, $312 billion. Shouldn’t the protesters want such aid to stop, given that it has provided Israel with significant improvements for the IDF, among other things. Disinvestment has the theoretical appeal of capitalist debasement, but not for gaining influence with respect to some protesters’ fuzzy goals.

The cause for the State of Palestine has been made numerous times over an historically extensive time period. Most recently on May 10, when the UN General Assembly (UNGA) offered a vote to upgrade Palestine’s membership in the UN. The vote was 143-9 approving the upgrade for Palestine from “non-member/observer status” to “member status,” with 25 abstentions. There are currently 193 UN member states, thus apparently 16 member states did not formally vote or abstain on this motion.

This was the second time the UN considered including Palestine as a full member state. In 2011 Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority's application for UN membership. It failed. The Palestinians did not receive the required minimum support from the UN Security Council (UNSC). Instead, Palestine received observer status in 2012. Palestine is one of two states that have observer (non-voting) status at the UN, the other is the Holy See/Vatican City.

The UNGA May 10 vote was entirely symbolic – something the UN habitually specializes in doing – because the inclusion of any national state into the UN requires prior approval for membership by the 15-member UNSC. A minimum of 9 of the 15 UNSC members must approve the request for full membership. As one of the 5 permanent members of the UNSC[1], the US retains veto rights on any measure put before the Council for a vote. The US vetoed the vote for Palestinian inclusion as a full UN member state.

Deputy US Ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, told the General Assembly after the vote that unilateral measures at the UN and on the ground will not advance the US-preferred two-state solution. He stated, “Our vote does not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood; we have been very clear that we support it and seek to advance it meaningfully. Instead, it is an acknowledgment that statehood will only come from a process that involves direct negotiations between the parties." Furthermore, the current Palestinian reality is there are 2 deeply rivalrous, ununified fragments to Palestine; the East Bank Palestine that is headed by Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and the Gaza authority that is headed by Hamas’s staunchly seclusive Yahya Sinwar.

The continuing diplomatic journey to establish a State of Palestine has navigated many twists and turns. In retrospect, mistakes have been made by every participant. The journey to Palestinian statehood was altered when the State of Israel was created in 1948, becoming a UN member in 1949. Since its beginning, the US has been a key ally of Israel. Both nations have benefited from this relationship. Nevertheless, this may be changing a bit under the strong right-wing control of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. President Biden recently threatened to halt some shipments of US offensive weapons if the Israelis move ahead with their invasion of Rafah.

Unlike the current Gaza protests the anti-Vietnam War protests throughout the US involved hundreds of thousands of Americans. There are several inter-related reasons why the Vietnam protests were so much broader than the Gaza protests. First, in the late 1960s all young American men between 19-25 years old were required register with the Selective Service System (aka, the draft) for military service. Second, President Lyndon Johnson made the tragically flawed decision to send large numbers of US combat personnel to aid South Vietnam’s fight against the invading North Vietnamese. President Johnson’s decision supported President John F. Kennedy’s previous 1961 decision that authorized smaller numbers of US military advisors to assist the South Vietnam government in developing strategy and tactics to combat North Vietnam’s raiding guerrilla troops.

The US Vietnam draft began in 1964. The US military conscripted 2.2 million American men during this period, which brought the Vietnam tragedy directly into families’ lives throughout the 50 states. The Vietnam War was never far from any American’s thoughts.

My Selective Service (draft status) card categorized me as 4-F, meaning I was legally registered but not qualified for military service. No, not because I had heel spurs like Donald Trump alleges. I was, and remain, a type 1 diabetic. Ironically, my having diabetes likely saved my life after my college deferment ended as a 21 year old B.A. degree holder.

About 2.7 million US troops fought in Vietnam for a decade, ending in 1973. An estimated 10,000 women also served in Vietnam, principally as nurses/medical staff as well as in administrative roles, military intelligence or air traffic control. More than 58,000 Americans died and more than 150,000 were wounded in Vietnam.

The estimated fiscal costs of the Vietnam conflict, that unequivocally pale in comparison to the human toll, exceeded $176 billion during 3 US presidencies: Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Retrospectively, the US’s entry into Vietnam’s civil war has been properly viewed as a giant military, political and cultural blunder of the first-order.

The Gazan conflict is significantly distinctive. Unlike Vietnam, there are no US armed forces fighting in Gaza. The scale of conflict is much slimmer. Perhaps more importantly and thankfully, there is no longer a draft requirement for young Americans to fight in the Middle East or anywhere else.

Comparisons between the protests in 1968 and 2024 have been made, but in a real sense the current protests about Gaza are incomparable to those that happened during the Vietnam War. The times are different, the politics are different and the public is different. The Gaza protests reflect these differences; many thousands of antiwar activists will not be marching in Washington DC towards the capitol with strong public support.

Although thoroughly despicable, Hamas’ strategy of hiding deeply underground within Gaza’s daily urban milieu is as outrageous as it is wretchedly shrewd. This strategy, together with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s scorched-earth tactics to improbably eradicate Hamas and its fighters, has resulted in immense damages to innocent Gazans’ lives. So far the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has killed or injured more than 110,000 people living in Gaza, whose communities have been destroyed. Water, food, fuel and healthcare remain in desperately short supply in Gaza.

 Given these circumstances, what can the pro-Palestinian protests hope to achieve, other than expressing understandable exasperation and rage? Other than symbolism, somehow convincing college trustees to sell their endowments already-slender holdings of Israeli equities will have next to no actual remedial effect on Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Maybe symbolism is sufficient, although I doubt it. Trustees may be reluctant to do even this because it opens up future possibilities of having to unload other equities that upset another set of activists. More substantively, none of the Gaza protestors’ demands are aimed at getting Hamas to stop its staggeringly appalling tactics that precipitated Israel’s invasion. This is probably a purposeful oversight, but that bias limits the protestors’ broader support.

Although unlikely, the protestors should take as a victory President Biden’s latest public decision about the Prime Minister’s war tactics. The Gaza protests have encouraged the President to stop delivery of giant bombs and other over-the-top weaponry that the DOD calls “high-payload munitions.” Finally, I urge Gaza protesters to reconsider showing up in Chicago at the DNC. If they somehow disrupt the DNC’s proceedings – that the media will unfortunately happily support and emphasize no matter how inconsequential – they will only increase the odds that #45 will become our 47th President. That fate would be disastrous for far more people than the 2 million Gazans.

 

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[1] The 5 permanent members of the UNSC are: China, France, Russian Federation, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the USA. The 10 non-permanent members - 5 of which are elected each year by the General Assembly for a 2-year term - currently are: Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, South Korea and Switzerland.