Three Simple Tests to Weigh the Protesters’ Legitimacy

The media is doing all it can to de-legitimize the students protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the U.S.’ complicity in it. It is a sign of just how fragile, and threatened, is the existing order that promotes the genocide.

Besides diverting attention from the genocide itself, the media is calling the protests “Pro-Palestinian,” instead of “Anti-genocide.” That framing, itself, is revealing of the need to obfuscate. The media are also suggesting the students are being led by outside agitators, that they are antisemitic, even “terrorists.” Anything except the fact of the genocide.

There are three simple tests we can conduct to answer whether the students’ protests are legitimate. They start with this: “Does a government—any government—have the right to murder tens of thousands of its own innocent, defenseless women and children?” Because that is undeniably what is happening in Gaza.

The Israeli government is murdering tens of thousands of innocent, defenseless women and children. And it is doing so without any remorse and with the seeming conviction that it is going to get away with it; impunity. Is that acceptable? If it is not, then the students’ protests are legitimate.

A second simple test of the students’ legitimacy is this: “Should a government be able to ethnically cleanse millions of people from land their ancestors lived on for 2,000 years so that it (the government) can steal that land and keep it as its own?” Because that is undeniably what is happening in Gaza.

Israel was granted 55% of Palestine by U.N. resolution 181, in 1948. It took 78%, making itself immediately in violation of international law. And then, in 1967, it took the rest. That’s why the Palestinians now live in what are termed “occupied territories:” Gaza; the West Bank; East Jerusalem. Those were all seized by an illegal—and still illegal—military occupation. Is that acceptable? If it is not, then the students’ protests are legitimate.

A third simple test of the students’ legitimacy is this: “Should the U.S. government be assisting in this, the most open and notorious ethnic cleansing and genocide of the twenty-first century?” Because that is undeniably what is happening in Gaza.

The U.S. government is doing everything it can—providing money, weapons, diplomatic cover, military cover, media cover—to help the government of Israel murder tens of thousands of innocent, defenseless women and children and ethnically cleanse millions more so that the Israeli government can steal the land and keep it as its own. Is that acceptable? If it is not, then the students’ protests are legitimate.

Those are the only three tests you need to ask to determine whether the students’ protests are legitimate.

The reason the students are being savaged in the media is because their protests are spotlighting, as the media itself will not, the horrific immorality of what Israel is doing, the craven complicity of the U.S. government in helping them do it, and the deep entwinement of so much of U.S. society in those immoral, craven acts: the government; the universities; the military-industrial complex; the media; and more. And, to be clear, it is not antisemitic to say this.

It is not antisemitic to say that a government cannot murder tens of thousands of innocent, defenseless women and children. It is not antisemitic to state that no government has the right to ethnically cleanse millions of native people from their land so that it can steal that land and keep it for itself. It is not antisemitic to say that the U.S. government should not be helping a government—any government—commit such savagery.

The students are one of the few classes of actors remaining in the society that are not bought, or sold out. Congress is laughably, tragically bought by money from the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC). The travesty is that everybody knows this but is not supposed to say it, and most do not. But it is not antisemitic to say it. It is simply a clinical description of how money and power works in a society that has abandoned its ideals and principles and worships only money and power.

The universities are bought by their dependence on large donations from wealthy Jewish donors, which we saw when the presidents of Harvard and Penn were run out of their jobs because wealthy Jewish donor demanded their heads. And no, it is not antisemitic to say that. It is simply a clinical description of how money and power works in a society that has abandoned its ideals and principles and worships only money and power.

In these ways, as it was in the Vietnam War, the students may yet be the society’s salvation. Back then, the U.S. government was “bombing back to the stone age” a society of pre-industrial-age rice farmers who simply wanted to be left alone to choose their own form of government, which the U.S. government was determined they would not be allowed to do.

Four million Vietnamese were killed against 58,000 Americans. That’s a 69-to-1 kill ratio. That’s not a war. That’s an industrialized slaughter. It’s the same in Gaza, today, except worse.

The Israeli government has herded the Palestinians into what is called “the largest open-air concentration camp in the world” and is massacring them with surgically targeted, industrial abandon. It is the Holocaust redux, lacking only the gas chambers. And, this time, all the world is watching.

The problem the students pose to the Powers That Be is that they will not submit to and recycle the Officially Sanctioned Narrative, which holds that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” Israel does have the right to defend itself—within its internationally recognized legal borders. Gaza is not within those borders. It is an illegally occupied territory, so that “right to defend itself” does not apply.

Let’s be clear. Israel is the fourth mightiest military power in the world. For more than seven decades it has been carrying out the ethnic cleansing which it is now hoping to finish. Its actions have nothing to do with defense. It is simply slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent, defenseless women and children so that it can steal their land.

Thank God for the students back in the Vietnam era. They pulled the U.S. back from an abyss of apocalyptic violence, suicidal immorality, and industrialized genocide. We can only hope that the students, today, can do the same. But that depends on our willingness to listen to simple truths, and the courage to abide by the obvious answers.

Whether we have such willingness, and the courage to do what the answers compel, is not at all clear. What is clear is that the media will do everything it can to prevent us from arriving at the right answers, and the right action.