Student protests. Police arrests on campus. Occupying university offices.
No, this is not a throwback to the Fees Must Fall protests that rocked SA, but scenes straight out of Ivy League and other universities in the US this week following weeks of pro-Palestinian protests. Students are taking issue with universities that do business with Israel or companies linked to the Israeli military.
These demonstrations are a perhaps inevitable result of the seven-month-long war that Israel has waged in Palestine, which has killed over 34,000 people and displaced nearly 2 million more in response to Hamas’ deadly October 7 attacks. The demonstrations on campuses remind us of similar scenes in the 1960s when students protested the US war in Vietnam and also in the 1980s when students marched and blockaded campus buildings to demand sanctions on apartheid South Africa.
This fresh round of dissent against US President Joe Biden’s foreign policy further throws doubts on his re-election chances in November. He has been polling at around 37% for months now – the lowest any incumbent president has ever dropped in ratings. Not even Donald Trump or Richard Nixon polled that low towards the end of their troubled administrations. Still, Biden has steamed ahead with his support for Israel, shown in the recent passing of a $95-billion military aid package by the US Congress, which will distribute the funds to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.
Meanwhile, according to reports, the International Criminal Court may be preparing arrest warrants against the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and at least two other senior government officials who have been implicated in crimes against humanity, most likely for the policy of forced famine in Gaza.
These student protests are the latest in the global movement against the war in Palestine, which has been carried out in virtually every major city since October last year. We previously covered South Africa’s application to the International Court of Justice against Israel and this war and reported how some political parties fear that this stance would isolate us on the international stage. These demonstrations have proven that this is not the case.
