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Letter from America: US Jewish lobby suppresses growing student protests

When US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin was taking questions from the international press a few days ago, a Jewish correspondent phrased a question in this form.

To appreciate the power of the Israeli lobby in the US, I will give a few examples.

When US secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin was taking questions from the international press a few days ago, a Jewish correspondent phrased a question in this form.

“What will the US do if Israel orders it to join the war in Lebanon?” she asked.

Austin did not bother to correct the woman about whether Israel can order the US to go to war with a foreign country.

We now know in hindsight that when the US went to war with Iraq, Afghanistan  and Syria, the so-called war mongers in the George W. Bush administration, were in close alliance with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The present situation began on October 7, when Israeli defense forces were caught unawares by Palestinian patriotic resistance fighters, losing 1 200 men.

This event, however, precipitated a pre-programmed plan to wipe out the 2.3 million Gazan Palestinians with the support and active participation of the US.

As we speak, the US has placed its elite forces to advise the genocidal Netanyahu in the campaign to murder Gazans.

However, university students and the youthful generation (below 35) seeing the genocidal activities of the Israeli army in Gaza rose up.

Students at Ivy League Universities, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia (almost universal) made their disgust felt by public demonstrations.

By November, as casualties in Gaza mounted, reaching 20 000 murders of innocent women, children and defenseless men, student revolts increased in intensity.

Rhetoric from Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Natanyahu, calling Palestinians  “human animals” (a contradiction in terms) and children of “darkness” did not help.

Gas and oil had been discovered, and Israel is on its way to steal Gazan resources with the help of British Petrol exploration team.

The US Congress, completely in the pocket of the Israeli lobby, squished and squirmed.

“We stand by Israel,” was the chorus of the corrupt.

Joined by former British prime minister, Tony Blair, that one of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Biden and his spokesperson wished that Netanyahu would go away.

Whether pro-Israeli lobbyists and their supporters knew it or not, I am not sure. The pro-Israel National Review confessed that anti-Jewish sentiments have their roots well before October 7, based on the premise that “Israel and Jews are cast as oppressors subjugating their Palestinian victims.”

Further, Jewish supporters were surprised to find that universities and colleges have for nearly three decades included in their decolonial curricula narratives that identify Zionism with Nazism. “Bard College offers a class on Israeli apartheid. Princeton offers a class called: The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South.” (National Review, Dec. 20/22).

In these trauma studies, Palestinian life is used as an example of oppression, trauma and coloniality. The eruption of global demonstrations in sympathy with Palestine caught Jewish interests by surprise.

“Those who only know their own thoughts do not really know those, because they have never been challenged.” (George Will).

The intensity, fervor and persistence of campus resistance revealed their long-standing roots in the academies themselves.

They must be punished.

 Exactly 30 days after the October 7 attack on Jewish occupation forces in Gaza, a US Congressional Committee on Ant-Semitism called three university presidents for questioning.

It is the first time I have heard of the existence of such a committee.

The questioning was hostile. Why on earth had these presidents allowed demonstrations against the sacred cow, Israel on their campuses?

Harvard’s president, Sister Claudine Gay, an attorney, was the first black to ever hold the position. She had just been inaugurated in the last month.

“Would calls for the genocide of Jews violate the university’s code of ethics?” Was the question.

The sister’s reply was lawyerly. It depends on circumstances and an attempt is always made to protect free speech even if that speech is offensive.

Billionaire John Huntsman threatened to withhold donations unless the sister Gay was dismissed. But she had just been in the position for a month.

A Congressional Committee authorised an inquiry into Gay’s scholarship.

This is the first time in history that Congress has entertained questions about dissertations.

Three errors in her doctoral dissertation were attributed to plagiarism, which is a cardinal sin in academia.

A student reader wrote in a student newspaper that the president’s scholarship was held to a lower standard than his own. Double standards should not be allowed.

As we go to press, sister Gay (Jan 3rd) has resigned her position.

While Gay tried to hold her position for 30 days after the hearing, Pennsylvania’s Liz MacGill did not a week. After the Congressional hearing on November 8, she returned home to find her university board chairperson in a state of shock. Dr. Scott Bok had been a pillar of strength for the university for decades. But his support for President McGill had put him in a bad place with the Jewish lobby.

The state governor had communicated to him that he too, must go.

Two university presidents who failed to contain the protests of those under their tutelage have been sacked. But as British spy Alistaire Crooke noted, “Gaza is already a monument to callous inhumanity and suffering.” We may add, courtesy of the US.

 *Ken Mufuka is a Zimbabwean patriot. He writes from the US.

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