“Unbelievably disappointing.” Biden risks White House over Israel

“There is a right to protest, but not a right to cause chaos,” said US President Joe Biden on Thursday. He broke the White House’s silence on pro-Palestinian protests at American universities. He said both camps were right and peaceful dissent was perfectly fine, but stressed that violence would not be tolerated.

“Destruction of property is not a peaceful protest. It is against the law. “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, closing campuses, forced cancellations of classes and graduations – none of this is peaceful protest,” Biden added, clearly referring to the recent events in New York when protesters occupied one of Columbia University’s buildings.

The occupation of Hamilton Hall did not last very long – the school management called the police to help, who intervened against the protesters. By the way, the building already experienced something similar in the late 1960s, when students protested against the war in Vietnam.

It wasn’t just the student protesters who were quick to condemn Biden’s words. For example, the reason for their anger is that the president did not reflect on the fact that schools called armed police forces to their campuses to break up non-violent demonstrations. In addition, he did not comment on reports that pro-Israeli demonstrators attacked pro-Palestinian ones at one of the schools.

“It’s disappointing, but it’s no surprise,” the Al Jazeera website quoted the reaction of Kali, a student protesting at George Washington University in the US capital, as saying. “For the Biden administration to demonize us like this is frankly incredibly disappointing. It paints a target on the backs of Arab, Muslim, Palestinian and anti-Zionist youth.”

At the same time, Biden must be aware that such a reaction to what is happening at universities will rather spoil him before the November elections, in which he is seeking re-election. Among the young voters who got him to the White House in 2020 and whose votes he will need even now, he has been losing support for a long time.

For example, according to a CNN poll last weekend, Biden trails Trump by 11 percentage points among young voters ages 18-34. Rather than the shift of Democratic voters to the Republican candidate, however, he is threatened by the fact that young people prefer not to go to the polls.

Matěj Jungwirth on the protests in the USA

The stumbling block for the president is precisely what is happening in the Middle East, as many young people do not agree with the firm support that the United States expresses for Israel. Even 81% of voters under the age of 35 do not agree with the way Biden is handling the whole situation, according to the already mentioned survey.

“What we see in Columbia, Texas or Indiana will have a political impact. I think that this event can affect the presidential elections and the decision-making of people who will or will not vote in them,” Matěj Jungwirth, an analyst from the Association for International Issues (AMO), warned in an interview for Seznam Zprávy.

This topic could manifest itself especially in the so-called swing states, states that, with regard to the American electoral system, realistically decide on the winner of the presidential election, where every vote will be fought for. And Michigan, for example, one of them, has a large Arab-American community that is turning away from Biden as it stands.

But the whole current situation highlights much more complex problems on the American political scene. According to Jungwirth, who is now working as part of his doctorate at Northwestern University in the state of Illinois, Democrats are struggling with a long-term inability to meaningfully work with young voters.

This is most probably related to the fact that there are still representatives of the older generation in the leadership of the party, who find it difficult to find common themes with today’s youth. After all, Biden himself is 81 years old today.

Photos from the protests

“It doesn’t seem to me that there is a targeted effort to build young or at least middle-aged leaders. And at the same time, I think that the current elites and young, more progressive voters are beginning to diverge a little ideologically,” confirmed the Czech analyst. “I don’t feel like they’re reflecting on it enough and working with it. My personal prediction is that this may be one of the reasons for Biden’s loss.”

The American newspaper The New York Times also draws attention to how protests at universities reveal tensions in the Democratic Party. While most Democrats support free speech and condemn anti-Semitism, there is still debate over how to distinguish legitimate criticism of the Israeli government from anti-Semitic rhetoric.

According to the media, the US police arrested more than 2,000 people in two weeks of protests at universities. And while the armed forces dismantle the camps built by students, some universities such as Northwestern or Brown have already been able to agree with the protesters on the next course of action and to ease the situation.

Protesters at Northwestern University, where Jungwirth is based, have gotten the school to establish a cultural center for Middle Eastern students, for example. But the school has also committed, for example, to supporting visiting researchers from Palestine for the next two years and to allowing five Palestinian students to study with full scholarships.

Given the higher level of police involvement elsewhere and the approaching summer, however, it is difficult to predict what will actually happen next with the protests.

“The biggest paradox of all these repressions is that the summer holidays are just around the corner,” concluded Jungwirth. “In a few weeks, no one would care if someone is camping on campus or not. So the question is why everything didn’t actually get out of hand and whether the need for escalation wasn’t artificial or purposefully chosen.”