Legendary Jamaican Reggae music star Jimmy Cliff wrote and sang ‘Vietnam’ in 1969 that quickly climbed the American hit parade, as it characterized the sad story of the fate of mothers losing their sons in the unjust war on the other side of the world.
It was about a Jamaican friend who wrote him happily announcing he’ll be finally returning home soon, only for his US-based mom to get a letter from Vietnam informing that her son was dead.
There’s no war in Vietnam today, but in Palestine – and the current students’ demonstrations at over-200 university campuses across the United States (US) had, by May 5, seen over 2,400 arrested for protesting against US policy in support of Israel’s war on Gaza.
The students are also demanding American university administrations today divest from Israel and their protests recall similar ones against the Vietnam War in 1967 and 1968 that helped lead to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
The Vietnam War started in 1955 and ended 20 years later in 1975, but the second-half of that decade saw consistent and persistent demonstrations by students who feared being drafted and saw war expenses as threatening states’ investment in education.
Starting with President Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War in 1965, students spent the following decade taking the fight to the Washington, affecting every presidential election between.
In 1967, students at Columbia and other universities protested against Presidents Nixon and Johnson’s Vietnam policies, the draft and the Pentagon.
Today’s demonstrations are already being felt by the political directorate as the USA heads to the November 3, 2024 presidential elections, forcing Democrats and Republicans to both dig deep and desperately for ways and words to respond to the nation-wide protests against the US continuing financing and supporting of Israel’s never-ending war on Palestine dating back to 1948.
The student protests have been largely peaceful and restricted to small university spaces, the only violence coming from police intervention and unrestrained attacks by groups bearing Israeli flags, while peaceful student demonstrators are restrained, arrested and detained.
Support for the students is mixed, but strong in states where their rights are respected by understandable citizens, community leaders and associated teaching fraternities.
Parents and relatives, friends, neighbours and community leaders are also demonstrating open solidarity with the students’ demands for divestment of university ties with Israel, while also voicing support for students against the police crackdowns and attacks by pro-Israel groups.
The student movement is better armed this time around with the experiences of the past and the growing global and national opposition to Israel’s war of attrition in Gaza, where the death toll is approaching 35,000 in seven months or just 200+ days.
Like with the Vietnam War, people across America and the-world-over today can see the carnage for themselves; and while Americans aren’t seeing body-bags returning home or coffins draped in national flags, they’re nonetheless appalled that taxpayers’ funds for education, health, science and housing are being spent instead-by billions – arming Israel.
Americans are also appalled at President Joe Biden’s recent statement that the protests won’t influence any change in American support for Israel.
The White House and State Department have adopted a two-tongued approach — sounding like being critical of Israel and concerned about humanitarian causes, while offering ‘iron-clad’ support for the Jewish state’s 75-year-old occupation of Palestinian lands and wars to eradicate and/or exterminate Palestinians imprisoned in their own lands and communities.
No one anywhere has supported the killing of 1,139 Israelis by Hamas on October 7, 2023, but everyone not supporting Israel agrees that killing 35,000+ Palestinians – including almost 15,000 children and injuring over 77,000 women, elderly and infants, resulting in over 2 million people displaced, with 1.5 million stuck in Rafah, while almost-500 Palestinians have been killed and nearly-9,000 detained in the Occupied West Bank since October 31.
Israel continues its air bombing of Rafah and has started its long-promised ‘ground offensive’, using arms mainly supplied by the US, UK, Germany and other NATO nations, to continue its overwhelmingly-disproportionate response.
Hundreds of Palestinian health workers have been killed trying to assist fellow citizens, over-180 UN staff have perished, 149 journalists have been targeted and eliminated – and food and water are being used as weapons of war, affecting tens of thousands of pregnant women and taking the lives of new-borns, with over-30 children having died from malnutrition and famine stepping-in in Northern Gaza.
The students have Time and History on their sides, but not Biden or Trump.
With only six months left to the November presidential poll, the Democrats are losing traditional youth and student support, while American Muslims and large immigrant Arab communities are also deserting by droves.
The Republicans are again stuck in the quicksand of Trump’s normal unpredictability, which has intensified since starting to feel the accumulating weight of court cases in different states, some simultaneously, while he tries to remain focused on preventing his legal woes from affecting his political support for November.
Trump and Biden being the two oldest-rivals-ever for the US Presidency is another factor alienating youth and students – and Americans wanting neither, but having no third choice.
Frustrated independent voters are also showing signs of either rebelling with their ballots in the voting booths against both parties on polling day, or staying home.
Israel was found guilty in the court of public opinion long-before its Cabinet passed legislation in April 2024 to outlaw media houses it considered ‘enemies of state’ and its banning of Qatar-based international broadcaster Al Jazeera on May 4 ahead of the planned ground offensive in Rafah.
Like with Vietnam, the student protests aren’t limited to the US, today also taking place in Australia, the UK and France, alongside pro-Palestine street-protests in most major capitals worldwide.
Likewise, the two US presidential candidates will have to take their concerns into consideration, sooner than later.
It’s just a matter of time…