MEDIA SHAMEFUL COVERAGE OF ANTI-WAR PROTESTS!!
Student protests broke up in over 100 university campuses in America, from Ivy League, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, N.Y.U., Michigan, and here the University of Minnesota. Started with Columbia’s President calling on New York Police to disperse student encampments; Minouche Shafik an Egyptian American who stained the great Palestinian American Edward Said legacy at Columbia University. Police with guns, full gear, and armored vehicles with a bridging mechanism got onto campus, using rubber bullets and tear gas on peaceful protests.
Over 2000 students were arrested from all over American universities. Young Americans are revolting against their corporate educational institutions which care only about money, investments, donors, and endowments. Students have the right to reject their universities’ complicities with the Israeli war on Palestinians that according to the ICJ trial case, amounts to genocide, this was also brushed off and demonized by the media. The media ignores any historical context of young students’ antiwar protest This student protest is reminiscent of the 60’s students’ Vietnam antiwar protest, the May 1st Kent State shooting that killed four students, and the laws and order that resulted in the Nixon election. A CNN poll released showed a staggering 81 percent of voters under the age of 35 rejecting President Biden’s handling of the war. However; while the media looked the other way from Israeli atrocities committed in Gaza, and humanized war criminals, the Media are focusing mainly on student violence, antisemitic false claims, and campus politics. Media’s shameful misrepresentation of student protests obscures the reality of a peaceful antiwar war movement, portrayed as a war between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli binary. Picturing students as “Privileged’, extremists, some even accused them of being manipulated by Hamas. The Time depicted the peaceful protests as a disease, “Spreading” and “contagious” “Police arrested dozens of people at pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Yale University in Connecticut and New York University in Manhattan, as student protests over Israel’s war in Gaza continue to roil US campuses.” Explained in the Guardian. “Universities Struggle as Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations Grow Warned the Times. “Columbia, administrators at some of the country’s most influential universities were struggling, and largely failing, to calm campuses torn by the “conflict” in Gaza and Israel.” According to the Times, almost six months of Israeli bombing and destruction of Gaza, killing over 40,000 Palestinians, destroying hospitals, schools, and water supplies, turning Gaza into a concentration camp, and starving two million Palestinians, is a “Conflict”. CBS headline screamed, ‘Violence breaks out at some Palestinian campus protests” Protesting genocide and Zionism is not antisemitic explained a Jewish student. In New York, Police in uniforms and a police-military Helicopter hovered over the dispersed students in the streets; According to the media “Disperse”. Students asking their universities to stop investing in Israel is not a pro-Palestinians protest, it’s a protest against genocide and isn’t antisemitic either, It Is the so-called pro-Israel protest, supporting the Zionist Genocide. “150 arrested at New York University amid pro-Palestinian protests, NYPD says.” ABC headline. I stopped at the University of Minnesota campus this week, I saw the only encampment that was not attacked by the police, a few students with skimpy Bikini laying on the grass under a sunblock tent. Media pretense of neutrality of student protests on campus is shameful and damaging, neutrality when there is a war crime committed, is collaboration. Ignoring the demands of the antiwar movement, painted them as just Pro-Palestinians, not students who are rejecting their university investments in the apartheid state of Israel, and the Genocide in Gaza. I’m not sure what the so-called pro-Israelis are protesting. Despite the media misrepresentation of student protests, as unruly and violent, most of the violence is coming from the police and pro-Israeli cam. Media ignored the killing of journalists who were on the frontline, bringing the horror of war on Gaza. While Biden joking with journalists at the White House correspondents’ dinner roast. Canceling classes, shutting down campus, and military police removing protest encampments on campus, fearing the safety of the Jewish students’ university officials claimed. “Many Jewish students agonized anew over some protests and chants that veered into antisemitism, and feared again for their safety.” Reported the Times. Destroying Palestinian universities, and schools and killing students for the Times is collateral damage, just a Netanyahu misstep in Gaza. The spiraling uproar in Upper Manhattan helped fuel protests on some other campuses reported the Times. Corporate media has portrayed the protesters as fringe weirdos, leftwing extremists, who are rejected by most Americans. “We’re all a united front,” said Malak Afaneh, a law student protesting at the University of California, Berkeley. If the Vietnamese Anti-War movement was showing on national TV, the massive bombing and destruction of poor Vietnamese, farmers, and children. Now young Americans see the genocide streaming daily, images of killed Palestinians, women, and children. hearing real accounts of starving Palestinians and destroyed hospitals, schools, homes, and livelihoods of a nation. Corporate Media coverage of the antiwar movement, dominated with a reductive oversimplification narrative, cares about rating and sensualism journalism. The best of America, our young students, wanted a voice in the future of this country. They wanted to shape our old rotten foreign policy, especially in the Middle East, but as they say, the first causality of war is the truth.
Ahmed Tharwat
Host/Producer of Arab American TV show BelAhdan
Blogs at Notes From America
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Working on his documentary The Coptic Grave
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Host/Producer of Arab American TV Show BelAhdan With Ahmed
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My Interview with Professor Ahmad Ahmad, UCSB
