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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
College campus protests highlight tensions in Biden’s coalition | |
By Gregory Krieg, CNN | |
Updated: | |
11:48 PM EDT, Tue April 30, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
’s hopes of recreating the coalition that lifted him to office in | |
2020 are coming under threat as the spreads across college campuses. | |
Pro-Israel Democrats are now pushing the president to respond more | |
forcefully to at colleges and universities, echoing calls from | |
Republicans, including former , who have cast the increasingly | |
combative demonstrations as a mark of incompetence inside the White | |
House. | |
For months, Democrats on Capitol Hill and in the highest echelons of | |
the party have approached the conflict in Gaza with relative caution, | |
but as the , college officials weigh canceling commencement ceremonies | |
and Republicans ratchet up their attacks, Biden’s work to hold | |
together a united front are fraying. | |
The White House and congressional leaders seemed to embrace a new, | |
tougher tact Tuesday when discussing the by protesters at Columbia | |
University. | |
“President Biden respects the right to free expression, but | |
protests must be peaceful and lawful. Forcibly taking over buildings is | |
not peaceful – it is wrong,” White House deputy press secretary | |
Andrew Bates said, adding that the president “condemns the use of the | |
term ‘intifada,’ as he has the other tragic and dangerous hate | |
speech displayed in recent days.” | |
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also denounced the protesters at | |
Columbia, suggesting that the demonstrations were poised to “veer | |
into criminality.” | |
“Smashing windows with hammers, taking over university buildings is | |
not free speech,” the New York Democrat said. “It is lawlessness | |
and those who did it should promptly face the consequences that are not | |
merely a slap on the wrist.” | |
The administration’s shift in tone, though, is unlikely to quiet the | |
calls for Biden to take a heavier hand with the protesters. But it | |
could further risk the president’s standing among younger voters, | |
who, , overwhelmingly disapprove of his handling of the war. | |
Also Tuesday, the College Democrats of America – a mainstream, | |
Biden-backing organization – put in its lot with the campus | |
protesters, many of whom are Jewish themselves. It praised the | |
“bravery” of students willing to endure arrest and suspension “to | |
stand up for the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people.” | |
While the group reiterated its support for Biden and other Democrats in | |
the coming election, it also issued a warning to the president’s | |
campaign. | |
“Each day that Democrats fail to stand united for a permanent | |
ceasefire, two-state solution, and recognition of a Palestinian state, | |
more and more youth find themselves disillusioned with the party,” | |
the College Democrats wrote. | |
Escalating tensions | |
On Monday, before protesters at Columbia took over the school building, | |
nearly two-dozen House Democrats issued an ultimatum to members of the | |
university board: Clear the protest encampments or step down. | |
The pro-Palestinian activists who occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia | |
said they had “liberated” it in honor of a young Palestinian child, | |
, who was killed alongside her family in late January during the | |
Israeli military offensive in Gaza City. | |
Outside on Tuesday, students chanted, “From the river to the sea, | |
Palestine will be free” and “Palestine will live forever,” video | |
obtained by CNN shows. Protesters also from a window reading | |
“Intifada,” the Arabic word for an uprising, and “Hind’s | |
Hall,” according to video. | |
Republicans have moved quickly to message around the latest | |
developments. House Speaker said at a news conference Tuesday that | |
Republicans would “hold these universities accountable for their | |
failure to protect Jewish students on campus.” | |
“We need moral clarity on the issue,” Johnson previously told | |
reporters. “We need everyone from the president on down to speak out | |
about this and say that it is clearly wrong and Jewish students | |
aren’t second-class citizens and they can attend class just like | |
everyone else.” | |
Unlike the Democrats, GOP officials have been in lock step denouncing | |
the protests and related efforts to curb Israel’s military campaign, | |
which has killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza, according to the | |
enclave’s health ministry. Trump, the party’s presumptive 2024 | |
nominee, that Jewish Democrats, who include critics of Israeli Prime | |
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, “hate their | |
religion,” and he has sought to yoke Biden to the least savory | |
characters in the college protest hubs. | |
“Nobody knows where the US stands right now. I think Biden is not on | |
the side of Israel, and he’s making a tremendous mistake. You have to | |
clean up the terror that we witnessed on October 7,” Trump said in a | |
phone interview with Fox News Tuesday. | |
The GOP also plans to put the spotlight on Democrats with a planned | |
vote Wednesday on the Antisemitism Awareness Act, a bill introduced by | |
GOP Rep. Mike Lawler, a swing-district freshman from the New York | |
suburbs. The legislation has Democratic co-sponsors but uses a | |
definition for antisemitism – tying it to support for Israel – | |
rejected by many party moderates, progressives, and Jewish advocates. | |
It is expected to pass the chamber, though, and likely to become a | |
political wedge come November. | |
The back-and-forth among Democrats heated up last week, when Florida | |
Rep. Jared Moskowitz responded to a statement from Vermont Sen. Bernie | |
Sanders condemning Democratic leadership’s decision not to bring up | |
for a vote his amendment “to end offensive military aid to | |
Netanyahu’s war machine.” Moskowitz, in a social media post, | |
suggested Sanders was evading a more important issue. | |
“Bernie, now do AntiSemitism,” Moskowitz wrote. “Why so quiet?” | |
The next day, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has been | |
bird-dogged by some left-wing activists for not taking a hard-enough | |
line against Israel, came to Sanders’ defense. | |
“Sen. Sanders’ family was killed in the Holocaust,” Ocasio-Cortez | |
wrote on social media. “He dedicates his every moment to realizing | |
tikkun olam. His commitment to protecting innocents in Gaza stems FROM | |
his Jewish values. He and many other Jewish leaders deserve better than | |
to be treated this way. This is shameful.” | |
Moskowitz responded by relaying his own family’s ordeal during the | |
Holocaust and pointing to his votes for aid to Israel and Gaza. | |
“We see each other at work,” he then told Ocasio-Cortez, “we are | |
both better than doing this here” on social media. | |
1968 redux? | |
In their letter Monday to Columbia University’s board of trustees, | |
Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Dan Goldman of New York, along | |
with nearly two dozen other Democratic co-signers, exhorted the school, | |
whose president has already called in the New York Police Department to | |
disperse demonstrators, to immediately “disband the encampment.” | |
(The NYPD’s first effort failed, and the scenes from campus provided | |
rocket fuel for further, nationwide protests.) | |
Parallels between the current, increasingly hostile stand-off between | |
Democratic leaders and activists and the antiwar movement of the 1960s | |
– or, more recently, Occupy Wall Street – are easy to find. | |
Especially in the rhetoric used by Republicans to capitalize on the | |
tumult, as Richard Nixon did in 1968 when he called for “law and | |
order” over the forces of anarchy and what the right then called the | |
“lunatic fringe.” | |
In one sense, there is an unlikely degree of unity among Democratic | |
officials for supporting Israel – at least within official | |
Washington, which has largely coalesced in backing Netanyahu’s stated | |
mission of dismantling the terror group Hamas, which killed at least | |
1,200 Israelis on October 7. Progressive leaders in the Senate, most | |
notably Sanders and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have been | |
critical of Israel’s tactics in Gaza and the fuzzy parameters around | |
US aid but have not sought to bring all the demands of the protest | |
movement to the national stage. | |
With few exceptions, the driving forces behind the movement within the | |
Democratic Party to defeat corporate-friendly centrists and moderates | |
in primaries have appeared squeamish about the prospect of loudly | |
defying the White House or being seen to endorse the growing | |
demonstrations. | |
One longtime progressive strategist, who has worked with | |
outside-the-party movements and high-profile Democratic campaigns | |
alike, told CNN there was “a pretty significant disconnect” | |
between the progressive base and like-minded elected officials. | |
“Even the Biden people who think the progressive base will come | |
around no matter what do think ‘We have to worry about Bernie,’ or | |
‘We have to care about Warren,” the strategist said. “But | |
(Sanders and Warren) are not going to the White House and saying, | |
‘You really got to do something about this.’” | |
Both Sanders and Warren announced their support for a ceasefire after | |
initially hesitating. Members of the House “squad” of progressive | |
lawmakers were more aggressive in pushing for peace, but the largely | |
bipartisan support for Israel’s initial incursion mostly drowned them | |
out. | |
On , Sanders pushed back fiercely against claims – from members of | |
both parties – that the protests are antisemitic by definition and | |
repeatedly pointed to the facts on the ground in Gaza to push for new | |
checks on US military aid to the Netanyahu government. | |
Asked whether he was comfortable with Jewish student supporters of | |
Israel being called “pro-genocide,” Sanders – a Jewish man whose | |
father’s family was killed in the Holocaust – sought to keep the | |
focus on the actions of the Israeli government. | |
“I think the word genocide is something that is being determined by | |
the International Court of Justice,” he said. “But this is what I | |
will say: I don’t think there’s any doubt that what Netanyahu is | |
doing now, displacing 80% of the population in Gaza, is ethnic | |
cleansing. That’s what it is.” | |
Among the demonstrators, this is often viewed as a distinction – | |
whether agreed upon or not – that blurs the bigger picture: | |
specifically, that Israel is breaking international law by what its | |
critics see as attempts to either annihilate, through death and | |
destruction, or completely marginalize the Palestinian population in | |
occupied land. | |
The Biden administration, along with his campaign, . In their view, | |
Israel’s ground war in Gaza is a reasonable response to the carnage | |
of October 7. Like nearly every other major elected official, Biden and | |
his allies – including Sanders – have said that Israel has the | |
right to protect itself. | |
More than 250 former staffers from the Obama-Biden administration | |
implored the White House Tuesday to call for an immediate ceasefire in | |
Gaza. Two people who signed the letter, which was first reported by the | |
, provided it to CNN. | |
Democrats’ dilemma | |
Biden has sought, when he addresses the issue, to take the air out of | |
the campus protest controversy and Republican efforts to use the | |
demonstrations as an election-year cudgel. | |
Asked by reporters last week about the demonstrations, Biden said, “I | |
condemn the antisemitic protests; that’s why I’ve set up a program | |
to deal with that,” before adding, “I also condemn those who | |
don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” | |
On Sunday, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who’s been | |
critical of the civilian deaths and destruction in Gaza and has | |
expressed to the Israeli government, sought to disentangle the two | |
issues. | |
“We should all speak out when protest crosses the line, when it | |
becomes violent or when there’s hate speech. But 95% of the young | |
people who are on these campuses are there because they believe there | |
is a fundamental injustice being perpetrated in Israel,” Murphy said | |
on Fox News. “We also have a history of overnight, multiday protests | |
in this country. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with | |
protecting the ability of peaceful protests to last beyond a handful of | |
hours.” | |
Republicans have been less inclined to sort through the details. | |
Days earlier, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the fourth-ranking House | |
Republican and a top GOP fundraiser, called on the Biden administration | |
to begin an unprecedented crackdown on protesters, asserting that | |
“anarchy has engulfed the (Columbia University) campus.” | |
“By allowing this support for terror to continue, this wicked | |
ideology is able to spread,” Stefanik wrote. “I demand that you | |
enforce existing law to revoke the visas and deport students here on | |
visas who are suspended for their antisemitic actions.” | |
This story has been updated with additional developments. | |
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