A serious red line has been crossed: America’s democratic freedoms, expansive on paper, will simply not tolerate serious dissent on the U.S.–Israel relationship. As criticisms of Israel have become more mainstream, the attempt to shut them down entirely has become more extreme.
In pursuit of this blank-check relationship with an Israeli government that is becoming ever-more intransigent with each passing year, pro-Israel forces in the U.S. are attacking our own democratic freedoms in order to suppress public outcry about apartheid and potential genocide 6,000 miles away. And, if the recent campus crackdowns are any indication, these forces are winning their battle.
With tens of thousands of Palestinians left dead and the Israeli assault on Gaza ongoing, the U.S. protests targeting university ties with Israel over the last month — voluble and outspoken — have been overwhelmingly nonviolent.
Yet these nonviolent protests have met with the full brutal force of the U.S. security state. Dispersing the protest encampments, police have viciously beaten protesters, fired rubber bullets, and enveloped students in dense clouds of tear gas.
Making up excuses after the fact doesn’t change what it was at the time.
It’s not an excuse. Bush knocked them back to the Stone Age and Halliburton got the contract to rebuild the nation while the US military supplemented their system of order. We created the problem.
I don’t need you gaslighting me about something I saw unfold.
Democrats overwhelmingly voted for the Iraq war. They made encouraging noises about stopping, but they did not get out in 2007 like you lied. They took until 2011, and if they had a Republican president to capitulate to at the time, they would have kept it going longer.