The context and scale are different, but there are common methods in the suppression of demonstrations in the Arab Spring in 2011 and crackdowns against pro-Palestinian groups on university campuses in the U.S. Will President Biden, like Hosni Mubarak 13 years ago, lose power as a result?
One of many arrests made by CHP officers in riot gear to take down a pro-Palestinian encampment on the UCLA campus.
Gene Blevins/ZUMA
AL MANASSA
ENGLISH EDITION • WORLDCRUNCH
Khaled Dawoud
May 08, 2024
-Analysis-
CAIRO — Police in Los Angeles last week resorted to tactics widely known in the Middle East for dealing with pro-Palestinian student protesters. Indeed, watching the images from Cairo was reminiscent of one particular police attack on pro-democracy protesters in Egypt during the 2011 Arab Spring revolution.
The January 2011 attack, commonly known as the Camel Attack, involved thugs employed by security agencies to attack protesters. It was a turning point in the revolution that ultimately forced the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak.
Despite the different context and capabilities, police in Egypt and the United States think the same way. Moreover, if such crackdowns continue, it could fatal for U.S. President Joe Biden in the coming race against Donald Trump.
In order to disperse a small sit-in held by pro-Palestinian supporters at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), police allowed pro-Israel groups, including students, to attack makeshift encampments surrounded by improvised fences of wood and iron barriers.
For two hours, these thugs used multiple forms of violence, in front of policemen armed with the latest riot control tools. They assaulted the students, brutally beat them with sticks, and sprayed them with pepper spray and tear gas, in an attempt to end their sit-in protest.
How it started?
The protest began as a limited sit-in to reject the crimes of the Israeli occupation against the Palestinians in Gaza. But it ended with broader protests against the interference of the police and politicians in university affairs, and their efforts to suppress freedom of expression, which is sacred in universities.
When the protesters asked the police to protect them, they failed to do their job — and the police, echoed in the mainstream U.S. media, described Israel's supporters as "counter-protesters" confronting the "sit-in protesters."
The police didn’t provide protection to the pro-Palestine protesters from the attack by pro-Israel protesters; and the following day, L.A. police, along with federal officers, surrounded the sit-in camp and forcibly dispersed it, just as happened at Columbia University in New York days earlier.
Police forces in the U.S. are infamous for their brutality in dealing with minorities, particularly Black Americans, but the level of violence they used against pro-Palestine demonstrations was notably brutal, and didn't spare older professors who had joined the protests.
Major change
The student demonstrations in many universities across the United States are the most visible sign of what appears to be a major change in American public opinion about the Middle East. Historic support of Israel has been fading since the war in Gaza among many of those who describe themselves as “progressive” supporters of the Democratic Party, including notably members of ethnic minorities, especially African Americans and Latino Americans.
Nevertheless, this transformation — which comes just months before the 2024 presidential elections in which Joe Biden will face his arch enemy Donald Trump — isn't likely to have the kind of impact that anti-Vietnam war protests had in the late 1960s.
Those protests eventually helped stop the Vietnam war after a long and costly fight. The students at the time weren't only protesting in support of a distant moral cause, but rather in defense of their own personal fate in the face of the mandatory draft.
A recent CNN poll showed that the Palestinian cause still occupies a low ranking in Americans' priorities. Less than half of the pollsters said that they are following war developments with interest, and that they will keep the Middle East in mind while voting in the presidential election.
Still, it's notable that the percentage has increased to 60% among students who classify themselves as supporters of the Democratic Party. That’s the biggest problem Biden and the leaders of the Democratic Party are facing.
Pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University as part of 'March for Divestment'.
Lev Radin/ZUMA
Attempted balance
Biden, who describes himself as a Zionist, realizes that if he strongly criticizes pro-Palestine supporters — like Trump has done repeatedly – he will lose more votes from young and progressive Democrats.
Biden is trying to strike a balance, stressing his support for freedom of expression and his rejection of Islamophobia, while affirming his intolerance of “anti-Semitism.”
This mix, however, is unlikely to satisfy an increasingly angry American youth population, especially in the wake of movements against police brutality and repressive techniques that are being used to crack down on the pro-Palestine protests.
Increasingly, it has begun to look like police crackdown on protesters in Third World countries.
Biden’s sole hope is to obtain a ceasefire in Gaza — and perhaps even end the war — so students stop their protests by the end of their school year.
But if the protests continue with the same strength and scope, and the war continues until the autumn, Biden may see his reign end — like Mubarak in Egypt — at the hands of popular protests. And especially the violent attempts to keep them suppressed.
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