David Hearst

The Tet Offensive, a surprise attack launched by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese People’s Army of Vietnam in January 1968, was a military failure.

It was designed to spark an insurrection in South Vietnam that never ignited. After the initial shock, the South Vietnamese army and the US forces regrouped and inflicted heavy losses on the Viet Cong’s best troops.

But it had a major consequence on the Vietnam War.

General Tran Do, the North’s commander at the battle of Huế, recalled: “In all honesty, we didn’t achieve our main objective, which was to spur uprisings throughout the South. Still, we inflicted heavy casualties on the Americans and their puppets, and this was a big gain for us. As for making an impact in the United States, it had not been our intention – but it turned out to be a fortunate result.”

The Tet Offensive proved a tipping point in America’s support for the war.

The Pentagon came under unprecedented criticism for its optimistic assessment of the course of the war and while the Viet Cong lost 30,000 troops, the US suffered 11,780 losses in the following year, proving the North’s military resilience.

A large credibility gap opened up between then US President Lyndon B Johnson (LBJ) and public opinion. LBJ himself lost faith in his military leadership and replaced it.

In 1968, Columbia University became one of the epicentres of anti-war protest, spurred on by Columbia University’s ties to the defence industry. Students occupied five buildings and took its dean, Henry Coleman, hostage for 36 hours. There is an iconic image of a student smoking a cigar in his office.

The police were called in. There were hundreds of student arrests, injuries, a strike and then resignation of Columbia’s president, Grayson Kirk. Anti-war protests reached a climax outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and were later seen as one of reasons for the election of Richard Nixon.

In the meantime, the anti-war movement had spread like wildfire around the world.

There was a major demonstration in West Berlin. Vietnam was one of the sparks behind weeks of street fighting around the worker and student uprising of May 1968 in Paris and across France. To this day, bullet holes in the Marais in Paris can be seen.

The May 68 protest movement was short-lived politically. The insurrection in Paris lasted only ten weeks, although at one point the Elysee felt so close to losing control that its incumbent President De Gaulle fled the country.

The French president sheltered in the warm embrace of Nato. Where else would he go? He fled to the HQ of the French Army stationed in Germany alongside its Nato allies.

The next day, half a million workers marched through Paris chanting “Adieu de Gaulle”. De Gaulle recovered to win the next election, but the shock of the news was profound. It changed a whole generation in France.

1968 today

The parallels between 1968’s protest movement against the Vietnam war and today’s global protest against the Gaza War are many.

Like the Tet Offensive, the mass prison breakout of Gaza, engineered by al-Qassam Brigades on 7 October, went out of control within hours. This was caused in part by the unexpectedly rapid collapse of the Israeli army’s Gaza Brigade in southern Israel.

Once again, Columbia has been at the centre of the revolt, with an encampment protesting Israel’s assault sparking a wave of similar actions on college campuses across the US.

An attack against military targets, in which hundreds of Israeli soldiers were killed, turned into a series of massacres against civilians, either kibbutzniks or the music festival-goers that Hamas and other groups rampaging over the border stumbled across. In the words of one Gulf state official, the attack on 7 October was the mother of all miscalculations.

But the Israeli response, a seven-months-long demolition job on Gaza, a genocidal campaign against every citizen and family in the strip regardless of their affiliation, the destruction of their houses, hospitals, schools, universities, has proved a turning point in world opinion.

Once again, support for this war is provided by a Democrat US president in an election year. Once again, Columbia has been at the centre of the revolt, with an encampment protesting Israel’s assault sparking a wave of similar actions on college campuses across the US.

Columbia, Yale, and Harvard are all in the crosshairs of this student revolt because of the universities’ ties with Israel.

At Columbia, students are demanding the university end its investments in the tech giants Amazon and Google which have a $1.2bn cloud computing contract with the government in Tel Aviv.

At Yale, students are demanding the university divest from “all weapons manufacturing companies contributing to Israel’s assault on Palestine”. Yale has exchange students with seven Israeli universities. Harvard has programmed with three of these universities, while Columbia has relations with four of them.

As in 1968, many of these protests have been met by force. Columbia President Nemat Minouche Shafik ordered the NYPD to disperse the encampment of 50 tents on the South Lawn, which led to the arrest of 100 Columbia and Barnard College students, including the daughter of US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

The students were also suspended from school and told they would not be able to finish their academic semester. At Yale, 50 protesters were arrested on charges of “aggravated trespassing”. At Ohio, demonstrators were beaten and tasered. Nearly 900 protesters have been arrested nationwide since the original confrontation at Columbia on 18 April.

None of this is new.

In 1970 the Ohio National Guard opened fire on protesters killing four and wounding nine students in what became known as the Kent State Massacre. Then as now, police brutality against students has only caused the protest to spread.

Hours after the administration shut down an encampment at Princeton, hundreds of students occupied a central courtyard, bringing books, laptops and blank canvases to set up a “Popular University for Gaza”. Faculty members joined in, leading teach-ins and discussions.

Police have been called into 15 universities across the US, and there are protests in a further 22 other universities and colleges.

The US protests have spread to British universities, although they have received less media attention.

At Trinity College, Cambridge, the portrait of Lord Balfour, the British foreign secretary responsible for a statement recognising the right of Jews to a homeland in Palestine, was defaced and slashed before being removed by the university.

London has just seen its 13th national demonstration since the war began. The protests against the war in Gaza, in their persistence and size, are only matched by the million-plus demonstration against Tony Blair’s decision to invade Iraq, which in 2003 was the biggest of its kind.

The protest movement is having a deep effect on Gaza itself because for once the Palestinian people enduring this onslaught do not feel they are on their own.

Palestinian journalist and content creator Bisan Owda said: “Keep going because you’re our only hope. And we promise we will hold our ground and tell you the truth always. And please don’t let their violence scare you. They don’t have any other options but to silence and terrify you because you are demolishing decades of brainwashing.”

Zionism is the target

Owda is right. If the targets of 1968 protest movement were the Pentagon, or the repressive paternalism of the Gaullist state, the targets today are Zionism and Israel’s armourers in the US, the UK, and Germany.

This is the pro-Israel lobby libelling and smearing politicians as antisemitic for their support of Palestine. They are the ones causing gutless and panicky universities to kick lecturers out of their jobs. They see themselves as democrats but their hands are deep in the toolkit of fascists. They endanger the rule of law, free speech and the right to protest.

Spearheading the revolt against Zionism is a new generation of Jews who are turning up in increasing numbers at these protests.

One student at Columbia and two at Barnard explained why: “We chose to be arrested in the movement for Palestinian liberation because we are inspired by our Jewish ancestors who fought for freedom 4,000 years ago. When the police entered our encampment, we locked arms and sang Civil Rights era songs that many of our more recent ancestors recited in the 1960s. We belong to the legacy of progressive Jewish activism that has worked across race, class and religious lines to transform our communities.

The Jews amongst them are horrified by what is being done in their name. Horrified by how their religion has been morphed into an apology for ethnic cleansing

“The arrest and brutalization of over 100 pro-Palestinian Columbia students is the worst act of violence on our campus in decades. The moment Columbia asked the NYPD to arrest hundreds of student protestors, our university normalized a culture in which political differences are met with violence and hostility… As we write this, Israeli students passing by call us ‘animals’ in Hebrew because they think none of us will understand – reminiscent of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s remarks that Palestinians in Gaza are ‘human animals'”.

The Gaza war is causing an unprecedented debate among Jewry, with leading intellectuals like the Canadian journalist Naomi Klein arguing that Zionism is a “is a false idol that has taken the idea of the promised land and turned it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate”.

Klein wrote: “From the start it has produced an ugly kind of freedom that saw Palestinian children not as human beings but as demographic threats – much as the pharaoh in the Book of Exodus feared the growing population of Israelites, and thus ordered the death of their sons.

“Zionism has brought us to our present moment of cataclysm and it is time that we said clearly: it has always been leading us here. It is a false idol that has led far too many of our own people down a deeply immoral path that now has them justifying the shredding of core commandments: thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not covet.”

Palestine is everywhere

These events will not be without their consequences.

In the immediate future, the anti-Gaza war movement has revived the Palestinian national cause as never before. Fading graffiti commemorating Fatah and PLO’s battles in refugee camps in Lebanon have been replaced by bright new symbols celebrating the attack on 7 October. The inverted triangle depicting Hamas parachuting over the barrier in Gaza is everywhere.

Each demonstration around the world is headed by the Palestinian diaspora which has reacted in the opposite way to what was intended by Israel and its supporters. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thought that if he killed off the elders, their sons and daughters would forget the struggle.

Instead, Netanyahu has recreated and reinforced the bond of Palestinians everywhere to their lost land. Ask Palestinians in the Jordanian refugee camp of Hitten where their home is, and the overwhelming answer is Gaza or the West Bank.

This wave of support has similarly undone years of planning to disconnect the Palestinian cause from the Arab World. Events helped. The Arab Spring and its suppression, and the civil wars that followed, supplanted Palestine as the main source of news for at least a decade.

Israel’s attempt to bypass the Palestinian national cause by reaching out directly to the richest Gulf states was just about to succeed when Hamas staged its attack.

Seven months later, Palestine is everywhere. All polls show it. Instead Israel itself is in the dock of international justice, under court investigation at both the International Criminal Court, which is about to issue warrants for the arrest of Netanyahu and others, and the International Court of Justice for genocide.

These are the immediate consequences, but there are two long-term consequences which could be far more important.

The first is that for the first time in the history of this conflict, Gaza – both its people and its fighters – are displaying a determination to stand and fight which the PLO and Yasser Arafat never showed.

For the first time in its history, Palestinians have a leadership which will not give up its major demands and which commands their respect.

The second consequence is that a new generation is coming of age in America, the only country that can stop this conflict by withdrawing its military, political and economic support for Israel. It is still now the only country that Israel listens to and takes seriously.

The Jews amongst them are horrified by what is being done in their name. Horrified by how their religion has been morphed into an apology for ethnic cleansing. Horrified by how their proud and painful heritage has been reduced into a licence to kill. Horrified by the power exerted by Israel over the US Congress, UK parliament and every mainstream party in Europe.

Jews are challenging the claim that Zionism owns their narrative. For this they are variously accused of being traitors, “Kapos” (the Jews assigned by the Nazi SS to supervise forced labour), self-hating, or simply “animals”. But for me they are the biggest single source of hope in this bleak landscape.

The Vietnam War was to last another seven years after the Tet offensive. And Israel’s occupation of Gaza will not be easily ended.

But we could well have reached the tipping point in support for Israel in the US, UK and Europe and this is of historic significance.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Israel has launched a major campaign to prevent the International Criminal Court (ICC) from issuing arrest warrants for top officials over war crimes in the besieged Gaza Strip.

“The Prime Minister’s office is worried that the ICC will soon issue arrest warrants against [Benjamin] Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as IDF (army) Chief of Staff Herzl Halevi,” an Israeli diplomatic source told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

“Where is [US President Joe] Biden? Why is he quiet while Israel will potentially be thrown under the bus?” the source said.

The Israeli source argued that The Hague-based court could not act against Netanyahu and top army officials without overt or tactic support from the US.

Israeli analyst Ben Caspit said that Netanyahu was “under unusual stress” over the prospect of an ICC arrest warrant against him and other Israeli officials.

Netanyahu was leading a “nonstop push over the telephone” to prevent an arrest warrant, focused especially on Biden’s administration, he wrote on Walla news site.

Israel and the US are not members of the ICC and do not recognize its jurisdiction.

Palestine was admitted as a member of The Hague-based court in 2015.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has earlier instructed its embassies worldwide to be prepared for potential repercussions if the ICC issues arrest warrants against Israeli officials for war crimes and human rights violations in Gaza.

Israel has waged a brutal offensive on the Palestinian enclave since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

Nearly 34,500 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 77,60 others injured amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.

More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

(Source: AA)

Dr Amira Abo el-Fetouh

There is no doubt that the steadfastness of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in the face of the brutal Zionist aggression has inspired the people of the free world. By sacrificing their lives for their country’s freedom and independence, they are breaking the chains that shackle them. After more than 200 days of the Israeli genocide, people around the world have been inspired by Gaza’s brave resistance. The student protests we are witnessing in American universities is an expression and embodiment of this fact.

Students at Columbia University in the US began a campus sit-in on 18 April to protest against the university’s financial investments in companies that support the Zionist occupation of Palestine. They were shocked into their revolt by the scenes of the massacres committed by the Israeli occupation army. The revolt has spread to other universities, including NYU, Yale, the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas and MIT, among others. Similar student revolts have been seen in universities in France, Turkiye, Malaysia and Indonesia. French students at the Sorbonne in Paris carried out a major protest while French President Emmanuel Macron was visiting the campus.

These protests, especially in the US, have terrified the Zionist entity and prompted it to resort to its default response narrative which claims that accusations of Israeli brutality and racism are “anti-Semitic”.

It is a tired, overused response that nobody with any credibility believes any more.

Predictably, though, that’s what Israel’s extreme far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, called condemnation of his rogue country’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Ben-Gvir’s comment coincided with a statement by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on X, in which he claimed, outrageously, that: “Anti-Semitism on campuses in the United States is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. The world cannot stand idly by.” He was obviously trying to invoke German Holocaust guilt, which has served Israel so well for many years. However, it was ironic for him to mention the Nazis because, in doing so, he exonerated the Palestinians even though he probably thought that his choice of terminology would criminalise them. Nazism was a European creation and the Jews who were oppressed and persecuted by its followers were also European. Establishing the Israeli entity on Arab Palestinian land, and punishing the Palestinians for European Nazi crimes against European Jews is just one of the major injustices that the people of occupied Palestine have faced for more than seven decades. Why should they have to pay the price for crimes committed by Europeans?

US President Joe Biden hasn’t helped the situation by also accusing student protesters of “anti-Semitism”. They can accuse him and his administration of all sorts of things in the name of freedom of speech; and insult countries and politicians around the world; but woe betide anyone who criticises the Zionist state of Israel and its leaders. How logical is that?

Nevertheless, the demonstrations in American universities send a message direct to Biden, the main supporter of the genocide in Gaza, and to Netanyahu, its main perpetrator. The student protesters are the future, and they are leading the movement for change in the world. Their revolt against the Zionist “self-defence” narrative and the crimes of the Zionist state confirms that an important transformation is on the cards, and not just in the US. They could — and hopefully will — have an important impact on the US presidential election in November.

This explains the US and Israeli anger and accusations of “anti-Semitism”, with both Biden and Netanyahu “crying wolf” and unable to understand that the old rhetoric won’t wash any more; and that the world is changing.

Biden’s blatant bias towards the Zionist state has been public knowledge ever since he said in 1986 (and repeated last year), “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.”

His response to the student campus revolts does not befit the leader of the country supposedly founded on the principles of freedom, democracy, human rights and freedom of opinion and expression. The US has thrown all of its principles to the wind for Israel, silencing and gagging its citizens, and facing the demonstrations with police brutality. American students have exposed the true face of their country; its democratic mask has fallen off.

The US politicians bought and paid for by the pro-Israel lobby are no better than the worst tin-pot dictators in the world. They have failed to respect their own founding principles, and shown scant regard for academic freedom. With their uncivilised attack on students and their right to protest, the US authorities confirm the truth of what Indian freedom fighter Gandhi said when asked by a journalist, “What do you think of Western civilisation?” His response was simple: “I think it would be a good idea.”

The world is now witnessing how America has violated its own Constitution by arresting students and threatening their professors; restricting academic freedom and freedom of speech; and breaking up peaceful demonstrations by force. The First Amendment of which US citizens are so proud has been violated beyond repair, surely. Remember this the next time a US official condemns other nations and governments for their supposedly “undemocratic” behaviour.

When democracies send security forces onto university campuses, we know that they are on a slippery slope to authoritarianism and ultimate collapse. The United States of America is at a crucial stage of its existence. Are the American people aware of this? And do they understand the potentially catastrophic consequences of trashing their Constitution — at the cost of billions of taxpayers’ dollars — for the sake of the Zionist, apartheid, genocidal state of Israel? If they don’t, then they need to wake up quickly.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

The League of Parliamentarians for al-Quds concluded on Sunday the activities of its fifth international parliamentary conference, entitled: ‘Freedom and Independence for Palestine,’ held under the auspices of the Turkish Parliament in Istanbul.

The three-day conference was attended by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Speaker of the Turkish Parliament Prof. Numan Kurtulmuş, over 700 parliamentarians from 80 countries, and official, international and Turkish figures.

In the final statement of the conference, LP4Q called for the establishment of an international legal initiative supported by parliamentarians and parliaments that would coordinate the efforts of legal professionals working to prosecute genocidal war criminals, support the global boycott movement of the Israeli occupation and its supporters, demand that parliaments enact laws contributing to boycott movements and criminalize dealing with the Israeli occupation.

Moreover, the statement asks all participating parliamentarians and parliaments to prompt LP4Q’s role as a global parliamentary legal and political umbrella that supports Palestinian rights, and to coordinate international parliamentary efforts in confronting the parties aiding the war of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

The conference attendees also believe that the Israeli occupation is the greatest obstacle in achieving peace in the region and a tremendous threat to world peace, stressing that the Palestinian parties who’ve been defending their people and land are liberation movements worthy of praise. Thus, They refuse to label them as terrorists and ISIS-like movements.

The conference’s opening session included speeches by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Speaker of the Turkish Parliament Prof. Numan Kurtulmuş, LP4Q President Mr. Hamid bin Abdullah Al-Ahmar, and President of LP4Q in Türkiye Dr. Nureddin Nebati, as well as presidents of parliament and participating delegations.

On the second day, LP4Q held a parliamentary forum session, which included speeches by participating parliamentarians, a legal symposium with the participation of Turkish Minister of Justice Yılmaz Tunç and a humanitarian seminar supporting relief projects for the Gaza Strip.

On the third day, a political symposium was organized, during which LP4Q reviewed its comprehensive executive reports on its performance and work in the last four years (2020-2023). Furthermore, LP4Q’s executive board elections were held, and its statute was reviewed.

On the sidelines, the ‘Jerusalem Exhibition’ initiative was carried out, seeking to raise awareness regarding the threats facing Jerusalem, in addition to exhibitions related to the Palestinian cause and heritage and another exhibition concerning the ongoing genocidal war in the Gaza Strip.”

Hundreds of students have been arrested across universities in the United States as protesters continue to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and divestment from companies enabling Israel’s nearly seven-month war on the Palestinian enclave.

Police were out in full force on college campuses on Saturday, some using chemical irritants and Tasers to disperse the students, as more universities witnessed protests against the continued bombing of the Gaza Strip and seeking an end to US military assistance for Israel.

In Boston, police detained about 100 people while clearing a protest camp at Northeastern University, with social media posts showing security forces in riot gear and officers loading tents onto the back of a truck.

In a statement on X, Northeastern said the area on campus where the protests were held was now “fully secured” and “all campus operations have returned to normal”.

The school said its move came after “what began as a student demonstration two days ago was infiltrated by professional organisers with no affiliation to Northeastern”. It added that detained individuals who produced a valid school ID were released and will face disciplinary proceedings, not legal action.

In Bloomington in the Midwest, the Indiana University Police Department arrested 23 people as they cleared a campus protest camp, the Indiana Daily Student newspaper reported.

On the opposite side of the country, the Arizona State University Police Department arrested 69 people for trespassing after the group set up an “unauthorised encampment” on campus.

Arizona state officials said a protest group, “most of whom were not ASU students, faculty or staff”, set up a camp on Friday and ignored repeated orders to disperse.

Students gather for a Pro-Palestinian protest at the Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona [Liliana Salgado/Reuters]

Meanwhile, at Washington University in St Louis, at least 80 people were arrested, including US presidential candidate Jill Stein and her campaign manager.

Across the US, university leaders have tried, and largely failed, to quell the demonstrations, which often saw the police intervening violently, with videos emerging from different states showing hundreds of students – and even faculty members – being forcefully arrested.

The protesters have demanded amnesty for students and faculty members disciplined or fired for protesting. About a week ago at Columbia University in New York, more than 100 pro-Palestinian activists were arrested.

What started at the Columbia campus has turned into a nationwide showdown between students and administrators over pro-Palestine protests and the restrictions on free speech.

In the past 10 days, hundreds of students have been arrested, suspended, put on probation and, in rare cases, expelled from colleges, including Yale University, the University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University and the University of Minnesota.

A few universities had to cancel graduation ceremonies, while others have seen their buildings occupied by the protesters.

Students taking ‘big risks’

Al Jazeera’s John Hendren, reporting from Princeton University in New Jersey, said “the price of protests can be high” for the students occupying college campuses.

“Students are taking some big risks at these protests. If they violate university rules, they can be expelled. And here at Princeton, tuition is over $50,000 a year,” he said. “For many of them, it’s an education they have been looking forward to all their lives.”

Princeton student Sam Bisno told Al Jazeera taking such risks showed how “passionate” students were about the issue. “People are willing to put it all on the line. But we know we have the power in numbers,” he said.

People stand near a flower arrangement that reads ‘Free Palestine’ during a protest at the University of Southern California [David Swanson/Reuters]

Momodou Taal was among four students whom Cornell University in New York state “temporarily suspended” on Saturday for setting up an encampment on its campus.

He told Al Jazeera the protesting students received threats and were subjected to doxing, which refers to the posting of the personal information of an individual on the internet without their consent. He said such students received no protection from their school.

“We no longer have faith in the administration to be a place safe for Muslim students, for Arab students, for Palestinian students and by and large those students of colour and pro-Palestinian students,” Taal said.

Maysam Elghazali, an organiser of the protests at Emory University in Atlanta, said the demonstrating students had three demands.

“Number one, that Emory disclose all of its financial investments. Number two, that they divest from all Israeli companies, and number three, that they provide continued amnesty and protection to all the students who were unjustly arrested,” she told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, college protests against the “genocide” of the Palestinians in Gaza have also spread to schools in Canada, Europe and Australia.

Canada’s first campus protest camp for Gaza came up at McGill University in Montreal on Saturday.

Broadcaster CBC reported protesters were demanding McGill and Concordia universities “divest from funds implicated in the Zionist state as well as [cut] ties with Zionist academic institutions”.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES