Violate, Violations, and Violence

V against victory

No end to the twists and turns in the genocide of the Palestinian people. Violate the ground they possess, commit violations against the body they possess, and provoke them into violence. The coordination of using the “V” words to prevent victory applies to the suppression of those who fight for the sanctity of life, against oppression, and for the peace and comfort of everyone.

Images and reports of the campus protests against those assisting and abetting in the genocide of the Palestinian people did not show violence by the campus campers — no bloody faces, no prostrate corpses, no images of broken windows, no sticks and stones to break bones — not until police arrived to unsettle and beat the protestors, and counter-demonstrators violated their rest, committed violations against the barriers that politely separated them from the public, and impolitely provoked the protestors into countering the violence committed upon them.

Faulty strategy by the counter-protestors. Marches, congregations, and protests generally aren’t “big news” after the first day. Front-page news needs thrills, excitement, sensation. Front page news adores violence. The violence provoked by counter-protestors gave the campus protestors a space on the front page and an introduction to a wider audience.

Who are the protestors? They are dedicated people who want those who enable genocide to disinvest from their investment in the slaughter of innocents.
Who are the counter-protestors? They are unlawful people who defend Israel’s genocide.
Who should government and law favor and protect? In the hypocritical American democratic system, genocide is selective, those who seek the contemporary genocide are favored and those who combat the genocide are thwarted. The genocide of the Palestinian people, certified by United Nations (UN) Human Rights officials as genocide, is selected by US government officials as not genocide, not even to be regarded as a serious oppression of innocent people. One difference between UN Human Rights officials and US government officials — the former does not follow the Zionist agenda and the latter promotes it.

Rather than call in the National Guard to shoot up the campus, as was done at the 1970 Kent State protest, where the Ohio National Guard fired on students and ended the Vietnam War demonstrations, propped up Joe Biden read from a Zionist-prepared script.

Not a peaceful process and against the law…People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked…No place for anti-Semitism or threats of violence against Jewish students, no place for islamophobia, no place for racism in America.

President Biden indirectly said, “We will allow the police and counter-demonstrators to forcibly remove those against the genocide and return the campuses to the control of the genocide perpetrators and those assisting in the genocide.” By changing the nature of the campus protests from being against genocide to harboring racism, the US president disregarded the genocide and urged bringing contemporary genocidal maniacs and contemporary genocide victims together to do away with the racism that has caused the genocide. Biden should read the New York Times observations of the violence at UCLA, which shows all violence committed by counter-protestors while the police stand by and permit the violence. His attitude and the speed with which police have attempted to squash the campus protests has a comparison — student protest at Tiananmen Square.

Tiananmen Square
On April 22, 1989, the day of former CCP general secretary Hu Yaobang’s funeral, tens of thousands of students gathered in Tiananmen Square to mourn his death. From this assembly merged a petition for a meeting between student representatives and government officials to discuss government corruption and more freedom of assembly and speech for the masses. Three meetings were held between the demonstrators and government officials and no agreement was obtained. One of these was a nationally televised meeting between Prime Minister (PM) Li Peng and leaders of the students' movement. I recall viewing the televised broadcast and remember student leaders were confusing and contradictory in their demands and Li Peng was confused at what he was hearing.

In a gesture of conciliation, PM Li Peng and Communist Party leader, Zhao Ziyang, went to Tiananmen Square and talked with hunger strikers. According to the official New China News Agency, Communist Party leader Zhao told the students, ''You have good intentions. You want our country to become better. The problems you have raised will eventually be resolved. But things are complicated, and there must be a process to resolve these problems.'' Prime Minister Li Peng concluded that chaos in Beijing was spreading all over the country and demanded that the students refrain from further demonstrations. 

For 44 days, up to one million students and citizens, some from Taiwan, occupied the Square and its surroundings, slept in tents, littered China’s most important Plaza with refuse and rubble, prevented tourists from exploring, and detoured Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev to “an obscure back entrance into China's Great Hall of the People for what was planned as a solemn ceremony marking the first Sino-Soviet summit in three decades.” During that time, no police interfered within the Square, no protestor was arrested, and no violence occurred.

Several times, unarmed Chinese troops (PLA) tried to reach Tiananmen Square and convince the demonstrators to leave. From television reports of those days, which were before the Internet and are difficult to reestablish today, I remember unarmed Chinese soldiers in buses being attacked as they moved toward Tiananmen Square. The buses were set on fire with soldiers unable to evacuate; other unarmed soldiers were badly beaten. An infamous photo of an incinerated PLA soldier was an unpleasant image. Rather than publish the disturbing image I have given it a link. 

On June 4, 1989, with martial law in effect and no other means to dislodge the crowd from Tiananmen Square, Chinese troops entered Beijing and fought their way to the Square. The rest is history, severely distorted by Western media, which claimed thousands were killed at Tiananmen Square when no students were killed in the Square. The few hundred fatalities were civilians on the avenue leading to Tiananmen Square, shot by PLA forces who retaliated against those who attacked them and blocked their passage, and soldiers killed by anti-government citizens.

Comparison between China’s (PRC) response to the Tiananmen Square protest and US response to campus protests reveals the hypocrisy of US democratic action.

• Student protestors exercised freedom of assembly and camped out in China’s main square for 44 days. Chinese police did not interfere. US police arrived on US campuses only a few days after the protestors camped out on university grounds. Freedom of assembly is fruitless without a place to assemble. Where else can students assemble other than on their campus?  

• Top officials of the PRC met and dialogued with the students, one time at Tiananmen Square and three times in Beijing. No American government official met with any of the students. Without the voice receiving a response from those to whom the speech is directed, free speech is only a word. It is a voice in the wilderness when controlled media masks the expressions.

• Student protestors at Tiananmen faulted their government’s domestic policies; they wanted more freedoms for themselves ─ a subjective petition. Student protestors at US campuses faulted their government’s foreign policy; they wanted their government not to assist in denying the ultimate freedom to a human being, the freedom to live ─ an objective petition

• Tiananmen had other dissidents, who had grievances against the government and supported the students’ demands. Students may have disagreed on tactics but no counter-demonstrators or provocateurs appeared in the square. The Chinese respected the student demands and their right to protest. The US protests featured counter-demonstrators supporting a foreign government and eager to provoke. Elements of the US public did not respect the student demands and their right to protest. Videos show many of the counter-protesters wearing pro-Israel slogans on their clothing, playing Israel’s national anthem, and singing an Israeli song about the Israel Defense Forces’ campaign in Gaza. The media promoted a ridiculous assertion that Hamas influenced the students and did not publicize Israelis’ role in the counter-demonstrations.

• The PLA performed brutally in its objective of clearing Tiananmen Square of all inhabitants. Considering martial law had been declared and resistance to their march to the square had to be overcome, from their perspective, they had no choice. In clearing protestors from the US colleges, police were brutal and that brutality was not proportional to the wounds inflicted upon them.

Conclusion
Government and public response to the protests reveal much about the nation where the protests occur. The campus protests showed the courage of America’s new generation, the apathy of the US public, and the treachery of the US government ─ the downfall of America.

The encounter between the campus protestors and the counter-protestors at the UCLA campus tells the story. A protest against genocide can solicit questions, and maybe arguments, but no sane human being forcibly counters those who demonstrate against a genocide. Labeling the protests as anti-Semitic because a few students claim they heard harsh words or were prevented from attending class is a deceptive scheme. Observing LA Police standing aside, while counter-demonstrators representing a foreign nation, beat, intimidated, and provoked American youth, indicated the US has no leadership; it is influenced by a foreign power.

The Zionists saw the WWII massacre of Jews as their most opportune moment ─ use the genocide to convince the world that Jews were not safe without their own nation. Anytime, anyone complains about Israel’s deceptions and oppressions, bring in media stooges to publicize the WWII genocide and use the opportunity to denigrate the complaint as anti-Semitic. The next step has the ADL raise an alarm of redundant and manipulated statistics showing a rapid growth in anti-Semitism ─ Jews are in trouble and need protection. Attention to Israeli Jews’ oppression of the Palestinians is sidetracked by attention to spurious anti-Semitism.

The hundreds murdered each day by Israeli Jews are considered less significant than the one or two Jewish persons who have received rude remarks from American youth. The deaths of the Palestinians, similar to the deaths of the WWII European Jews, have been perverted and used to reinforce the belief in a Zionist mission of helping well-educated, well-positioned, and well-established Jews escape spurious anti-Semitism. This hides the truth of the Zionist mission ─ seizing all Palestinian land and resources and expelling and murdering the Palestinian community.

As soon as the campus demonstrations started, the Zionists did what they always do, turned a negative into an opportunity. The demonstrations have been shadowed by false charges of a spontaneous hatred of Jews, the same Jews who are responsible for the genocide. The Jews who deserve animosity for their participation in the genocide are now the victims of those rallying against the genocide. Growing hatred of innocent Jews is now the topic.

The campus demonstrations have stirred the world but have been prevented from accomplishing their purpose of changing US foreign policy ─ stop aiding and abetting Israel in the genocide. Just the opposite, with false charges of massive “anti-Semitism” promoted by Israel’s stooges and invading the conscience of the Western world, Israel has its green light to commit genocide of the Palestinians.  

I am against my country’s revolutionaries
Wounding a sheath of wheat

Against the child
Any child
Carrying a hand grenade

I am against my sister
Feeling the muscle of a gun
Against it all
And yet

What can a prophet do to a prophetess
When their eyes
Are mad to drink
The sight of the raiders’ hordes?

I am against boys becoming
Heroes at ten

Against the tree flowering Explosives
Against branches becoming scaffolds
Against the rose-beds turning to trenches
Against it all

And yet When fire cremates my friends My youth And country
How can I Stop a poem from becoming a gun?

Rashid Hussain                  Opposition