Samir Atallah
Lebanese author and journalist, who worked for the Annahar newspaper, the Al Osbo' il Arabi and Lebanon’s Al-Sayad’s magazines and Kuwait’s Al-Anba newspaper.
TT

American Academia

Joe Biden had to make an appearance in order to justify what is prohibited by international norms: the storming of a university campus.

This was not about a public demonstration in London or Paris. The university was in America. These institutions took the United States to the forefront of nations.

There are many universities in China, Russia, and India, but none are Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and MIT. Not in Germany, not in France.

This institution is mostly the face of America, and the other face of Israel. When the world was promoting Henry Kissinger, he was praised as a professor at Harvard. When John Kennedy presented his values to the Americans, he boasted about being a Harvard graduate.

The fact that American academia protested against Israel instead of supporting it is a terrifying historical event for both sides. Israel cannot bear to see such a transformation in the country that acts as the primary guarantee of its existence. What begins in American universities may expand to European ones, which happened in the famous 1968 revolution. What students initiate is usually followed by professors, not the other way around.

Everyone owes all this amazing change in US society to an American man from Brooklyn, called Netanyahu. The Arabs spent millions of dollars to convince the Americans that the victims were the Palestinians, but they did not gain a greater supporter than George Galloway.

Netanyahu turned the world in favor of Palestine. He unleashed all brutalities in Gaza and has yet to stop. He bombed it with the equivalent of a number of atomic bombs and did not stop. He threw its people towards death, hunger, desolation, destruction and tragedy, and still summons reserve troops.

American academia was late in taking a courageous moral stance against the imitators of Nazi barbarism and genocidal lusts, and if it must be held accountable for something, it is for its failure to stop the murderous gang and the extermination government in the Israeli war cabinet.

Thirty-seven boys and girls lose their mothers in Gaza every day. 1.7 million people are threatened by famine. The good Guterres incessantly warns every day that Netanyahu’s massacres will reach an extent that humanity has never seen before, even at the peak of Nazi brutality.

Official international bodies. Academic institutions around the world. Respected and free press institutions. Independent countries. Relevant global organizations such as the World Health Organization, and finally the International Criminal Court; They all stand against the intensifying Israeli oppression in Gaza.

Mr. Biden will not be able to control universities in America, nor is Mr. Trump capable of convincing anyone that all of this is a Hamas issue. Both of them, the president and the candidate, are now facing the masses. We don’t know how long the people will be able to endure this scene.