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 Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesJoe Biden is in the process of alienating his allies for the sake of adversaries he can neither win over, nor appease. This, as they say, is a rookie mistake.
I'm speaking, of course, about Biden's threat that the U.S. will not supply weapons for Israel to invade Rafah, a city that the Associated Press describes as "the last major Hamas stronghold in Gaza."
In so doing, Biden is being less than a loyal friend to Israel, an ally who rightly views Hamas as an existential threat. But he's also alienating his political allies right here in America. And while we can debate the ethics of urban warfare in Gaza, what seems less debatable is the notion that this is a shrewd political move. Indeed, it strikes me as quite stupid.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
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Larry Hamm is chair of the People's Organization for Progress and a Princeton alumnus who took part in protests at the school in the 1970s to call for divestment from apartheid South Africa. He visited the Princeton student encampment earlier this week and says he is "really proud of the students" for their protest against the war in Gaza. Hamm, who is running in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate from New Jersey, is promoting a vote for "uncommitted" in the state's presidential primary vote. "I'm totally opposed to the Biden administration's approach to this genocidal war in Gaza. There must be an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and the United States should cease any military aid to Israel."
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??The first faculty-led Gaza solidarity encampment in the United States was launched Wednesday at The New School in New York City, where nearly two dozen professors and lecturers pitched tents inside the lobby of the university's main building on Fifth Avenue. The encampment is named after the Palestinian writer, poet and professor Refaat Alareer, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in December. The faculty protest began after the police raided a student encampment at The New School and arrested more than 40 students following a request by the university administration to clear the encampment. On Thursday, 12 more people were arrested outside The New School as the faculty encampment continued inside. Democracy Now! was on the scene and spoke with protesting faculty who denounced the school's ties to Israel and the militarized police response against student protesters. "For the state violence that our students were subjected to and traumatized because of, we could not stand on the sidelines any longer," part-time lecturer Suneil Sanzgiri said. "What we're doing here is calling for all faculty across the country to step up, to risk more and to escalate, because we have to get all war profiteers out of our universities."
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Police have now arrested more than 2,500 students at pro-Palestine protests across the U.S., yet students continue to call for an end to the war on Gaza and universities' investment in companies that support Israel's occupation of Palestine. We speak to three student organizers from around the country: Salma Hamamy of the University of Michigan, president of the school's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, about the commencement ceremony protest she helped organize, and Cady de la Cruz of the University of Virginia and Rae Ferrara of the State University of New York at New Paltz about police crackdowns on their schools' encampments. De la Cruz was arrested in the UVA raid and banned from campus without an opportunity to collect any of her belongings. She says repression has strengthened the resolve of many protesters, who are willing to risk their academic futures to push for divestment. "All of us there felt like we have more time on our hands … than the people of Gaza," she explains, "We would hold it down for anything."
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