The New York Times and the Washington Post recalled the memory of the student protests against the Vietnam War in 1968, in light of the current protests in American universities against the Gaza War, especially with the police being called to disperse the sit-ins in both cases.

Although the two newspapers focused on recounting the events of 1968, the similarity of circumstances led them to compare two generations angry at the war in similar political circumstances, prior to the Democratic National Convention, and in the face of important elections for the Democratic candidate, current President Joe Biden.

If the Washington Post was content with referring to the protests at Columbia University in New York today as a response to the protests of 1968, the New York Times went further in comparing the moment.

A generation ready to protest

The New York Times saw - in a column by writer Charles M. Blue - There are two generations of young people at both times ready to protest, the first of which was matured by the civil rights movement and national mourning after the assassination of President John Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the second grew up with protest movements, such as “Occupy Wall Street” and “Life Blacks Matter,” Parkland, Florida, and Student Gun Control Campaign.

The generation of 1968 was drawn into a movement that began on college campuses and grew, with a moral conviction as the basis for its anger over the Vietnam War, the first televised war in which Americans were able to see its horrors in almost real time, and for which over the course of two years a million Americans were recruited.

As for the current generation - according to Charles M. Blue - He follows the Israeli war on Gaza on social media, and many of them are horrified by what they see, and anti-war protests begin to spread from university campuses.

In this context, more than a thousand black pastors called on President Biden to press for a ceasefire in Gaza, and Martin Luther King Jr. had announced his opposition to the war in Vietnam, saying that he was “forced to see the war as an enemy of the poor and attack it in some way.”

The newspaper pointed out that, as happened in 1968, classes will end and students will return home for the summer, but their opposition will not end as it did not end at that time, as anti-war groups plan to organize large protests during the Democratic National Convention.

Hatem Abudayyeh, of the Palestinian American Community Network, said, “We will organize a march with or without permits, and this protest will be the most important since 1968 in Chicago, when demonstrators against the Vietnam War and the Black Liberation Movement organized mass demonstrations that were violently suppressed.”

The writer pointed out that there is great support for the students’ cause, as an opinion poll found that young Americans support a new policy, and that 5 out of 6 of them support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and another poll conducted by Quinnipiac University found that 53% of Democrats oppose sending more Of military aid to Israel.

Reckless gamble

However, there seems to be a feeling among the Biden campaign - according to the writer - that it can simply wait for the demonstrators to leave, and that feelings will eventually fade and that Democratic voters will line up when Election Day approaches and the choice between Biden and Republican candidate Donald Trump becomes clearer.

It is not easy for them to ignore the body of a dead child in his mother's arms. It is not easy to ignore hungry people scrambling for cover when they come under fire. It is not easy to clear the rubble after a convoy of food aid trucks came under fire and many aid workers were killed.

But this is a reckless gamble, according to the New York Times, because the protesters and many voters are dissatisfied with something more than just an ordinary foreign policy issue.

Many of them believe that they are watching genocide, aided and abetted by an American president whom they supported, and thus they feel that they are personally involved in a conflict in which killing is increasing with no end in sight. This is a moral issue for them, and their position will not change easily.

It is not easy for them to ignore the body of a dead child in his mother's arms. It is not easy to ignore the hungry people scrambling for cover when they come under fire. It is not easy to remove the rubble after a convoy of food aid trucks came under fire and many aid workers were killed.

People watched all these things on their TVs and phones.

The writer stated that the number of dead and wounded far exceeded 100,000. These are large numbers accompanied by an unacceptable level of suffering, and the youth will clarify this point this summer in Chicago, according to him.

Source: New York Times + Washington Post