Nearly seven months after the war between Israel and Hamas began, the demonstrations roiling university campuses nationwide are exposing new tensions within the Democratic Party over how to balance protections for freedom of expression and support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip can be brought into line with the concerns that some Jewish Americans express about anti-Semitism. .
From New York and Los Angeles to Atlanta and Austin, Texas, a wave of student activism has manifested itself in protest camps and other demonstrations, prompting significant police action and sometimes appearing to attract outside agitators. The protests have also emerged as the latest flashpoint in the internal democratic debate over the war.
As campus unrest plays out nationwide in the final days of the school year, the moment also brings political risks for a party that has used promises of stability and normalcy to win crucial recent elections and is facing a challenging struggle for control of the government. in the fall.
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“The real question is: Can Democrats re-portray themselves as the steady hand at the helm?” said Dan Sena, a veteran Democratic strategist. “Things that create national chaos like this make that more difficult.”
Sena and other Democrats have argued that Americans have good reason to associate their opponents with chaos: Former President Donald Trump faces multiple criminal charges; the narrow, divided Republican majority in the House of Representatives has its own divisions over Israel and freedom of speech; some Republicans have pushed for National Guard deployments on college campuses; and for years, Republicans have faced criticism over anti-Semitism within their own ranks.
But since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 and the Israeli military response that local authorities say killed more than 30,000 people, the battle over US policy toward Israel has been particularly pronounced on the left.
Most Democrats say they both support free speech and condemn anti-Semitism, and view criticism of the Israeli government as fair game. But in trying to address an intractable conflict marked by competing historical narratives, debates over how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and anti-Semitic speech are fraught and reaching a fever pitch on campus.
According to some lawmakers who have visited camps and attended demonstrations, the students are part of a long tradition of campus activism and their rights to freedom of expression are at risk. They say incidents of anti-Semitism do not reflect a broader movement to which many young progressive Jews belong.
Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, went to the University of Texas to show solidarity with the protesters, linking their activism to that of students opposing the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.
“So often it happens that history justifies those who ask for peace early,” he said. “I think more and more members of Congress will show up at these events and hear more and more about where the students are coming from.”
Asked about instances in which protesters across the country have used anti-Semitic language, Casar said: “Those people are worthless.”
“They are not part of the peace movement,” he said. “Anyone who is motivated by hatred – whether it is racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, hatred in any form – is not peaceful.”
But for other Democrats, cases of harassment and intimidation described by some Jewish students are a defining feature of the campus movement.
Nowhere have these tensions been more apparent than at Columbia University in New York, which has become both an epicenter of the protest movement and a flashpoint for its opponents.
Democrats, including President Joe Biden, House and Senate leaders and prominent Senate candidates such as Reps. Adam Schiff in California and Ruben Gallego in Arizona, have condemned anti-Semitic harassment around Columbia.
Other Democrats have tried to personally show solidarity with Jewish students who have said they feel unsafe. Rep. Jared MoscowwitzD-Fla., recently visited campus with several other Jewish lawmakers.
Some in his party, he said, downplayed the harsh nature of some of the demonstrations.
“There are people who are peaceful, but they are not,” he said. “But there is a denial from my friends on the left,” a view that “everyone is peaceful, there is no anti-Semitism.”
He declined to name names, but he and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have sparred on social media. Ocasio-Cortez, one of the progressive lawmakers who visited the Columbia encampment, also condemned “heinous people wandering off Columbia’s campus and espousing “virulent anti-Semitism.”
But in general, Moskowitz argued, some on the left who rightly criticized the anti-Semitic chants of “white, Aryan-looking men with tiki torches” who gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 seemed reluctant to denounce threatening statements couples like these came from liberal-oriented Americans.
“I don’t see the same level of outrage,” Moskowitz said. “It is politically difficult now.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., a long-serving Jewish member of Congress, has also raised concerns about anti-Semitism. But he said his party has been consistent in denouncing bigotry, unlike many Republicans, pointing to Charlottesville. (Moskowitz shared that view of Republicans.)
“Democrats are willing to denounce anti-Semitism wherever it is, and there has certainly been some anti-Semitism on campuses,” Nadler said, although he questioned how representative the demonstrations were of the student population.
Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for Biden’s campaign, said that “while Donald Trump proudly stood with white supremacists and encouraged violent action against peaceful protesters,” Biden is defending the First Amendment and has “strengthened protections against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”
In Georgia, where protesters at Emory University were violently suppressed, state Rep. Ruwa Romman said “there is no room for anti-Semitism in this movement.”
But she cautioned against focusing on a “few agitators” over the “thousands of students who are welcoming, who believe in a multiracial, multicultural, multireligious world.”
“When we lose young people, we don’t just lose at the ballot box,” said Romman, a Palestinian Democrat. “We are losing them in the entire election apparatus.”
In the meantime, some Republicans are trying to portray the entire Democratic Party as extreme and overly attuned to the concerns of Ivy League protesters.
Democrats “demonstrate that they are listening to a very small, very radical, very online segment of their base that is not representative of the broader electorate,” said Jack Pandol, a spokesman for the House Republican campaign arm, which sells T-shirts. shirts referencing blasphemy against Hamas.
Former Rep. Steve Israel, who headed the House campaign arm, said that while Republicans might see an opportunity for messaging, it was far too early to determine whether it would be robust in November.
“Campuses are generally empty in the summer, the energy around this issue may dissipate and the question will be whether it returns in the fall,” he said. “The answer to that is not here. It is in the Middle East.”
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