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“The dress does not make the monk.” This French idiom, which implies that appearances can be deceiving, certainly applies to the field of political maneuvering, and it is equally pertinent when dealing with mass manipulation. As such, political stances howled amidst the media frenzy often serve as a dense smoke cloud, inadequately veiling the true intentions of those who are orchestrating behind the scenes to serve their political agendas, which are totally unrelated to public demonstrations.
This distortion of realities in the field has come to light during recent student protest movements, which have unfolded on several prestigious American campuses in recent weeks. Dozens of angry students have indeed flooded the campuses of Columbia in New York, as well as Yale, Harvard, and Princeton, among others. This unrest even briefly touched Sciences Po in Paris. At first glance, the catalyst for this upheaval seems to be the deadly escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
The fact that students rise up and raise their voices to condemn the massacres endured by the population of Gaza is, in principle, a commendable initiative. Nevertheless, the slogans voiced and the positions taken here and there illustrate the extent to which the protesters are unaware of the realities on the ground and display total ignorance. They vilify the Netanyahu administration while simultaneously endorsing Hamas, which they perceive as a “resistance movement.” In doing so, they overlook — or feign to overlook — that Netanyahu has aided and bolstered Hamas to weaken the Palestinian Authority and undermine the Palestinian state project. Furthermore, they disregard — or pretend to disregard — that it is through the collusion and cooperation of those they condemn, namely Netanyahu and his circle, that Hamas has received substantial funding, with hundreds of millions of dollars regularly transferred by Qatar via Israel.
The agitators who present themselves as bearers of the Palestinian cause adopt the slogan “Free Palestine” while consistently glorifying Hamas. However, they conveniently forget — or feign forgetfulness — that Hamas waged a deadly war in Gaza against Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in the early 2000s, resulting in the massacre of about 800 officials, leaders, and Fatah militants, some of whom were brutally executed. This conflict led to the eviction of the Palestinian Authority from Gaza, and consequently, the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization), which was weakened despite its prior establishment as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people under the leadership of Yasser Arafat while enjoying recognition from the international community.
The protesting students who have occupied American campuses likely do not know — or pretend not to know — that Hamas, with the Israeli right wing as its tacit ally, undermined the Oslo Peace Accords in 1994 and 1995, negotiated by Yasser Arafat’s PLO with Israel, precisely aiming to establish a free Palestine, a cause they claim to fervently defend. These self-proclaimed insurgents also seem unwilling to recognize that Hamas went beyond merely sabotaging the PLO’s efforts towards a “free Palestine,” but concurrently served as a tool for the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose strategy cunningly exploits the Palestinian cause to assert dominance in the region.
Do these zealous agitators not realize that by adopting a blatantly anti-Semitic posture, they are only provoking an international outpouring of solidarity for Israel, thereby inadvertently bolstering the Israeli right?
Such inconsistencies and ignorance have characterized the sudden surge of protests, following a uniform scenario across multiple universities (despite the ongoing Gaza conflict for over six months), revealing a manipulation orchestrated by powerful clandestine actors. Such manipulation is far from serving the legitimate interests of the Palestinian people.
The students who stormed multiple campuses in the United States have displayed inconsistencies and ignorance in their positions, revealing a larger manipulation of realities on the ground.
Inconsistencies in positions and ignorance of key realities have defined the campus protests in the US.
