The campus protests over the Israel-Gaza war and similar demonstrations throughout the United States are ongoing, with questions about free speech, law enforcement overreach, anti-semitism, and individual university responses dominating the headlines.
While there have been some pro-Israel “counter-protesters,” the overwhelming energy right now is in sympathy for the Palestinians and the thousands of innocent civilians whose lives were lost due to Israel bombardments and tank fire, not to mention the second hand effects of the siege and lack of healthcare. They demand that the U.S. government stop fueling the war with American weapons, and for a ceasefire to end the suffering.
But at this point has the media — and therefore the American public — been more focused on the protests rather than the life and death issues the demonstrators ostensibly want raised? This seems particularly apparent given that most of the coverage tends to treat the civilians’ plight and apparent Israeli atrocities — what students are actually protesting — as a kind of side point, if those topics are mentioned at all.
In the midst of the protests last week, the United Nations revealed, “Disturbing reports continue to emerge about mass graves in Gaza in which Palestinian victims were reportedly found stripped naked with their hands tied, prompting renewed concerns about possible war crimes amid ongoing Israeli airstrikes, the UN human rights office, OHCHR, said on Tuesday.”
The story continued: “The development follows the recovery of hundreds of bodies ‘buried deep in the ground and covered with waste’ over the weekend at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, central Gaza, and at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the north. A total of 283 bodies were recovered at Nasser Hospital, of which 42 were identified.”
Then the gruesome description from the U.N.: “Among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands…tied and stripped of their clothes.”
This news of the mass graves is known to some. Most major news outlets carried it, but below the proverbial fold. It was not a major topic of discussion, on cable news panels or at the top of any headlines in the United States. Meanwhile, children continued to be killed by airstrikes throughout Gaza, and in a grim turn of events, a premature infant who had been taken alive from the womb of her dead mother after a bombing died in the incubator last week.
Ironically, a major media focus on stories like these in the first months of the war since Oct. 7 led in part to the protest movements, which have exploded in recent days on college campuses. So how does this bode for American public opinion today, when most of the news coverage is about campus protests and not on the ongoing airstrikes, the lack of food, clean water, healthcare or the pending Rafah invasion? The conditions on the ground have not changed, but media interest has, apparently.
After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently announced that he intended to push his country’s forces into the westernmost provision of Rafah, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) asked the Biden administration on Tuesday about the potential for civilian casualties. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin responded that Israel’s offensive has claimed “far too many civilian deaths already.”
“We certainly would want to see things done in a much different way” than operations across the rest of Gaza, Austin said.
How many Americans saw this exchange in their social media feeds, as opposed to the saturation of protest footage and accompanying vitriol between both sides over the students’ rights – or not – to be overtaking buildings, constructing tent cities, shutting down classes, and more?
The media should have the ability to cover more than one story at a time, but so often, they refuse to. So, somewhat ironically, the protests have even been a distraction from the actual war in the Middle East. ABC News even acknowledged it, reporting Wednesday, “After weeks of nonstop coverage of destruction and death in the Gaza Strip, media across the wider Middle East have latched onto the demonstrations roiling American university campuses over the Israel-Hamas war.”
It is much easier for the protests to overshadow the actual misery in Gaza and that is clearly what is happening. While many protesters’ intentions might be noble, is there a better distraction right now for Israel to do as it pleases?
This is not an argument for or against the protests. Just an observation that probably deserves at least a minimum moment of thought by anyone genuinely concerned about the current plight of the Palestinians.
![Following a largely preordained election, Vladimir Putin was sworn in last week for another six-year term as president of Russia. Putin’s victory has, of course, been met with accusations of fraud and political interference, factors that help explain his 87.3% vote share. If this continuation of Putin’s 24-year-long hold on power makes one thing clear, it’s that he and his regime will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. But, as his war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight, what is less clear is how Washington plans to deal with this reality. Experts say Washington needs to start projecting a long-term strategy toward Russia and its war in Ukraine, wielding its political leverage to apply pressure on Putin and push for more diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict. Only by looking beyond short-term solutions can Washington realistically move the needle in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. has focused on getting aid to Ukraine to help it win back all of its pre-2014 territory, a goal complicated by Kyiv’s systemic shortages of munitions and manpower. But that response neglects a more strategic approach to the war, according to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spoke in a recent panel hosted by Carnegie. “There is a vortex of emergency planning that people have been, unfortunately, sucked into for the better part of two years since the intelligence first arrived in the fall of 2021,” Weiss said. “And so the urgent crowds out the strategic.” Historian Stephen Kotkin, for his part, says preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty is critical. However, the apparent focus on regaining territory, pushed by the U.S., is misguided. “Wars are never about regaining territory. It's about the capacity to fight and the will to fight. And if Russia has the capacity to fight and Ukraine takes back territory, Russia won't stop fighting,” Kotkin said in a podcast on the Wall Street Journal. And it appears Russia does have the capacity. The number of troops and weapons at Russia’s disposal far exceeds Ukraine’s, and Russian leaders spend twice as much on defense as their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine will need a continuous supply of aid from the West to continue to match up to Russia. And while aid to Ukraine is important, Kotkin says, so is a clear plan for determining the preferred outcome of the war. The U.S. may be better served by using the significant political leverage it has over Russia to shape a long-term outcome in its favor. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft, says that Russia’s primary concerns and interests do not end with Ukraine. Moscow is fundamentally concerned about the NATO alliance and the threat it may pose to Russian internal stability. Negotiations and dialogue about the bounds and limits of NATO and Russia’s powers, therefore, are critical to the broader conflict. This is a process that is not possible without the U.S. and Europe. “That means by definition, we have some leverage,” Beebe says. To this point, Kotkin says the strength of the U.S. and its allies lies in their political influence — where they are much more powerful than Russia — rather than on the battlefield. Leveraging this influence will be a necessary tool in reaching an agreement that is favorable to the West’s interests, “one that protects the United States, protects its allies in Europe, that preserves an independent Ukraine, but also respects Russia's core security interests there.” In Kotkin’s view, this would mean pushing for an armistice that ends the fighting on the ground and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, meaning not legally acknowledging Russia’s possession of the territory they have taken during the war. Then, negotiations can proceed. Beebe adds that a treaty on how conventional forces can be used in Europe will be important, one that establishes limits on where and how militaries can be deployed. “[Russia] need[s] some understanding with the West about what we're all going to agree to rule out in terms of interference in the other's domestic affairs,” Beebe said. Critical to these objectives is dialogue with Putin, which Beebe says Washington has not done enough to facilitate. U.S. officials have stated publicly that they do not plan to meet with Putin. The U.S. rejected Putin’s most statements of his willingness to negotiate, which he expressed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, citing skepticism that Putin has any genuine intentions of ending the war. “Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said in response. But neither side has been open to serious communication. Biden and Putin haven’t met to engage in meaningful talks about the war since it began, their last meeting taking place before the war began in the summer of 2021 in Geneva. Weiss says the U.S. should make it clear that those lines of communication are open. “Any strategy that involves diplomatic outreach also has to be sort of undergirded by serious resolve and a sense that we're not we're not going anywhere,” Weiss said. An end to the war will be critical to long-term global stability. Russia will remain a significant player on the world stage, Beebe explains, considering it is the world’s largest nuclear power and a leading energy producer. It is therefore ultimately in the U.S. and Europe’s interests to reach a relationship “that combines competitive and cooperative elements, and where we find a way to manage our differences and make sure that they don't spiral into very dangerous military confrontation,” he says. As two major global superpowers, the U.S. and Russia need to find a way to share the world. Only genuine, long-term planning can ensure that Washington will be able to shape that future in its best interests.](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media-library/following-a-largely-preordained-election-vladimir-putin-was-sworn-in-last-week-for-another-six-year-term-as-president-of-russia.jpg?id=34283894&width=1245&height=700&quality=90&coordinates=0%2C77%2C0%2C77)
