Thousands of students at many of the nation’s most noted universities are demonstrating, as I write, against the Israeli government’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
In many ways it’s a painful case of deja vu all over again, as the great American philosopher Yogi Berra said, of the campus demonstrations of the 1960s and ‘70s opposing the U.S. war in Vietnam, including then and now the condescending assertion by authorities blaming the unrest on “outside agitators.”
There are differences, of course. But the followers of Ho Chi Minh were leading a revolt against a century of France’s colonial occupation of their country, as Hamas has led a rebellion of Israel’s half-century occupation of portions of the former state of Palestine.