Statement of Patricia Campos-Medina on Student-Led Peace Protest on College Campuses
On yesterday’s International Workers Day, May 1st, 2024, I stood in solidarity with workers demanding their rights to join a union and with students across college campuses protesting the war in Gaza. The labor and the peace movements have always been connected and yesterday’s march in Princeton underscored the unity of both movements.
Student activism follows a rich American tradition of students protesting war and demanding peace. As a survivor of the brutal civil war in El Salvador, I know firsthand that it was the courage of thousands of American students who protested the Reagan Administration’s support of the oppressive military regimes in El Salvador and Central America in the 1980s and early 1990s that allowed many Central Americans and me the opportunity to survive that terrible war.
In every generation, it is young people who remind us of our moral responsibility to fight for peace and to protect children, women, and the civilian population in times of war. I salute you and all the courageous students protesting on college campuses across the United States calling for peace in the Middle East. Your voices are demanding more accountability from the government of Israel, an end to violations of human rights, and an end to the ongoing humanitarian crisis facing the people of Gaza.
From the start of my campaign for US Senate, I have called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, the return of all hostages, and the protection of civilians during times of war. I stand with Sen. Bernie Sanders as he calls for accountability from the Government of Israel and against the Netanyahu regime’s war policies that are creating an unsustainable humanitarian crisis in Gaza and will lead to even more suffering and a long war in the Middle East.
America’s most sacred tenet of our Democracy is freedom of speech. Nowhere is that sacred promise more vital than protesting war.
As a union member of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP-AFT), I stand in clear defense of academic freedom and maintaining college campuses as places of learning, respectful exchange of ideas, and safety for all students.
I also stand in opposition to all forms of Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, Asian Hate, and racist attacks of any kind against any students who exercise the right to protest. Hate cannot bring peace.
Attacks on the academic freedom of faculty who support students in their exchange of ideas, as well as right-wing demands from the US Congress that college administrators squash protest are anathema to freedom of speech. We must reject it.
I am proud of my life of activism beginning with my participation in the Day Hall Takeover at Cornell University in 1993, the anti-Iraq war protest of 2003, and the many actions and protests in support of labor and immigrant workers’ rights.
As a candidate for US Senate, and as a public servant, I will always protect our right to freedom of speech and protest as it makes our Democracy stronger when we are able to disagree and find solutions that uphold peace and our humanity.
Editor’s Note: Campos-Medina is a candidate for the United States Senate in the June 4th Democratic Primary.
Pure garbage.
Prior to October 7, there were roughly two million Arab citizens of Israel but no Jewish citizens in Gaza. Gazans in 2006 voted in Hamas to rule them. It summarily executed its Palestinian Authority rivals. Hamas canceled all future scheduled elections. It established a dictatorship and diverted hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid to build a vast underground labyrinth of military installations.
Hamas began the war by deliberately targeting civilians. It massacred them on October 7 when it invaded Israel during a time of peace and holidays. It sent more than 7,000 rockets into Israeli cities for the sole purpose of killing noncombatants. It has no vocabulary for the collateral damage of Israeli civilians, since it believes any Jewish death under any circumstances is cause for celebration.
Hamas places its terrorist centers beneath and inside hospitals, schools, and mosques. Why? Israel is assumed to have more reservations about collaterally hitting Gaza civilians than Hamas does exposing them as human shields.
We are told Israel wrongly uses disproportionate force to retaliate in Gaza. But it does so because no nation can win a war without disproportionate violence that hurts the enemy more than it is hurt by the enemy.
The U.S. incinerated German and Japanese cities with disproportionate force to end a war both Axis powers started. The American military in Iraq nearly leveled Fallujah and Mosul by disproportional force to root out Islamic gunmen hiding among innocents. Hamas has objections to disproportionate violence — but only when it is achieved by Israel and not Hamas.
Prior to October 7, there was a de facto three-state solution, given that Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza were all separate states ruled by their own governments, two of which were illegitimate without scheduled elections.
It was not Israel, but the people of Gaza and the West Bank who institutionalized the “from river to the sea” agenda of destroying its neighbor.
Israel would have been content to live next to an autonomous Arab Gaza and West Bank that did not seek to destroy Israel in their multigenerational efforts to form their own “one-state solution.”
The so-called international community is demanding Israel agree to a “ceasefire.” But there was already a ceasefire prior to October 7. Hamas broke it by massacring 1,200 Jews and taking over 250 hostages.
Hamas violated that peace because it thought it could gain leverage over Israel by murdering Jews.
Hamas now demands another ceasefire because it thinks it is no longer able to murder more unarmed Jews. Instead, it now fears that Israel will destroy Hamas in the way Hamas sought but failed to destroy Israel.
Did Hamas call for a cease-fire after the first 500 Jews it massacred on October 7.
President Joe Biden believes that the Muslim religious holiday of Ramadan requires Israel to agree to a ceasefire
But did either Hamas or any other Arab military ever respect Jewish religious holidays?
The October 7 massacre was timed to catch Israelis unaware while celebrating the Jewish religious holidays of Simchat Torah, Shemini Torah, and Shemini Atzeret on Shabbat.
Moreover, Hamas’s surprise attack was deliberately timed to commemorate the earlier sneak Arab attack on Israel some 50 years earlier.
On October 6, 1973, the Israelis were the target of a surprise attack when celebrating the religious holiday of Yom Kippur. Arab armies also assumed they would achieve greater surprise when attacking during their own religious holiday of Ramadan.
So, Arab militaries fight opportunistically both during Jewish and their own Islamic holidays. Egyptians and Syrians still boast of their 1973 surprise attack on Israel as the “Ramadan War.”
Only Westerners, not Arabs, believe there should be no war during Ramadan.
Israel risks the lives of its soldiers to prevent civilian deaths. Hamas risks the lives of its civilians to prevent terrorists’ deaths. Israel considers it a failure, and Hamas considers it globally advantageous when more civilians die than its soldiers.
The Biden administration threatens to cut off or slow-walk aid to Israel if it continues to retaliate against Hamas even though they started the war. So the administration promises to give more aid to Gaza after the October 7 Hamas massacres than it gave to Gaza before Hamas’s attack.
The international community that favors Hamas knows it would be safer to be a prisoner of Israel than of Hamas. It knows women are not going to be raped in custody by Israelis. And the unarmed are more likely to be mutilated and decapitated by Hamas than Israelis.
Is the international community more likely to charge Israel than Hamas for war crimes because the Jewish state seeks to avoid civilian deaths that Hamas finds useful?
As for the protests, expell the students. Any here on student visas should be deported. No more aid to any college or university, no refugee status for palestinians.
Simply put, let the protestors call for the citizens of Gaza to give up all of the Hamas terrorists. Then there can be real discussions about a ceasefire.