UCLA Students Protesting Israel’s Actions in Gaza

What with all the campus protests of Israel’s attacks on the Palestinians of Gaza, I am reminded of Hamlet watching the murderous King Claudius tear up at ancient Greek tragedy:

What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing—no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me “villain”? Breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i’ th’ throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?

I am somewhat amused by all the campus protests. It’s not at all like the anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s, because American college students, for the most part, have nothing to gain or lose by doing so. In all likelihood, they will not be drafted and shipped off to Rafah to confront the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza.

No doubt, Bibi Netanyahu is a villain, as are the West Bank settlers depriving the Palestinians of their land. But then, there’s plenty of villainy to spread around, when one considers the horrors of Hamas’s October 7 attack on innocent Israeli citizens.

Have there been any campus protests on behalf of the Rohingya? the Chechens? the Ukrainians? Granted, the United States supplies Israel with arms, but we are not participating in or even encouraging what looks like genocide to me. It does not look to me as if the protesting students had any skin in the game.

Perhaps the protests erupted because it’s spring, and “dull and muddy-mettled rascals” like to kick up a row from time to time.