We may have been too quick to formulate such judgement
“We always let them know first, and this was no exception,” says Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter regarding the 56 arrests made for those guilty of Trespassing on Indiana University property for failing to follow rules of encampment.
Last Thursday, hundreds of people, a mix of IU students, local residents, and several out-of-town activists arrived at Dunn-Meadow, a field on Indiana University’s Bloomington Campus which has a rich history of being the gathering spot for protests. From Vietnam to Iraq, US military involvement has been the topic for several gatherings at this location for decades.
Carter stated that the Police spoke with University Authorities in advance of Thursday’s scheduled protests, to put in place a plan on how to address the situation and to become “prepared for the unknown.”
Carter said that public schools are no different than private property, and that once the property owner has deemed someone to be trespassing, the Police must enforce it.
“There’s a lot that we can do, but not a lot that we should do,” Carter added.
The University Authorities provided plenty of warning to those that had set up structures in violation of IU policy. They offered time for those in violation to take down the structures and allow everyone to carry on with their protest, but once they refused, the State Police were called in.
If one removes the emotion of viewing pictures of swat teams in riot gear on the school campus in their hometown, and those positioned around the perimeter, stationed on top of buildings scoping down on the action; perhaps, they might see some of the rationale of steps which were taken.
The escalation was quick to travel downhill, and quite the public relations nightmare, but the President of a State University working to not allow the nightmare which has been occurring across the nation to overwhelm Bloomington, does not seem unreasonable.
There are many throughout the town calling for the resignation of IU President Whitten for allegedly violating the free-speech rights of protestors. But, was enforcing rules, regardless of their inception, a violation of rights, or simply the means to establish rule and order on campus? As other colleges throughout the country have experienced students overthrowing common space and threatening students of Jewish heritage, it seems as if the IU Administration had intended to employ safety measures to avoid a campus takeover.
Many have taken to social media outlets describing these college outbreaks as “peaceful protests.” But how peaceful is a mob of people chanting threats toward the Jewish?
In Dunn Meadow, I personally heard the chanting of hateful speech.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” the battle cry coined by the terrorist organization Fatah in the 1970s. Fatah, along with PFLP made up the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) beginning in 1966, until it was rebranded as Hamas in the early 2000’s.
Hamas, during a Military Coup in 2004, then took over the Palestinian Authority as the ruling government of the Arab people collectively known as Palestinians over the last 50 years. But they have governed through a fearful dictatorship, keeping humanitarian aid and funding that was intended for the poverty-stricken nomadic people of Gaza, and used it to further arm themselves to accomplish their mission of destroying the Jewish people.
The phrase is not benign, and has one definition . . . the calling for the extermination and genocide of every Jewish person.
Additionally, on IU’s Bloomington Campus, one self-described “co-organizer” of the Dunn-Meadow event on Thursday stated, “The Jews are responsible for this, and will get what is coming to them.”
Not the sounds one expects to hear from a “peaceful” group!
Protesting, and our right to assemble are imperative aspects to our freedom and way of life, but calling for the death and destruction of others, and those fellow students on campus, is crossing a dangerous line.
And then, there is the battling of police . . . while photos from local journalists are angled to demonstrate college students and professors being tossed around and hit with clubs, the vantage I witnessed was that of large groups of angry protesters linking arms and stepping into the faces of law enforcement, aggressively prohibiting them from doing what they were there to do, which was to remove the tents which were not allowed.
Recognizing that there is a humanitarian crisis in the Middle East is being a decent person. Voicing a sentiment of peace is wonderful. Marching to promote unity for the innocent is honorable.
But this is a very polarized movement which is producing more hate than peace, right here in our backyard.
Meanwhile, it is day 205 since Hamas stole hundreds of innocent people during their brutal attack, and 134 are still being kept hostage. 7 of these are American citizens.
The captors remain in bunkers underneath schools and hospitals, using the people they are charged with leading as human shields, hoping for a continued international crisis to play into their motives.