Even as the Israeli military was
shooting innocent, starving people waiting for food in Gaza, Massachusetts
police were overreacting to a pro-Gaza, pro-human rights protest in Cambridge,
where Harvard University has most of its campus. Whereas the Israeli military (intentionally?)
did not engage in crowd control around a designated food-distribution
site, Cambridge and Harvard police employees overreacted and in so
doing, falsely presented the visuals of an emergency and intimidated peaceful
protesters. Both the Israeli military and a local and a private police
department in Massachusetts can thus be criticized, and the choices of all
three were to the advantage of Israel in spite of its ongoing war crime and
crime against humanity in regard to the Gaza Holocaust, and to the advantage of
the American defense contractors profiting from the U.S. Government sending
weapons to Israel.
On July 19, 2025, “Israeli
troops opened fire” on “crowds of Palestinians seeking food at a
distribution point run by an Israeli-backed US company in southern Gaza,
killing at least 32 Palestinians.”[1]
As if killing starving people on their way to an Israeli-approved food-distribution
point being managed by an American company, in “a separate incident, at least
18 more Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strikes (sic) on Gaza City .
. . near hubs operated by the Gaza Humanitarian Fund (GHF).”[2]
Of course, the “Israeli military did not immediately react to reports of the
two incidents.”[3]
Especially concerning the first, even an attempted justification that the crowd
was unruly would only beg the question of why the Israeli military had so badly
mismanaged crowd-control, as it could certainly be anticipated, given the
extent of famine in Gaza, that a crowd of starving, desperate Gazans would
manifest to get food. To fail to manage an easily anticipated crowd and then
shoot on the crowd reflects badly on the Israeli government rather than the
starving people.
On the very same day, presumably
many hours later, a “Free Palestine” small protest took place in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Whereas the Israeli military lapsed in managing a
crowd, the Cambridge police surrounded the small group of protests on both
sides. Even a city block away, Harvard’s private police employees had infiltrated
Smith Hall, which is just across a street from Harvard Yard. Even though no university
administration office was open on that Saturday in Smith Hall, which doubles as
a student hang-out space, at least eight police employees interspersed
themselves out in front, and left four or five of their cars double-parked on
the street. To say that both the local and university police overreacted,
given the small size of the protest and where it was taking place, is an
understatement. The extent of police-presence around the small group of
protesters can even be interpreted as an attempt to deny Americans their right
of political protest and free speech by visible intimidation. When Black Lives Matter
protests were going on several years earlier in Phoenix, Arizona, such
intimidation was at the extreme of police surrounding protesters with machine
guns even though the protests were all non-violent. The presumptuous “right” of
police to deter by intimidation deserves to be contested in a U.S. district
court, for the convenient (in terms of power-aggrandizement by police)
assumption that peaceful protest will turn violent and thus should be treated
as such is fallacious.
In short, there is simply too
much show of military/police force evinced in these two cases—one
in Gaza and the other in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The instinctual urge to
bully ought to be checked by local governments, and even private universities
that operate as de facto non-democratic local governments, against military and
police employees, including their respective directors. Starving people being
shot on the way to an approved food-distribution site and pro-human
rights protestors being intimidated by an excessive show of presence by police up
close and even a city-block away from the protest itself can both be taken as “red-flags.”
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. No Harvard administrator would say to that
university’s police unit that its presence was excessive in front of Smith
Hall, and no government official in Netanyahu’s government in Israel would
chastise the military for letting the crowd of starving people get out of hand,
if in fact that crowd became unruly as opposed to being “sitting ducks” for
Israeli troops hateful of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, over at Harvard, an invasion of human-rights advocates was expected . . .
With the celebration of liberty obscured by the smoke of intimidation, I left in utter disgust as the booms of the "bombs" in the sky began. As I walked away quite determined, the first few powerful thuds I could feel through my body made the show of force on the ground seem somehow more real. A celebration of raw force by means of weapanry, or liberty from autocratic intimidation? It is no wonder that the U.S. was being so helpful to Israel. My visit to Boston was eventful and enlightening. I hear that Geneva is wonderful.
2. Ibid. The grammar error aside, there were more than one strike, as the report also mentions them as “attacks.”
3. Ibid.
