Ali: Mocking Gaza protesters as ‘gluten-free warriors’ was enjoyable — right up until a mob at UCLA attacked them

Invoice Maher on his HBO speak display this week explained that pro-Palestinian scholar protests on higher education campuses are what occurs when “activism merges with narcissism.”

The Atlantic columnist David Frum referred to protesters like the UCLA pupils who were being violently attacked Wednesday by a mob of counterprotesters as “banana-allergy revolutionaries.”

For the duration of Tuesday night’s tactical police reaction to Columbia College students’ having about a creating on campus, writer Judith Miller tweeted: “Hey Columbia protesters! If you are so very pleased of what you’re performing, why are you covering your faces?”

Mocking university student protesters has become a entertaining and uncomplicated pastime since they started marching and camping out in opposition to Israel’s ongoing armed service incursions in Gaza next the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in Israel. All critics and jeering old people require is a system (cable Tv set, Instagram, a tattered soap box) to discredit the movement as the performative act of feckless snowflakes and spoiled little ones.

The protective gear of the “gluten-absolutely free warriors” is a variety of costume-up. Their security measures — encampment barricades and self-manned health-related tents — are viewed as ploys for consideration. They’re identified as cowards for masking their faces with masks and goggles.

But these actions weren’t just for show. UCLA’s professional-Palestinian demonstrators did will need to protect and protect on their own when a violent mob of professional-Israeli counterprotesters attacked their encampment.

Movie shot by The Instances, other media retailers and witnesses at the scene demonstrate counterdemonstrators in black apparel and white masks ripping down barricades, beating individuals with batons and poles and screaming racial epithets. Campers were dragged, kicked and pummeled by the predominantly male mob Tuesday night time and Wednesday morning though law enforcement and campus security stood by for three hrs prior to responding.

Legislation enforcement finally cleared the counterprotesters, who reportedly involved non-university student organizations. No arrests ended up manufactured.

But 24 several hours afterwards, more than 200 professional-Palestinian demonstrators were being arrested when UCLA identified as in a substantial law enforcement existence to crystal clear the pupil encampment.

“What we’ve just witnessed was the darkest working day in my 32 many years at UCLA,” David Myers, a professor of Jewish background at UCLA who is operating on initiatives to bridge discrepancies on campus, instructed The Occasions. “Why did not the police, UCPD and LAPD, clearly show up? Those in the encampment were being defenseless in the experience of a violent band of thugs. And no just one, wherever they stand politically, is safer nowadays.”

The optics, at best, discourage no cost speech on campus and motivate violent reprisal from all those who disagree with the message. Current weeks have witnessed law enforcement summoned by universities these as USC, UCLA and Columbia to quash largely peaceful university student rallies and clear encampments, although racial slurs, verbal threats and violent assaults perpetrated in opposition to antiwar protesters have not been addressed with the very same seriousness or urgency.

Fox News by natural means took the “Good vs. Evil” theme a action further when describing the protest movement as a Trojan horse for nefarious, anti-American functions.

“A whole lot of them appear to be the very same type of protester we noticed through the George Floyd protest,” anchor Trace Gallagher explained in response to the tactical reaction of the NYPD at Columbia this week. “They have modified the chants. It is a new locale and a large amount of the similar crowd that moves into these matters.”

His guest went on to say that the protesters are “targeting the American process and utilizing the Palestinian lead to to piggyback their nonsensical, glazed-in excess of beliefs in order to get started mass anarchy.”

Delegitimization is a common tactic in the discussion around who has the increased moral ground. But it shouldn’t subject: All tranquil protesters — on and off campus — have to have to be secured, irrespective of in which their contributors stand on the war.

Seeing footage of the violence at UCLA this week is chilling, and there’s certain to be a lot more risky clashes if the basic safety of protesting learners is mocked as avoidable, or schools carry on to deal with them as the menace. Their ideal to properly work out absolutely free speech has to be safeguarded.

Cynical agitators like Maher will generally leverage incendiary moments for scores and clicks. But tucking one’s opposition to the protest motion into a flippant screed in opposition to Gen Z is not just obnoxious, it is risky. It feeds a damaging narrative that their require for defense is make-consider, that they are a whining, pampered technology we need to ignore, or worse, make it possible for other individuals to goal whilst we observe from the sidelines.