I was a student during Vietnam. Today's protests aren't that different. | Opinion

At the semi-tender age of 19, I learned what the business end of a state police stick felt like, when shoved into one’s chest.

I also became acquainted with the, shall we say, acridly piquant aroma of tear gas.

Now, more than 50 years later, many of my young friends may themselves become acquainted with the modern versions of those items. Different times, different wars, many of the same type of protesters — and the same type of responses.

There are familiar echoes between the two periods of demonstrations: both tangled in the long, historic webs of dismantling empires, both expressing urgent concerns over current conflicts and crises, both with political implications beyond the cause at hand, both raising worries of disorder and chaos, both advancing optimistic ideals and wallowing in callous cynicism.

Today’s demonstrations over the Israel-Hamas War are not yet — and we hope will not ever be — as violent as many anti-Vietnam War demonstrations. There have been no bombings — as there was at the University of Wisconsin during the Vietnam period (resulting in one death) — and when U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and other Republican lawmakers called for the National Guard to shut down protests, I remember all too well the shots fired at Kent State University and their bloody aftermath.

And today’s demonstrations deal with issues I’d argue are more morally complicated. Because when it comes to the Israeli and Palestinian questions, both sides are right. And both sides are also wrong. Often at the same time.

They're right, because Palestinians and Israelis have a right to live in peace and security and to exercise self-determination. They are wrong, because the Israeli government and Hamas — on what they say is the behalf of Palestinians — are wantonly, determinedly, killing each other. Israelis and Palestinians are the victims of long-standing discriminations and ultimately must — both for their security and for the world’s — reach at least a grudging peace. And because the rest of the world helped create the current mess, we must also help find a way to resolve it.

Cynicism and idealism

As complicated as the Vietnam era was, the Israeli-Palestinian-Hamas wretchedness overall exceeds what we experienced. A long-time friend reminded me that while anti-Vietnam protests were common, a teacher at our high school slapped a pointer at a map of the Middle East and said that the region would be the most compelling, conflicted and concerning for them and the world from that moment until past all of our funerals.

That region gave birth to the three greatest monotheisms, religions that all espouse unity, peace and love. Since Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish and Muslim forces have killed one another, while evangelical Christian ministers are kind of cheering it on as a sign the end days are upon us.

Trust me, when I marched in peaceful anti-war demonstrations at Michigan State University, and reported on a massive days-long protest at MSU following then-President Richard Nixon’s decision to mine North Vietnamese port cities (a protest involving a lot of property damage along East Lansing’s main thoroughfare of Grand River Avenue — hence the tear gas — and students trying to seize control of MSU’s Hannah Administration building — and hence the police stick to my chest, knocking me down the front steps as I was taking notes) the issues were much simpler.

Either: End the war, let the Vietnamese figure out for themselves what they want.

Or: Who cares what happens with the Vietnamese, American lives shouldn’t be lost in the conflict.

In other words, the goals were both idealistic and cynical.

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Exhausting, and morally awkward

Both today’s conflict and Vietnam are rooted in decisions made at Versailles at World War I’s end.

Old empires such as the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman were carved up, resulting in new nations in the Middle East and promises (to the Jewish people through the Balfour Declaration) for new nations later. At the same time, victorious empires like the British and French got new rewards (which, for Britain, included a large chunk of Palestine, and for the French, denying Ho Chi Minh’s dream of an independent Vietnam).

In the 1950s, Israel’s first great leader, David Ben Gurion, and Moshe Dayan, probably Israel’s greatest military commander, said Israelis had to understand Arabs would never make peace because what is now Israel was once their land, and that if the results were flipped Israel would be fighting Arabs to get back their land.

In many ways, Palestinians have been shafted by all sides, again going back to Versailles. Hamas is hardly friend to Gazans (and don’t forget, all of Gaza is smaller than Detroit, with roughly the population of Detroit and Dallas combined. Well before the current war, Hamas killed Gazan Palestinians who opposed it, monitored and kept security files on any Palestinians critical of its actions, and violently shut down protests of its rule.

Hamas has gotten huge sums of funding from sponsor states like Iran, but most has gone to its military operations, while most Palestinians there live in poverty, suffering from poor health care and education services.

The U.S. is in the exhausting and morally awkward position of backing Israel, promoting a cease-fire and supporting humanitarian aid for the Palestinians harmed in Israel’s offensive. 

Given history, in one sense we have a moral duty to support and protect a safe place for Jewish people — but at the same time, protest indiscriminately killing the innocent. Hence we provide weapons to one side, and food to the other. It is baffling, and outrages both sides.

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When everyone fears the same things

During the Vietnam protests, one might have seen a counter-protester calling demonstrators commies. By the 1970s, most Americans opposed the war (though an awful lot also opposed the protests, especially when they grew violent).

Today, while most protesters are supporting Palestinians (and not necessarily Hamas), there are counter protesters supporting Israel. On both sides, people are honestly worried for their families and friends in that region. One of my dearest young friends, who as a little girl would come to our house for tea parties, has many dear friends of her own in Gaza, and was one of the very first student protesters arrested.

My friend acted from her sense of idealism.

Cynically, we see GOP congressional leaders demanding action against what they see as the antisemitic roots of these protests. No one could deny that antisemitism exists, and that there have been some antisemitic incidents on campuses.

Yet, Republicans leading the drive against campus antisemitism engage in their own snide antisemitic tactics.

George Soros’ name is dragged into virtually every conservative complaint. (And not just about the Israel-Hamas conflict: One of the recent authors Hillsdale College tapped in its Imprimis publication cited Soros as a cause for increasing crime. You’ll have to figure out that on your own.)

There are lots of well-to-do donors to liberal causes, but Soros, now in his 90s, is the one conservatives harp about. One has to wonder if it because he is a Holocaust survivor, and Jewish. New York’s Republican Rep. Elaine Stefanik has both hammered university officials for alleged antisemitism, and Soros for contributing to Democrats.

In the end, we must all be governed by our best interests, which call for peace, respect and a political solution granting Israelis and Palestinians a chance to be free of ongoing mass murder. How to get there? Well, be cynically idealistic, I suppose.

In reality, that is what the demonstrations are imperfectly all about now, and were imperfectly all about then.

One thing we did hear a lot during Vietnam, and personally I think we should hear a lot now, since it reminds of us of the ultimate goal: John Lennon’s “Give Peace A Chance.” No kidding. On its own, it won’t solve anything, but it helps keep us working towards what we need.

Free Press contributing columnist John Lindstrom has covered Michigan politics for 50 years. He retired as publisher of Gongwer, a Lansing news service, in 2019. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it online or in print.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Israel-Hamas War and Vietnam era campus protests aren't that different