Rebuilding Rob

Your Favorite Blogger is about to venture into some real murky water, so bear with me. Bear in mind that I am no lawyer; let alone one who specializes in Constitutional law.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the on-going war between Israel and The Palestinians is an incredibly hot-button topic here in the States. For the last 2 weeks, we’ve been hearing stories about dozens of college campuses across America being disrupted as a result of these protests; particularly at Columbia University and UCLA. Now it appears that students protests over the war are going global as well.

I believe that the rights guaranteed by the first amendment are the most import, most fundamental rights American citizens have. Having said that, there are limits to free speech in America. The First Amendment, or 1A, does not give people the unconditional right to say anything they want, where or wherever they want. There is legal precedent that says that any speech that present a clear & present danger to others is not guaranteed under 1A. Perhaps the best example of this is shouting “fire” in a crowded theater. The chaos that would ensue as people try to leave the building presents a clear & present danger to those in attendance.

Protests on college campuses date as far back 1209. The anti- war and civil rights protest that took lace on American college campuses during the 1960s are common knowledge. While most of us associate college campuses with protests, I could not find one reason why these events happen where they do. I believe the fact that campuses are a center for higher learning to be the driving factor. These are places where people of varying political and social views go to think, grow, learn and engage in discourse. People in that late-teens-to-early-twenties age range are usually at their most politically passionate. When you combine all of these factors together, college campuses are the logical location for such protests to take place.

Protests can take on many forms. They can consist of picketing, marches, rallies. Sometimes protests will take on more even more dramatic forms such as sit-ins, boycotts or strikes. What we’ve been seeing in campuses like Columbia and UCLA in the last few days is on an entirely different level. Bearing in mind what I said earlier about limitations to free speech, the protests at these schools are becoming dangerous for the protestors, law enforcement and the rest of the campus population.

Thrown into all of these combustible elements is the root cause for the protest itself: the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. At the heart of these protests is the fact that many colleges give endowments to companies in Israel or even companies that profit off of the ongoing conflict. Add in the aforementioned politically active young people – some of whom are of Israeli or Palestinian descent and you get the college campuses are facing today. This is to say nothing about the knuckle-head factor, outsiders who get involved just because they want to “watch the world burn”.

Many people who are far more intelligent that I have weighed on the Arab-Israeli conflict; but that won’t stop me from giving my $.02 on the matter:

People can say what to about the their birthright to certain land in the Middle East. They can cite the fact that a particular piece of land is holy to them, per their religious beliefs. Furthermore, they can be upset about the fact that land was taken from their people in order to create Israel. They can point out the fact that Israeli has nearly blind-support from the United States. These things are all true.

The situation in the Middle East of an absolute clusterfuck of negotiations and policies conducted in bad faith by all parties for decades. The situation is what it is. They say that compromise is a agreement where neither party gets everything they want. If there is ever going to be any sort of peace in the Middle East, all invested parties need to come to the proverbial table with this concept of compromise in-hand. Israel is not going to be wiped from the map. Palestinians need their own state. A two-state solution is not only mandatory, it is a non-negotiable. Neither side is going to get sympathy – either by committing terrorist acts or using overwhelming might to pulverize “the other”. Until both sides (all sides if you count the US) can agree to these realities, the fighting is going to continue. And as along as the fighting continues; as long as the US has a foothold in the region, protests will continue here in America.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:

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• Life is What Happens: A Look Back at My Non-Existent 2025 Vision
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The article “On…the First Amendment, College Protests and War in the Middle East” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.