MAY 9 • 2024 | 9
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six years ago, they largely 
succeeded. The Vietcong 
and the North Vietnamese 
regarded the demonstrations 
as strategic assets capable 
of turning American 
public opinion against 
the war. Emboldened, the 
Communists launched the 
1968 Tet Offensive, which 
further strengthened anti-
war sentiment. 
Today’s demonstrators 
also want to change 
American foreign policy 
from pro- to anti-Israel, 
to cut off all forms of aid 
to, and investment in, 
the Jewish state, and to 
support Palestinian self-
determination “from the 
river to the sea.” Their goal 
is to make BDS the official 
policy of the United States. 
And their efforts have 
already had an impact. 
Thirty-seven Democratic 
Congress members, 
including former Speaker 
Nancy Pelosi, and seven 
senators, have already called 
for curtailing military 
supplies to Israel. The full 
extent of the demonstrators’ 
influence is expected to 
be reflected in the party’s 
platform to be drafted this 
summer in Chicago.
Hamas has surely drawn 
strength from these 
developments and hardened 
its position on a hostage-
for-ceasefire deal prior to 
Israel’s planned incursion 
in Rafah. The Biden 
administration reportedly 
opposes that operation 
entirely. Like the North 
Vietnamese before them, 
Hamas commanders no 

doubt regard the campus 
demonstrations as a strategic 
asset. 
Praising the “students and 
members of faculty for their 
opposition to the collective 
extermination carried out by 
the Zionists, the new Nazis, 
against our Palestinian 
people,” Hamas political 
bureau member Izzat 
Al-Rishq stated that “today’s 
students are the leaders of 
tomorrow.” President Biden, 
he predicted, will pay “a 
heavy electoral price” for 
opposing them. 
The Biden administration 
has not, in fact, taken a 
strong stand against the 
demonstrations, only 
their antisemitic rhetoric. 
It has not acted on my 
recommendation, and that 
of Anti-Defamation League 
CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, 
that the FBI investigate 
who is providing the 
matching green tents that 
now dot many university 
lawns, supplying standard 
Palestinian flags, mobilizing 
non-student agitators. 
Still, much like Lyndon 
Johnson before him, 
President Biden might lose 
the election to a far more 
conservative Republican. 
No more than in 1968, the 
American people may view 
campus unrest as a har-
binger of more widespread 
chaos and, rather than rally 
to it, recoil. 

Michael Oren is the former Israeli 

Ambassador to the United States. 

This essay was published on Clarity, 

his free Substack and was adapted 

from a Hebrew op-ed he published 

in Yisrael Hayom.

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