US media coverage of campus protests shows control of Israeli lobby: Journalist

By Press TV Website Staff

The US media that dedicated much of its coverage to anti-Iranian propaganda is practically saying or doing nothing in protest of government violence against students in the country, says a prominent journalist.

Ramzy Baroud, a Palestine-origin internationally-syndicated columnist, author and founder of the Palestine Chronicle website, in an interview with the Press TV website, condemned the US police violence against students protesting the Israeli genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

More than 1,000 students have been arrested in different US universities in recent weeks and subjected to violent crackdowns for urging their universities to divest from companies aiding the Israeli genocide.

The protests started in mid-April at Columbia University, New York, where a pro-Palestinian encampment was forcefully removed by police at the request of the university administration.

From Columbia, the campus movement spread to other universities across the US despite attempts by pro-Israel lobby groups to crush the movement with arrests, suspensions and other measures.

Baroud, who is based in the US, said many mainstream media outlets have been helping the US government authorities “by depicting the (protesting) students as unruly, antisemitic or worse”, not for America’s own security but to “protect the tattered reputation of a genocidal apartheid regime.”

“I believe that all of these contradictions are helping expose not only the control of the Israeli lobby over American everyday affairs but also the US government itself, which is funding the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza,” he told the Press TV website.

“Additionally, it has also exposed the fake progressives who selectively use their false credentials to align their political agendas, directly or indirectly, with that of Washington and its destructive foreign policy around the globe.”

The death toll from the Israeli genocidal aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, has reached nearly 27,000, the majority of them children and women.

US campus protests show Zionists failed to manipulate public opinion in West

What these student protests on university campuses across the US underline is the fact that the attempts to manipulate public opinion have failed spectacularly.

The humanitarian situation in the coastal territory also continues to be dire amid the crippling siege, lack of food and water as well as the absence of basic health care services.

The Joe Biden administration has been accused of masterminding the Israeli war on Gaza by providing lethal arms to the regime and failing to put pressure on Tel Aviv to halt its genocidal onslaught.

The prominent journalist and analyst said the US and its Western proxies launched a global campaign “in the name of freeing Iranian women” more than a year ago, which was “entirely political.”

“The sad irony is that US-Western military interventions have killed more women and other innocent people than any other cause of death whether in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya, during those periods of interventions,” he told the Press TV website.

“Equally sad is that many organizations and groups that classify themselves as ‘progressives’ have joined the American propaganda, thus serving, willingly or unwittingly, as an arm for imperialist interventions.”

Baroud said that “history is repeating itself” and this time Americans are being denied the right to protest.

“This time around, however, the people who are being denied their right to protest are Americans, the women who are being beaten up and humiliated by the police and other security forces are Americans, and the freedom of expression, which is being denied in ways unprecedented, is part of the legal rights of ordinary Americans,” he asserted.

“I am happy to see young Americans, from all backgrounds, championing this new effort. I believe that we are at the cusp of a serious shift in the collective perception of the American people.”

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