TEHRAN – The U.S. lectures other countries about the right to protest and freedom of speech but it is suppressing dissenting voices on college campuses throughout the country.

The police are cracking down on students in universities who are protesting Washington’s financial, political, and arms support for Israel, which has been committing unthinkable crimes in the Gaza Strip since October last year.

Stifling peaceful protests and freedom of speech in American universities has put into serious question the values that the United States has been claiming it stands for.

President Joe Biden, like many other Congress members and pro-Israel bigots, has accused the students protesting Israel’s crimes of anti-Semitism.

When asked on Monday what is his message to the protesters at college campuses, Biden said, “I condemn the anti-Semitic protests.”

The statement by the president is absurd and a sheer lie. The students, some of them Jews, are clearly noticing that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. In fact, organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace have played a leading role in the protests.

Possibly, Biden and hawks in Congress, are using the anti-Semitic slander to justify financial, military, political, and diplomatic support for the bloodthirsty regime of Benyamin Netanyahu.

Those people around the world who had been cherishing the United States for its self-proclaimed defense of democracy, freedom of opinion, and right to peaceful protests now feel disappointed and realize that they were badly mistaken.

Crackdown on students on campuses brings to mind the Kent State massacre of May 4, 1970, in which four Ohio college students were killed by the Ohio National Guard during a protest against the Vietnam War.

House representative Marjorie Taylor Green and senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, and other leading Senate Republicans, including Lindsey Graham and Charles Grassley, are demanding that Biden go even further. The senators signed a letter on Tuesday calling on the administration to carry out criminal prosecutions and deportations for participants in the demonstrations.

The content of their letter is shameful as it declares that there is an “outbreak of anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist mobs on college campuses,” led by “pro-Hamas rioters.” 

Slanderous allegations of anti-Semitism are being mocked by students and others alike.

On Sunday, Columbia Law School faculty condemned mass arrests and suspensions of students, saying such moves cast “serious doubt on the university’s respect for the rule-of-law values that we teach”.

“While we as a faculty disagree about the relevant political issues and express no opinion on the merits of the protest, we are writing to urge respect for basic rule-of-law values that ought to govern our University,” 54 law professors wrote, The Intercept reported.

A country that claims it is the leader of the free world but its police are storming the universities to arrest peaceful students is a serious cause of concern. Surely, it would embolden despots and dogmatic parliament members, like Tom Cotton and Taylor Green, in certain other countries.

The Biden administration is providing highly sophisticated lethal arms to Israel and vetoes UN Security Council resolutions against the regime. Congress is also ratifying billions of dollars in military aid for Israel, yet they expect nobody to protest either Israel’s horrible crimes or their complicity in these acts.

According to the Washington Post, one of the demands of the students is for universities to separate themselves from any companies that are empowering Israel's military efforts in Gaza. 

Washington’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza has gone to the extreme. Decisionmakers in the U.S. are refusing to look into the mirror to find out that their support for Israel has been causing anger and disappointment in the U.S. and around the world.

It is for such illogical and immoral support for hawks in Israel that prominent literary group PEN America has canceled its annual award ceremony after dozens of nominated writers withdrew in protest of the Israeli war in Gaza. The group, which is dedicated to free expression, announced that it was canceling the April 29 event.

A series of open letters signed by PEN nominees in recent weeks have criticized the group for choosing sides against Gaza in the war.

In a letter signed last month, several famous writers including Michelle Alexander, Naomi Klein and Zaina Arafat said the group was acting as a "cultural front for American exceptionalism" and was complicit in "normalizing genocide".

The U.S. has sent freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protests to the slaughterhouse through its unlawful and immoral support for butchers in Israel.

It is not just the administration, Congress or pro-Israel lobbyists who are coming hard on universities, movements and organizations that are calling for an end to the carnage in Gaza. Most media outlets in Israel have also resorted to censorship in the Gaza war. For example, according to the Intercept, the New York Times has instructed journalists covering Israel’s war on Gaza to restrict the use of the terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” and to “avoid” using the phrase “occupied territory” when describing Palestinian land.