To the editor,

Writing this on May 4, I’ m reminded with searing vividness of the turmoil resulting from the murder by the National Guard of four students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State in Ohio on this date 54 years ago. I remember how shocked the nation was at unarmed protesters being fired on by the very ones charged with defending our liberty. 

As a student in the 1960s, along with many in my generation, I experienced the US-pursued war in Vietnam as an awakening to America’s reliance on military force to conduct foreign policy, as well as to our deadly beholdeness to the weapons industry.

I believe that the escalation of the Israel/Palestine conflict has served for a new generation of young people as a focal point of awareness of the contradiction between America’s avowedly benevolent democratic principles and its betrayal of them, in this case as enabler of Israel’s aggression and colonial domination of Palestine.

Having followed the Israel/Palestine conflict for many years, I am heartened by this current awakening of conscience of the young. Too many of us have come to ignore or disregard our government’s role in perpetuating or enabling violent conflict throughout the world, often through the arms trade. I support the students’ principled stand against US complicity in war crimes.

Our new generation of activists should be allowed to exercise their right to protest without fear of being labeled antisemitic or construed as supporting Hamas, also a cruel and oppressive force that does not seem to care about people caught in the crosshairs of this war. And we should never let them be subjected to the violence that claimed four young lives in Kent, Ohio 54 years ago.

Thomas R. Smith

River Falls