I think it's a good time to reflect a moment.
What we witnessed on the 40 Acres yesterday was a profound example of injustice, favoritism, and abuse of state power. If you are motivated to protest, to change things, to resist, that is all part of the human experience. Humans are innately drawn to freedom, and when they are not free, they are drawn to emancipatory forces.
However upset we are about seeing our fellow Longhorns briefly subjected to unprovoked violence by the state, I hope we also reflect on how those valid feelings are and for generations have been elicited by the people of Gaza and the West Bank. They, too, are motivated to protest, to change things, and to resist. Those people are not free and have never known freedom, so they are drawn to emancipatory forces.
I think we should reflect on how it's all too easy for us, living in our "free" (relative to Gaza) countries, to tsk tsk at Palestinians for sympathizing with (and in a few cases, providing material support to) a particular emancipatory force of which we disapprove. We can rightly condemn the killing and kidnapping of civilians. These people have suffered unimaginably, several orders of magnitude greater injustices than the injustice currently responsible boiling our blood. Consider, if you can, how much rage would be within you if DPS had been as brutal to your loved ones on campus as IDF is to people who are forced to drive with green license plates.
You have every right to wish the worst for Abbott, the board of regents, and every other crony who made this possible. All I ask is that we also acknowledge that nothing in Israel happens in a vacuum, and much of the rage in that region depicted in the media is as valid if not more so than the rage we feel towards Abbott. We shouldn't act so surprised or clutch pearls when a few people took the predictable step of seeking emancipation through the only means available to them.