It is easy to make fun of the student protesters who have vociferously made their voices heard in support of the Palestinian people, pretty much across the whole country. Even here in Albuquerque at the University of New Mexico. The front page of the May 16 Albuquerque Journal, perhaps inadvertently, did just this with its banner headline, "Duck Pond Encampment torn down." That a ragtag encampment at a duck pond needed to be torn down by law enforcement officers to make sure that, well what? Keep the ducks safe? There seems to be fun to make all around.

But I think the student protesters have a point, and deserve to be heard. The right to peacefully assemble and protest perceived wrongs is still a thing. But aside from sensationalist images of occupied buildings and tug-of-war arrests, the protests have largely been peaceful and well within First Amendment parameters. According to The Economist there are about 16 million undergraduate students in the United States, yet the protests have resulted in some 3,000 arrests. Not exactly the breakdown of civil order, and not even close to the killing of four student Vietnam War protesters at Kent State in 1970 by national guardsmen.

To be sure, chanting "From the River to the Sea," and berating Jewish folks because they are Jewish is hateful, stupid, and counterproductive. The chant smacks of literal genocide, so it makes the chanters look silly as they loudly criticize Israel for supposed genocide against the Palestinian people. And berating Jews because they are Jewish looks a whole like their criticism of Israel treating Palestinians with cavalier disregard because they are Palestinians.

I was ten years old during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when Egypt, Syria and Jordan invaded Israel, and got their butts kicked for their effort. The same thing happened in the 1967 Six Day War. It was plucky little Israel defending its very right to exist, with astonishing success. Israel was rightly regarded, and highly hailed as a bright example of a nation state with a democratic form of government and a well developed free market economy. The contrast with other Middle Eastern states could not have been more stark.

But the youngsters see Israel with different, younger eyes. The plucky little Israel I remember is 50 years in the past. To the protesters, Israel is the undisputed military superpower of the Middle East and has always been run by Benjamin Netanyahu. The West Bank has always been a place where Israelis continuously take bite-sized plots of land for new settlements while denying the native Palestinians any meaningful degree of autonomy. And the current war in Gaza is an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe; the one-day October 7 invasion by Hamas was barbarous, but the months-long pummeling of Gaza resulting in tens of thousands of civilian deaths is out of all proportion to military necessity. To the youngsters, Israel is the bully, and this belief is not wholly wrong.

This belief, that Israel is the bully, is also not wholly right. Hamas is a literal death cult; its political goals are advanced when more people die, and it makes no difference whether the dead person is Israeli or Palestinian. Any protest that does not take this awful reality into account will come across as unserious, or even offensive to some.

The student protesters have youth and vigor on their side; decades of time and experience has yet to be inflicted upon them. Young people are not stupid, they are just young.

Darrell M. Allen is a former criminal defense attorney, and he is the husband of Merritt Hamilton Allen, a nice Republican lady. They live north of I-40 where they run one head of dog and two of cat.