It is such a small world. There was I, seated in front of a television set in suburban Auckland, watching the NYPD clear Columbia University of pro-Palestinian protesters, live, on CNN. It was night-time in New York City, but the streets surrounding the university were full of police officers and their vehicles, including, ominously, a fleet of buses to carry those arrested back to the cells.

The protesters had come out to meet them with placards and Palestinian flags. The news media was there, too, the mainstream and the defiantly non-mainstream. With the puppies of the student press getting in the way of the networks’ newshounds.

Watching those CNN anchors of the future do their thing – with admirable professionalism – I couldn’t help recalling the 1981 Springbok Tour protests when, clutching my student press pass like a rosary, I did my best to get as close to the action as I could without getting myself arrested.

It took some effort to convince the avuncular police sergeant watching over the protest that my pass hadn’t been whipped-up by some anarchist in the university printery, but, in the end, he agreed that it was real. Dunedin’s cops were difficult to dislike.

Watching the NYPD officers managing the crowds of students, I couldn’t help wondering whether their fierce reputation wasn’t just a little overblown. “Polite, but firm”, had clearly been the order from the NYPD “brass”, and it was being followed punctiliously by the police officers on the ground.

Understandable, I suppose, when you remember these student protesters are the sons and daughters of elite America, with ready access to the very best legal advice. It would not be wise for a beat-cop to baton these boys and girls, not until they’d thrown the first punch, or rock, or Molotov cocktail.

Not that these kids are the Molotov-hurling kind. Basically, they’re screechers. Shouting at the tops of their voices into police officers’ faces is about as aggressive as they get. One can only admire the sang-froid of the Texas state trooper who, having endured this treatment a couple of days ago in Austin, responded with: “We’re here to serve, sir, enjoy the rest of your day.”

The contrast between these pro-Palestine demonstrators and the occupiers of our own Parliament’s grounds back in 2022 is a sharp one. Columbia’s protests were largely performative, albeit with ugly antisemitic undertones. Yes, there were plenty of keffiyehs, plenty of flags, plenty of “from the river to the sea” chanting, but the quelling of the Columbia protest by New York’s finest was efficiently and surprisingly peacefully accomplished.

The students’ pup-tents didn’t burn. Chunks of concrete didn’t fly. There was no need for the Fire Department’s high-pressure hoses. New Yorkers may have fiery tempers, but they are not the least bit interested in burning down their beloved city.

Certainly, that contrast reinforces how very angry New Zealanders were in February and March of 2022. Unlike Columbia’s occupiers, who were quick to reference their nation’s constitution, New Zealand’s occupiers had become dangerously alienated from mainstream New Zealand society.

These were people who believed themselves abandoned and persecuted by their own government, outcasts, with very little left to lose. They were not trust fund radicals. They did not belong to the elites. They did not go quietly.

For the folks at Fox News – also covering the clearing of Columbia live – the images being broadcast to the nation must have struck them as pure political gold.

In a million living-rooms across the United States, tens of millions of ordinary working-class Americans would be taking in these scenes with ill-concealed contempt. Had their sons and daughters been fortunate enough to win entry to one of America’s best “schools”, would they have behaved in the same way as these spoilt, snot-nosed brats?

Unlikely.

Their kids had friends who’d served in Iraq. Friends who returned to the US with a less than loving attitude toward Arab Muslims. The last time their friends saw a keffiyeh it was most likely through a telescopic sight.

What’s more, their kids had gone to a church that saw the State of Israel as a crucial part of God’s plan. It was America’s duty to protect the Jews. Seeing the Columbia protesters refusing entry to Jewish students made these God-fearing Americans furious. Wasn’t that what the Nazis did? Fox News had shown photographs of stormtroopers doing exactly the same thing on the steps of the University of Vienna in 1938.

Oh yes, Fox News couldn’t get enough of these campus occupations. Each illegal pup-tent was worth 10,000 votes for Donald Trump.

Perhaps the strangest thing about watching the NYPD enter Columbia University, however, was realising that I wasn’t on the side of the student protesters. Though I had read all about Mark Rudd and the occupation of Columbia’s Low Library in 1968.

In spite of the fact that I had once memorised large chunks of Mario Savio’s famous “Stop the Machine” speech, delivered from the steps of Berkeley’s Sproull Hall in 1964. I just couldn’t identify with what I was witnessing. Not even the experience of having been a student protester myself, and getting arrested for my trouble, could move me to empathise. None of it mattered.

Maybe it was old age. Maybe, growing older, I have come to realise that history is not a process of sorting the “goodies” from the “baddies”; and that shouting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” is a simplification every bit as risible as “One side right, one side wrong, victory to the Viet Cong!” Maybe it’s the absurdity of condemning the Israelis for doing to Gaza what our own fathers and grandfathers did to Dresden – and Hiroshima.

Maybe I just can’t get past the words of the American talk-show host Bill Maher: “Hamas wishes it could commit genocide, but it can’t. Israel could commit genocide, but it doesn’t.”

Or, maybe it’s because I watch too many documentaries on the History Channel. Maybe it’s because, after viewing all those grainy black-and-white newsreels recorded at the end of World War II, I have a pretty good idea of what genocide looks like.

How I wish all those kids at Columbia, and all the pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the streets of New Zealand, could tell the difference between genocide and war – and remember who survived the one, and started the other. But, since that appears to be beyond them, I’ll continue to stand with Israel – and cheer on the NYPD.