It’s Exhausting Rooting for the Anti-Hero Israel
The Israel-Palestinian conflict is a complex one and it’s easy to buy into the current social construct of oppressor vs. oppressed. It is not easy to sum up in a few words why Israel is not an oppressor based on the boiled down nature of slogans being yelled out at protests these days. Student and some faculty protestors at more than 50 U.S. universities are taking the bait from Iran and Hamas, a terror group, without knowing all the facts. The protests are not pro-Palestinian — they are pro-terror. They need to stop.
I am pro-Israel. I am also pro-peace. I am pro allowing Jews to walk around without being harrassed as continues to happen on many campuses. I am pro giving prisoners for the Israeli hostages who remain in captivity for more than 200 days. I don’t see the protestors saying any of those things.
I don’t want Hamas to use Palestinians as human shields or cause additional suffering, but they do this purposely because they know that Israel will attack. Israel’s only option is attack or be attacked. What use is a ceasefire to Israel if Hamas has already said they will attack again and again, like they did on October 7? They filmed for themselves the destruction, mayhem and terror they imposed on Israelis.
Israel has always been in a tough spot since it was founded in 1948. When the United Nations passed Resolution 181 creating the state of Israel and an Arab state, only Israel agreed to move ahead.
All surrounding Arab nations declared war and attacked Israel. To Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, this is now known as the Nakba, or “the catastrophe.” The Palestinians talk of a wave of Israeli displacement of Arabs from villages in what is now Israel, that Jews came from Europe to live in Israel after the Holocaust. There are no winners in war and there likely both displacements by Israel and also many who fled and weren’t able to return. The fighting was started by Arab countries surrounding Israel, thinking they could quickly defeat the nascent nation but that didn’t happen and instead Israel defeated all the Arab countries.
What has followed is a long fight over the land and many wars started by Arab countries against Israel. Now much is fought between Israel and Iran by proxy.
There have been many attempts at peace and they have been rejected over and over. And the right-wing, extremist Netanyahu government is not in favor of a two-state solution.
Students at elite colleges across the U.S. are protesting in favor of the perceived underdog. They have been taught through Qatari funding that everything is black and white — there is an oppressor — the Israelis. There is an oppressed people — the Palestinians. Israel is an occupier, a practitioner of apartheid and committing genocide — this is what they say.
Are they asking for a ceasefire from Hamas, that the hostages should be given back to Israel and that we should pressure both sides to come to the table and figure out a peaceful solution? No they aren’t.
Antisemitism vs. Anti-Zionism
They like to say that they are not antisemitic protests, they are only anti-Zionist. What does that mean? It means that Jews are not allowed to have a homeland. Because Zionism is the desire of the Jews to go back to their homeland of Israel. Many of the protests have blocked Jews from entering schools, targeted Jews and even talked about killing Jews who are Zionists. How is that acceptable?
And how is it not antisemitic to say that Jews should leave the U.S., leave Israel and should be the next targets of Hamas. How is that not antisemitic?
Why this is wrong:
Hamas is a terror organization that came across the border from an unoccupied Gaza, slaughtered, maimed and raped more than a thousand innocent people just going about their lives. The idea that some protestors are calling what Hamas did acceptable resistance is abhorrent and not helping their cause.
When Hamas and Iran support your cause, you should know you are not helping anyone to get your point across. Also when you bring terrorist flags to your protest, this is wrong, like this Hezbollah flag that can be seen at Princeton.
Divestiture
They want divestiture, that their university endowment should stop investing in companies with a stake in Israel. The thesis is that this will have a negative effect on Israel and cause it to rethink its war against Hamas.
Divestiture has also been shown to do nothing — capital gets redeployed and someone else shifts money. See CNN story. A paper written by economists at the University of California who studied this called boycotts and calls for divestments a “sideshow.” See UC study.
The Occupation Claim
They want liberation of Palestine from occupiers. Some have even posted signs that tell Jews to “Go back to Europe.”
Why this is wrong:
There are Jews that have never left Israel — indigenous to the region. Jews are not white, the population of Jews in Israel that are from Europe or America is 36%. The population of Israel is heavily Sephardic, made up of Jews that came from Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Yemen, Syria and other countries in the region.
They were forcibly expelled by those countries around the time that Israel was created and were airlifted by the new Jewish state. Since the founding of Israel, more have arrived, along with Jews from Europe, India, Africa, Europe and the U.S. Israel is a great melting pot of Jewish diversity.
They somehow think that we should wind back the clock 75 years and disavow the state of Israel from existence. Why should the Jews not have a homeland? Why are they not entitled to what was given to them by the United Nations?
The Genocide Claim
The protestors accuse Israel of committing genocide while not mentioning what happened on October 7th to Israelis as being a genocide. Article II of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Why this is wrong:
This is precisely what Hamas did — attack Israel with an intent to destroy Jews. There are phone calls of Hamas members recorded telling of murdering Jews and their parents congratulating them.
Hamas rules over Gaza and supplies the data related to death and casualties. Many have challenged the reported numbers. Israel is attempting to fight in an urban warfare situation. Any civilian deaths are terrible but are part of the situation Hamas created to garner additional support for their cause. A death of a child on both sides is a tragedy.
Israel is responding to the October 7th Hamas attack. Why is Israel the only nation not allowed to defend itself? Why is it the one who should cease fire? Hamas attacked Israel. Israel left Gaza in 2005.
How Can We Have Peace?
All that being said, I can say what I say and the other side can say what they say. How will we come together to make peace? Not by talking past each other, protesting, ignoring the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza nor the Israeli hostages.
We must work together to find the answer. We must go back to having civil dialog and not spewing hate and vile slogans created by terrorists and monsters who slaughtered people in their beds, raped women and cut off body parts. We must not glorify such behavior when done by anyone ever. We must recognize that everyone loses by the current status quo continuing. There must be compromise on both sides to get to a peaceful solution.
