My allergies have been killing me. Stepping outside makes me sneeze and wince. Looking into the sun has become intolerable.
It’s funny how our bodies react to the things we don’t like. When something bothers us, we close our eyes and cower. The same holds true for events that make us uncomfortable. Conflicting ideologies and absolute differences of opinion irritate the mind.
As we do for all things that ail us, we must take a dose of medicine and find true resolution to the problems of our zeitgeist and not just scratch out our eyes. Student protests have erupted on college campuses throughout the country bringing awareness to the conflict in the Middle East.
It’s funny how we have used that term — conflict — for almost a century and come no closer to solving, much less understanding the nature of it. Closing your eyes doesn’t solve the problem. Now is not the time for cowardice and certainly not the time to waver.
I learned that lesson during the Gulf War. When bombs first flew over Baghdad in 1990, I was in a foreign land. I didn’t have the comfort of communal thought and patriotism.
I was a 16-year-old American in Germany and had to figure out the complexities of my own moral compass.
In America, I would have been surrounded by patriotism and the understanding that what we were doing was right. There, I was surrounded by a peace-loving people who had seen the devastation of war.
Their lens was entirely different. War was too close in their past to ever want to see it again. Germany had been vanquished and experienced abject destruction. They didn’t want to see the world make a monumental mistake again.
I remember school let out so students could march to the center of town in protest of the war. Arm in arm, they carried signs of solidarity to end it.
With the excitement of mobilization, camaraderie and good will, I could not muster the desire to go. Something deep inside of me said I didn’t belong to that voice. The voice that said stop this injustice. Mostly because I didn’t believe the war was unjust. I felt like those people in Kuwait needed vaque or backup. My stand was to stand for something. Even if it meant not being a part of the collective. Conviction has its consequences.
Many of the protests across college campuses today seem to have the opposite spirit. If you look at the pictures on social media or the news, you see students covered in keffiyehs and masks. Keffiyehs are the black-and-white scarves associated with the pro-Palestinian cause. Organizers direct protesters to cover themselves to protect their identities lest they be identified by future employers. Gotta save Palestine and have a job, I suppose, yet parents fork over nearly $90,000 per year for their children to attend Columbia University. That’s almost 3 times what the average New Mexican earns in one year. And now the president of the university canceled graduation.
Chants like “No divestment, no commencement” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” can be heard from encampments that exult arrogance, ignorance, and calls for extinction. Most students questioned don’t even know that these statements call for the eradication of the Jewish state and its people. They are calling for genocide.
Hamas represents and rules the people of Palestine. Though many liberal Jews desire a two-state road to the “Middle East conflict”, the attack by Hamas on Israel on Oct. 7 placed that concept on permanent hold.
What many protesters, sympathizers and college campus students refuse to mention is that they support terrorism — either because they are ignorant or because they disguise their intentions. Hamas was added to the U.S. Department of State’s list of foreign terrorist organizations in 1997.
It is one thing to voice your opinion about how you feel Palestinians are being treated and the indignity of war. It is yet another to incite violence and call for the eradication of an entire people.
France, with a history of antisemitism, culminating in the deportation of tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II, chose to make hate speech a crime in 2014. According to the Wall Street Journal, French courts ruled that public statements legitimizing Hamas or expressing approval for its violent actions are forbidden by the law against condoning terrorism.
This takes me back to my good ’ol college days at Yale. Even my alma mater is not immune from the pro-Palestinian protests where dozens of students were arrested from the plaza between the main dining hall, our beloved library that houses one of the Gutenberg Bibles and Woolsey Hall.
On this plaza are inscribed the words: “In Memory of the Men of Yale who true to Her Traditions gave their Lives that Freedom might not perish from the Earth. 1914 Anno Domini 1918.”
I can only hope that the students here express their American-given right to protest. To ring the liberty bell that says, “what I have to say matters!”
But I also hope they recognize the difference between opinion and the desire to eradicate the Jewish state.
We cannot afford to cower and bow to the symptoms that tickle our nose. We must clearly and methodically distinguish the difference between freedom of speech and — let’s not mince swords here.
It’s not “hate speech”. We must distinguish between freedom of speech and the desire to abolish an entire people. Those who wish to eradicate Jews are in the wrong; and they are terrorists.
Going along with the crowd because it sounded like a good idea at the time has its consequences. If we sit back and close our eyes.
If we wince the way we do to the symptoms of our allergies, then it remains clear that we need a stronger dose of medicine. The kind that clears the air and makes us see straight.