For weeks students have protested the Israel-Hamas war. I have watched with mixed feelings about both the conflict and the protests. There are a few observations:
The war between Israel and Palestine has gone on for thousands of years. According to tradition, it originated with the family dysfunction of the patriarch, Abraham. His son, with wife Sarah (Isaac), is the father of the Jews, while his son, with concubine Hagar (Ishmael), is the father of the Palestinians. If you didn’t grow up with these stories, read Genesis, chapters 16 and 21.
Over the millennia, countless people have died in this conflict. Rather than letting the moderates broker the peace that might have existed from the start if those two little boys had just been allowed to continue playing together, in Genesis 21, it seems we always have hardliners pushing for more blood. Hamas, an extremist organization, took power in Palestine, then stopped all elections for almost 18 years. Elements on both sides would like to wipe the other side off the face of the earth. It is ridiculous to paint either group as completely innocent. We need to separate the extremists from the citizens who want peace.
Americans should not make the same mistake. We have college students lining up to announce their support for one side or the other. Some protests were co-opted by outside groups with a more extreme agenda. According to CBS News, 30% of protestors at Columbia University, for example, had no affiliation with the school. Rather than getting on the evening news to state their positions and simply negotiate with schools for divestment in Israel, extremists wanted to occupy buildings, vandalize property, and try to provoke police.
I support non-violent protest in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Once the protestors become violent and destructive, they lose the moral high ground and become part of the problem. I hope that college students have learned enough history to understand why the event on October 7, kidnapping and killing Jews in a way that triggered Holocaust memories, would produce an extreme reaction. Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has stated, “Never again is now.”
That does not excuse the extreme reaction, but helps to explain it. It is not acceptable for any group to work toward the complete extermination of another. It is not acceptable for either side to kill civilians. Yet, both sides have done both of these things. It is not acceptable for extremists in power to hold onto that power, rather than giving their citizens the chance to vote them out if that is the will of the people.
We stand at an impasse. Hamas doesn’t want to give back all the Israeli hostages and lose their bargaining chip, while Israel won’t promise to end the war, even after hostages are returned.
America will not be the country to directly broker a peace deal. We have supported Israel over Palestine for too long. What we can do is challenge our own elected leaders to use their influence in bringing peace. Right now our young country is like the child who wants to take a side in a family feud that has lasted many generations. What we need to be, instead, is that young voice who sees that the violence hurts us all and asks, “How can we find a way to stop this fighting?” This should be the message of our students to our country and to the world.