Dear Students,
I am a middle-aged college professor now, but I was an undergraduate like you once, and passionately involved in student activism. In my day there were two issues that moved us most to action: the campaigns to divest from South Africa and to oppose the US government’s sponsorship of the Nicaraguan “Contras.” I participated in both, and in one protest during my freshman year was arrested for sitting in at the office of the Governor of Rhode Island (who had ordered a contingent of the Rhode Island Air National Guard to Honduras, to participate in military exercises widely perceived as an act of intimidation against the Nicaraguan government).
I respect your passion, and I sympathize with your cause. Like you I feel that there should be a cease fire in Gaza. I understand and admire your efforts to put pressure on those in power to achieve that goal.
Much of what I see in your movement, however, distresses me. The rhetoric being used by some of the leaders of your movement is offensive (for example, “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground,” a chant that I saw on video being intoned by a crowd of students outside of the gate to Columbia University). But if the problem were purely rhetorical, I would not be so concerned.
There are substantive complexities of the situation for which your movement as a whole is not, to the extent that I can see, accounting. The fight for divestment in South Africa and against “Contra Aid,” respectively, put my generation of activists at least tacitly on the side of the African National Congress and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. This was a moral choice that we made with open eyes. Both the ANC and the Sandinistas had engaged in political violence, but neither group, from the perspective of their international supporters, had forfeited the authority to advocate for the people of South Africa and Nicaragua against those who oppressed them.
The same cannot be said about Hamas. The atrocities of 10/7 involved a level of nihilistic cruelty and gratuitously obscene violence that cannot be justified by any appeal to the rights or interests of “the people.” Hamas are among the worst kinds of criminals: those who justify their obscenities in the name of God. The people of Gaza themselves know this. In surveys only 38% of Gazans express support for the continued leadership of Hamas when this war finally ends. It is truly remarkable, given all the Gazans have suffered, that Hamas enjoys less support in Gaza than either major political party does here in the US.
These facts are crucial for you to consider, because your movement has no hopes of making a positive impact if you are in any way “pro-Hamas.” This does not operate as a matter of perception…I am not asking you to consider what politicians or university administrators or even the general public “thinks” of you. Hamas is at the root of the problem that you are confronting. The people of Gaza need to be free of Hamas as much or more than the citizens of Israel do. Unless your movement is as much “anti-Hamas” as it is “pro-cease fire” or “anti-Netanyahu government (a conviction that I share with you most ardently),” your chances of aiding the people of Gaza are very slim.
Another problem I perceive in your movement is the use of the word “Zionist.” It is very common to hear those speaking on behalf of the movement characterize their opponents as “Zionists.” This is a mistake. For example, I am a Zionist, and I am not your opponent. But the problem runs deeper than that.
Much attention is paid to the question of what will happen to the people of Palestine in the wake of this war. That concern is absolutely legitimate, and advocates of a cease fire are right to point out that the lack of any plan for the future of the Palestinian people has delegitimized the campaign being conducted by Israel in Gaza. But such questions apply equally to everyone concerned with this problem. What will happen to the Jews of Israel-Palestine in the wake of this war?
Such a question might seem odd, but it arises naturally from any contention that the opponents of your movement include all “Zionists.” Do you see a future in which the more than seven million Jews who live in Israel-Palestine continue to live there? If so, you are effectively a “Zionist.” There is as much diversity of political opinion among Zionists as one may find among “Democrats” or “Republicans.” Some Zionists have insisted that Jews must have a sovereign state in which they are the majority. But other Zionists (such as Albert Einstein or Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah) have advocated only for a Jewish “homeland” in Israel-Palestine, where Jews would gather in large numbers but in which they would share power equally with the non-Jewish Arabs who would be their co-citizens. Though such Zionists are in the minority in Israel today, they continue to participate in Israeli politics. Thus, any scenario in which Jews remain in their current homes is effectively a “Zionist” future…the only question being “Zionism of which kind?”
This is important because anyone who says that they oppose all Zionists risks being interpreted as advocating for the expulsion of all Jews from Israel-Palestine, which of course would be a form of obscene antisemitism. A movement built on such shaky foundations stands little chance of political success. For your efforts to really bear fruit for the people of Gaza, it is imperative to clarify that you do not support Hamas, and you do not view all Zionists as your opponents.
I am left in an ambivalent position. I have seen counter-protestors waving Israeli flags in opposition to your movement. I cannot join them, because like you I believe that the Netanyahu government has forfeited all legitimacy in their conduct of this war. At the same time, however, I cannot in good conscience come stand with you. Until it is made clear that you stand against Hamas, and do not view all Zionists as your opponents, I cannot add my voice to yours. Instead I offer this letter as my contribution to your cause. I hope, if you read it, that you perceive in it my earnest hope to be of help to your work.
Sincerely,
Andrew Meyer
Professor of History
Brooklyn College
Well said!!
ReplyDeleteThanks.
ReplyDeleteAndy, let me say this as a committed Zionist (by your excellent definition) and as an old friend.
ReplyDeleteKarim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), announced today that he has applied for arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders – Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh – as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Americans ought to be proud of their student protesters today, not just the protesters who were instrumental in ending the Vietnam War. As Anahid Nersessian writes in this week’s London Review of Books, “protests have shown that the American university, which operates more and more as a high-cost degree factory where humanities departments squirm on the chopping block, is still a place where people can learn what’s true and act on their knowledge.” As Sophia Azeb of the University of California at Santa Cruz and Zachary Samalin of New York University noted in a recent Open Source podcast conversation with Christopher Lydon on the campus protests, the vast majority of protesters on US university campuses have condemned the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. Azeb notes that many of the protests have been led by Jewish students.
Until I read South Africa’s Application instituting proceedings and request for the indication of provisional measures, I thought that it was surely impossible for the Israeli state and for a government that included Benny Gantz, a centrist figure in Israeli politics, to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. I would urge you to read South Africa's application if you haven’t done so already, as it’s devastating and exceedingly well documented. On October 9, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant stated in an Israeli Army ‘situation update’ that Israel was “imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” On November 11, Israeli Minister of Agriculture Avi Dichter recalled in a television interview the Nakba of 1948, stating that “[w]e are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba”. On October 28, Lieutenant colonel Gilad Kinan, Head of the Israeli army’s Air Operations Group, described the Air Force as “work[ing] together with all the bodies in the IDF when the goal is clear — to destroy everything that has been touched by the hand of Hamas”. Non-cabinet members of the Israeli Knesset have frequently resorted to genocidal rhetoric: Revital Gottlieb calling for Gaza to be “wiped out”, Katrin “Keti” Shitrit-Peretz and Revital Gottlieb advocating for it to be “flatten[ed]”, Galit Atbaryan proposing it be “eras[ed]”, and Eliyahu Revivo saying that it should be “[c]rush[ed] . . . on all its inhabitants”. Yitzhak Kroizer has proposed that “there should be one sentence for everyone there — death”.
In this week’s New York Review of Books, Aryeh Neier, co-founder of Human Rights Watch and President Emeritus of the Open Society Foundations, concludes in an article entitled Is Israel Committing Genocide?: “I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory.”
Paul, Thanks as always for reading my blog and offering such thoughtful feedback, old friend.
ReplyDeleteI don't see much in your comment that I would disagree with, or that fundamentally contradicts anything I wrote in my letter. I have no qualms with indicting Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal. I know that many of my fellow Jews here in the US will see that as a terrible expression of anti-Israeli bias, but I do not. IMHO Netanyahu has betrayed the Zionist cause more fundamentally than virtually any other individual (surpassing even Yigal Amir, the villain who murdered Yitzhak Rabin), so any pressure that is put on him to resign (a step he should have taken months ago, even before his negligent leadership contributed to the disaster of 10/7), in virtually any context, is effectively "pro-Israel." There is no hope of peace in Gaza unless and until Netanyahu steps down or is ousted, so an arrest warrant serves the just interests of all the people of Israel-Palestine (including the hostages being held by Hamas).
I am aware of the toxic rhetoric used by Israeli leaders that you cited, and could add other examples of my own. This is one of the chief reasons that Netanyahu's ouster is so crucial to a resolution in Gaza. The struggle against Hamas is a classic asymmetrical conflict, and political factors always decide the outcome of such contests. All of the Israeli leaders who have framed the Gaza operation as a war with the "Palestinian people" have effectively declared endless war, which is in and of-itself both a moral transgression and a violation of international law. The Israelis must change leadership, and that new leadership must pursue a strategy that can transfer authority in Gaza to a Palestinian force other than Hamas, which requires enlisting allies among and support from the Palestinian people as a whole.
All of these factors make the cause of the protesters very just, and I admire their passion. But I would still insist that the complexities of the situation demanded strategic wisdom that the protesters did not manifest. I am sure that the protesters condemned Hamas, but to do so once or even occasionally was never going to be enough if they wanted their activism to land with maximum impact. In almost all venues it was incumbent on the protesters to register their condemnation of BOTH Hamas and the Netanyahu regime. This they did not do, and it left them vulnerable to co-optation that was heinous but predictable.
I realize now, for example, that the "protesters" I mention in my original letter (the ones chanting "Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!" among other equally obscene sentiments) were not affiliated in any way with the Columbia protesters. They made a point, however, of staging their demonstration on Broadway in front of the sign for the Columbia University subway station (just outside the West Gate onto the main quad). That group, I would be willing to bet, was closely linked to Hamas, and were engaging in their overt antisemitism in order to undermine any hope of peace. That is of course disgusting, but it was entirely foreseeable. Hamas waged 10/7 as an attack on peace itself, and Hamas continues to have a concrete interest in sabotaging any activism that might aid the cause of peace. It is for this reason that those who wish to stand for peace must stand clearly and PERSISTENTLY against Hamas. (1/2)
The student protesters never cued in to this peril that threatened their movement. I listened, for example to this podcast at the suggestion of another old friend:
ReplyDeletehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-nose/id1573983987?i=1000653607655
In that discussion three young Jewish protest leaders discuss the goals and methods of the Columbia encampment for 42 minutes. They are earnest, articulate, and well-informed, and I feel strongly that they were cruelly and unjustly mistreated by Columbia when they were expelled even before the encampment had been broken up. But while their idealism is admirable, they remain obtuse or naive about how the complexities of the issue will shape the impact of their protests. They mention in passing, for example, that some "outside groups" are chanting messages with which they do not agree, but are very dismissive on that score. They do not go into detail about what those messages are or why they disagree. Most tellingly, in the entire 42 minute discussion they do not once mention the hostages being held by Hamas. That is shocking, and it forecloses any possibility that their message will reach as far as it needs to.
One can object that we should not characterize the protests as "pro-Hamas," and that is fair, but protests are ultimately movements to shape public perception. I suspect that if you asked 1000 random people to characterize the protests, the most frequent answers would be "anti-Israel" or "anti-Zionist." If you then asked the same people "Are the protesters anti-Hamas?" the most frequent answers would be "No" or "I don't know." That may not be fair to the protesters, but it is what they wrought (or allowed to be wrought for them by groups like the one on Broadway chanting "Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!").
I hope that in the long run the impact of these protests will be positive. If mounting international pressure forces Netanyahu to resign before he is compelled to call elections, the protesters will deserve some credit for having brought that about. But if the only effect of the protests is to spread disenchantment and malaise among young people, so that Donald Trump gets re-elected in November, then everyone will have cause to regret, even the people of Gaza that the protesters want to help.(2/2)
Dear Andy,
ReplyDeleteThank you. Benjamin Netanyahu is not the only war criminal. He has plenty of helpers. In his 2007 autobiography, Promises to Keep, Joe Biden described walking through campus with Syracuse law school friends in 1968 to the Varsity Pizza Shop and seeing students hanging out the windows of the chancellor’s office with SDS banners. “They were taking over the building,” wrote Biden. “And we looked up and said, ‘Look at these assholes.’” Today, President Biden is sending thousands upon thousands of 2,000-pound Mk-84 boms to the Israeli state. He has condemned the student protesters and challenged their “right to cause chaos.” Hillary Clinton recently dismissed the student protesters as entitled, ignorant kids: “They don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East or frankly about history in many areas of the world, including in our own country.”
Most of the student protesters on US campuses are not historians, or jurists: they are students with eyes to see and ears to hear, and with courage and a moral conscience. The New York Times and the Washington Post ought to publish links these two texts, who are crystal clear in their condemnation of the Hamas leaders, on their front pages:
Statement of ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan KC: Applications for arrest warrants in the situation in the State of Palestine, 20 May 2024, https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state
Report of the Panel of Experts in International Law (Convened by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court), 20 May 2024, https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/2024-05/240520-panel-report-eng.pdf
Paul
Dear Paul,
ReplyDeleteYou are of course right that Benjamin Netanyahu had plenty of help in his war crimes, but anyone who is directing their anger at Joe Biden or Hilary Clinton, IMHO, is missing the plot. A long list of Bibi's accomplices could be drawn up, but any sane accounting would have one name at the top of the list, as Karim Khan's indictment makes clear: Yahya Sinwa.
On October 6, 2023 Bibi looked at the 1 million+ children of Gaza and said (in effect, I paraphrase): "God willing they will all live in stateless, hopeless poverty forever. With Yahya Sinwa's help it will be so!"
At the same moment, Yahya Sinwa looked at the 1 million+ children of Gaza and said (in effect, I paraphrase): "God willing, after tomorrow many thousands of them will die in blood and fire! With Bibi Netanyahu's help, it will be so!"
I wish what I wrote above were some kind of obscene joke. It is obscene for certain, but it is the plain truth. The Netanyahu regime and Hamas are toxic evils that have been fostering one-another for decades. They must be dismantled in tandem, or not at all. One does not have to be a historian or jurist to understand that. One only needs eyes to see and ears to hear. Doing it, of course, will require a great deal of courage and moral conscience. But it will require strategic intelligence in equal measure.
I hope it is obvious that I do not share either Joe Biden's paternalistic disregard for the student protesters or Hilary Clinton's dismissive contempt. I see my young self reflected in them, and I do truly admire their courage and their commitment. But I cannot, in good conscience stand beside them in this struggle given the way that their campaign has been conducted. Perhaps my view is biased by the fact that I have dozens of dear friends and colleagues who live and work in Israel. Perhaps it is colored by the fact that I am raising a Jewish daughter in a world slipping ever further into patterns of antisemitism and religious bigotry.
But I don't really believe that any of those perspectives make me empirically wrong. The world must rally to the aid of the people of Gaza, but to do so we must (as Karim Khan has done) apply focused and simultaneous pressure on both the Netanyahu regime and Hamas, because both of those forces TOGETHER are the wellspring of Gaza's torment. I meant it in all sincerity when I wrote, at the end of my letter, that I had composed the missive in hope of helping the protesters serve the people of Gaza.