One Can Only Hope

This is going to be a relatively short post this week. It's Sunday and the last two days of Passover begin at sundown which means it's chag...holy days...until Tuesday at sundown. Yeah, it's schlep. I know this. But it is what it is. 

Me during my protest period

I want to take a moment to write about the protests, demonstrations, and comparisons to the anti-war protests of the 60s and early 70s.To be honest, there are similarities, but there are also vast chasms of difference. I will absolutely admit to being part of the anti-war and free speech movements, probably beginning around 1967. I grew up in New York, on Long Island, but much of my time was also spent in the city. I participated in all sorts of anti-war demonstrations both in the city, at my high school, and later at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan where I spent my freshman and part of sophomore year. These were non-violent, directly in protest of American involvement in Vietnam, and, by extension, the draft. 

Those Columbia protests in the spring of 1968, however, were actually about two separate issues: the building of a gym in Morningside Heights and an anti-war protest. Two very different issues that were rolled together. It was not all peace and love; there were actions that resulted in the cops coming in. People were arrested. Sit-ins, building takeovers, and assorted rallies were largely non-violent although taking over Hamilton Hall was a bit dicey. But the two issues were clear: the gym and American involvement in Vietnam. 

Free speech is a cornerstone of American law and culture. But that does not mean any ol' speech qualifies as free speech. Free speech cannot mean hate speech, nor falsehood speech, nor even yelling FIRE in a crowded theater when there is none. Free speech comes with responsibility and if you wanna have it, you have to take the opinions you like as well as the ones you don't like. Truth telling must be central to free speech. My 7th-grade civics teacher used to remind us daily, free speech is an American right, but a civil responsibility. Use it wisely; guard it well.

The protests taking place at Columbia and universities across America are not quite like Miss Pease's vision for American wisdom. There's a fundamental lack of truth-telling and a whole lotta hyperbole going around. And while some might think this bolsters their case, it does, in fact, weaken it significantly. Hang on to that thought.

I am not a Ross Douthat fan even remotely, but I think he made a strong point in his op piece in the New York Times. He writes about what was once required reading versus the more recent changes to introductory curriculum:

But if you’re willing to simplify and flatten history — 20th-century history especially — it is easier to make these preoccupations fit Israel-Palestine. With its unusual position in the Middle East, its relatively recent founding, its close relationship to the United States, its settlements and occupation, Israel gets to be the singular scapegoat for the sins of defunct European empires and white-supremacist regimes...

Recognizing that this is happening — that Israel is a kind of enemy of convenience for a left-wing worldview that otherwise lacks real-world correlates for its theories — does not excuse the Israeli government for its failings, or vindicate its searching-for-an-endgame strategy in Gaza, or justify any kind of mistreatment of student protesters.

But it helps explain the two things that seem so disproportionate in these protests and the culture that surrounds them. First, it explains why this conflict attracts such a scale of on-campus attention and action and disruption, while so many other wars and crises (Sudan, Congo, Armenia, Burma, Yemen …) are barely noticed or ignored.

Second, it explains why the attention seems to leap so quickly past critique into caricature, past sympathy for the Palestinians into justifications for Hamas, past condemnation of Israeli policy into anti-Semitism.

The truth is that these aspects of contemporary protest politics are not just a recrudescence of past bigotries. They are partially that, but they are also something stranger, a reflection of a worldview that has come to its anti-Semitic temptations through a circuitous route.

This worldview is broad enough to set curricula but too narrow to find full purchase in the world as it exists, intent on finding enemies but discovering more of them in the past than in the present, and fastening on Israel with a sense of excited vindication — a spirit that yields easily, as righteous vindication often does, to hate.

While I rarely agree with this guy on anything, Douthat's observation on scapegoatism is really spot on. But I don't think that's everything. Ignorance of facts is part of the rhetoric being accepted as gospel. Refusing to recognize Jews as indigenous to the land sorta flies in the face of admitting your building is sitting on top of Second Temple. Calling Jesus as Palestinian when he was Judean is ridiculous, yet he is being played as an agent of resistance against Jews. Calling Jews colonizers when they returned to their traditional homeland, speak the language that is basically the same language as 1000 years ago, based the monetary unit on the shekel, the same monetary unit from ancient time, are not the marks of colonizers. They are, in fact, the hallmarks of DE-colonizers, but none of that matters in this world of make-believe history. 

Nor does it seem to matter that the hatred espoused at Jews, Zionist or not, is given a clean pass.

In his NYTimes op-ed piece, I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice,  John McWhorter writes:

I thought about what would have happened if protesters were instead chanting anti-Black slogans or even something like “D.E.I. has got to die,” to the same “Sound Off” tune that “From the river to the sea” has been adapted to. They would have lasted roughly five minutes before masses of students shouted them down and drove them off the campus. Chants like that would have been condemned as a grave rupture of civilized exchange, heralded as threatening resegregation and branded as a form of violence. I’d wager that most of the student protesters against the Gaza war would view them that way. Why do so many people think that weekslong campus protests against not just the war in Gaza but Israel’s very existence are nevertheless permissible?

Although I know many Jewish people will disagree with me, I don’t think that Jew hatred is as much the reason for this sentiment as opposition to Zionism and the war on Gaza. I know some of the protesters, including a couple who were taken to jail last week, and I find it very hard to imagine that they are antisemitic. Yes, there can be a fine line between questioning Israel’s right to exist and questioning Jewish people’s right to exist. And yes, some of the rhetoric amid the protests crosses it.

I've been wondering about that a lot. If people were standing in the middle of campus shouting "Go Back to Africa!" all hell would  break loose. What if the Sioux banded together to demand the return of their traditional lands? How about if a band of Mexicans for Repatriation of Texas (I made that up but I'm sure there are some who would love to take back Texas) crossed the border, murdered a swath of people in Laredo, kidnapped a whole lotta people and took 'em across the border as hostages?. How long would the US put up with that?

So, here's where I'm at, just so you know:

I do think Netanyahu is responsible to the debacle unfolding Gaza, but I don't agree that he is the root cause. 

I do believe there needs to be a ceasefire. 

I do believe all the hostages MUST be returned. 

I do abhor the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and I want an absolute end of the hostilities. 

Most of all, I want to see Gaza freed from the shackles of Hamas to build an economy and a country where its people can be free, self-reliant, and successful. ALL its people. Not just the straight ones.

But....and isn't there always a but?

There is a group called Shakara, Arabic for Partnership, consisting of men and women from Muslims countries. It's worth reading about them just to be reassured what is happening here is not universally shared. The article, In Israel, activists from Muslim countries denounce common threat of radical Islam appeared in The Times of Israel and is worth reading. This social media post on X is from one of the  participants; I thinks it speaks volumes:

One can only hope.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

May unmaking Pesach be easy and stress-free. 

And may there be a big cheese pizza the end.