Several dozen students rallied at Broward Commons on the Rutgers-New Brunswick campus Thursday in defense of Palestinian rights and justice, chanting slogans and demanding an end to Israel as an apartheid state. The rally attracted a handful of counter protesters and, at one point, a man in a yarmulke raced across College Avenue, screaming at the protesters, which led some to turn on him. Rutgers officials on site — volunteer marshals — quickly separated the two and prevented anything from escalating.
It would be easy to dismiss the counter protester as an angry thug, a grown man attacking a bunch of kids. That does both sides a disservice. This brief interaction is a snapshot of the anger and resentment on both sides, a seething that is unlikely to abate until advocates acknowledge the humanity of all involved.
I’m not talking about Hamas or the Israeli government. I’m talking about the workers and children, the parents and teens and all who are just trying to survive on a day-to-day basis.
The anger is paramount at this moment. Hamas slaughtered civilians. There is no justification for that, no amount of theorizing that can make that acceptable. The Israeli response has been scorched earth, an unjustified and indiscriminate targeting of Gaza’s residents. Civilians.
These are war crimes, as I wrote the other day, and they occur within a cycle of regional violence that begins with the occupation by the Israeli government of Gaza and the West Bank that has prevented an economy from taking root, has restricted movement of innocent Palestinians, and has treated them as less than human. Gaza, in particular, has been subjected to ongoing brutalities that have operated like a pressure cooker — the steam builds and, unless it is vented in some way, it will blow.
But there is more here, elements that both sides need to acknowledge, an emotional tie this particular land that is built into the DNA. This connection makes this more than just a debate over colonialism.
This emotional connection — I am pro-Palestinian rights, but also a Jew who was taught to have a special connection to Israel — made it hard to listen to some of the language being used by the students Thursday, language that has been common on the left this week. Jews hear this — the comparison of Zionism to Nazism, is an example — differently, or many of us do, even if we are longstanding critics of Israel and the Zionist project.
We hear — or I hear, at least — a dehumanizing of Jews, a conflation of Jew and Israeli, and the transference of anger from Israeli government to the broader Jewish community. Jews do this too — Israelis and Americans — when they erase Palestinians or, worse, portray them as literal animals. (The comparison of Hamas to the Nazis is equally dehumanizing.)
Sadly, Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway exacerbated the tensions on campus when he ignored Palestinian lives in his letter to the university community, an elision that left many Muslim students feeling unsafe.
The critical power analysis is important. Many on the left have attempted to frame what is happening through this analytical lens — for good reason. There is a power imbalance in the region, with one nation having one of the world’s best prepared army protecting a nation with a vibrant economy and the other having a smaller cadre of fighters and a captive population.
The analytical framework captures many of the important issues, but is inadequate to capture the pain being inflicted on both sides — especially when we are making these theoretical arguments from such a distance, safe and secure at our computers or on campus. The 1,300 dead Israelis are not theoretical and should not be seen as the price of freedom or the cost of ending colonial rule. Similarly, the 1,800 Palestinians killed since the war began — and the millions killed over the last several decades — are not an acceptable cost of Israel’s defense. These takes are callous and reduces the loss of life to political calculations, treating all civilians as disposable pawns.
As I write this on Friday, a day after the Rutgers rally, and another day of reflection and worry, The New York Times reports that Israel has ordered Palestinians in northern Gaza to evacuate south, “a possible precursor to a ground invasion but one that the United Nations warned could be calamitous.” Many Gaza residents “were reluctant to leave their homes for southern Gaza, which has even fewer resources, and routes to get there have been damaged by a week of Israeli strikes.”
The call for mass displacement takes what we are witnessing to a new level, and it makes it more urgent than ever that we find ways to get beyond the tribalism and violence that has marked much of Israel’s 75-year history. Haaretz, the liberal Israeli newspaper, reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “vowed that the ceaseless airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, which so far claimed the lives of over 1,700 Palestinians, are [only the beginning.’”
"We will annihilate Hamas and bring victory. It will take time, but will finish this war stronger than ever," he concluded.
The subtext is that those Gazans who do not flee south will be treated as combatants, a conflation of military and civilian that may not rise to the legal definition of a war crime but should be condemned as one.
The Hamas attacks cannot be condoned. That to me is simple. Israel’s indiscriminate response is indefensible, as well. Both things can be and are true. The targeting of civilians is morally repugnant and undercuts whatever moral high ground one might claim.
That was what Camus meant in The Rebel when he described ideology and religion as false rebellion, as the forfeiting of real freedom. They represent, he said, man’s attempt to replace god with himself. Doing so, I would add, leaves man unable to understand what true justice looks like, especially as the death toll rises, as civilians — workers — are slaughtered.