Both Palestine and Israel Should Be Free
I know each of the four retired sociology and global studies professors whose statement on Israel/Palestine and campus protests recently appeared in this space. One is a close personal friend. The others are casual friends. All are men of high ideals who have made significant, in some instances landmark, contributions to the struggle to make the world a better place. But their statement, while well intentioned, misses the mark by lacking a sufficiently strong acknowledgement that there are clear anti-Semitic slogans in some protests, and failing to acknowledge reported cases of threats of violence. And its description of the Israel-Hamas War follows the Hamas narrative in misrepresenting Israel’s objectives in Gaza.
This item, while subtle, should be recognizable to anyone familiar with political advocacy. The statement devotes one brief sentence to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, condemning it as an “unjustifiable atrocity.” This is an anodyne depiction intended to demonstrate the authors’ fair-mindedness. But a claim to fair-mindedness is undermined by the absence of detail of what happened on October 7: 1,200 innocents slaughtered in cold blood, 240 hostages taken, babies torn from their mother’s’ womb and decapitated, sexual violence against women, and a host of other acts of barbarism. In stark contradistinction, the statement pays far greater attention to the damage inflicted by Israel, ignoring the unassailable fact that most of the destruction resulted from Hamas violating international law by placing military installations in close proximity to homes, schools, hospitals, and other places where civilians likely would likely be in harm’s way.
Moreover, the statement ignores the fact that Israel is driven not by a thirst for revenge or genocidal aspirations, although regrettably, both have been expressed by a small minority of Israeli extremists and their diaspora supporters. In Hamas, Israel faces an enemy that openly affirms that its primary objective — really its raison d’etre — is eradicating the Jewish state by any means necessary, including murdering Jews. These goals were articulated in Hamas’s Charter (1988) and reaffirmed in its 2017 revised version. It’s legitimate to question whether the price being paid by Gazan non-combatants is justified by Israel’s right to defend itself by degrading the potency of terrorists committed to its destruction. But nothing is gained by siding with protesters chanting “From the river to the sea/Palestine will be free” — which echoes Hamas’s genocidal ambitions.
Is there a more constructive role the four retired professors, and many others like them, can play in struggling to find a path to peace, justice, and equality for all humans in Israel/Palestine? I think there is. In a recent op-ed published in the Washington Post, Paul Berman — a Washington lawyer, scholar, and former activist in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which was founded by one of the signatories — recalls the 1968 uprising at Columbia University, where he was a student:
“I raced around the quads helping to foment our mighty student strike. And, as I did so, one professor after another accosted me on the brick walkways to harangue me with lectures about politics and the past. They wanted me to understand that Germany’s leftists in the 1930s had failed to understand Nazism’s danger. Foolish left-wing radicalism had helped undermine the German universities, which ought to have been a place of anti-Nazi resistance. They wanted me to understand, all in all, that what people think they are doing might not be what they are actually doing, and, in the name of high ideals, society might be weakened, and the worst of disasters might be brought about.”
There is a pathway toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It entails a mutual recognition of the other side’s legitimacy in claiming a place for itself in the historic Middle East, and a renunciation of absolutist demands, especially those that fuel violence. It’s dangerously naïve to suggest that forcing a unilateral cease-fire on Israel will lead to peace. Unless and until Hamas renounces its genocidal aspirations, a unilateral ceasefire does nothing more than give terrorists an opportunity to re-organize and re-arm for another episode in their unrelenting pursuit of Israel’s destruction. Students, in their zeal to be heard, may not understand this. But their professors should, as Paul Berman’s teachers at Columbia did more than a half century ago.
Students can be “social change trailblazers” as the statement asserts. But not if their teachers encourage a direction for that trail that exacerbates toxic polarization. Their slogan should be “From the river to the sea/Both Palestine and Israel should be free.”
Rabbi Youdovin is executive vice president emeritus of Chicago Board of Rabbis and founding executive director of ARZA, Association of Reform Zionists of America. He’s been living in Santa Barbara since 2006.