ISTM #60 Gaza & the Student Protests

“ I may disagree with every word you say, but I will fight to the death your right to say it.” —Evelyn Beatrice Hall (often attributed to Voltaire.)

Like so many of my generation, I was greatly shaped by my experiences in the late 1960s and early ‘70s. I marched for civil rights and environmental protection, most often against the Vietnam War. Although I witnessed acts of violence by both police and protesters, my actions were always peaceful.

The closest I ever came to violence was in the 1966 March Against Fear in Jackson, Mississippi, after I flipped off a red-necked heckler who then heaved a pitchfork at me, missing me by at least six feet.

I was arrested only once, and that was in 1971, when 175,000 of us marched against the Vietnam War in Washington, DC. I was among the 7,000 who were confined overnight in the DC Coliseum. We turned it into quite a party,  singing, chanting, hugging, and joking in front of stands filled with befuddled police officers.

Today, such events are little noted. Even those of us who experienced them had forgotten about them for the most part. We’re grandparents now and are more concerned with retirement funds than giving peace a chance. It seems to me that what we did back then has been little noted nor long remembered, and that has been just fine with me.

It All Came Back
But it all started coming back to me this past weekend when I read multiple reports of protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. There were student confrontations and arrests at  Columbia, Harvard, UCLA, Cal Poly, Yale, Harvard, Browne, NYU, and UC Berkeley. Michigan, Minnesota, and, I assume, elsewhere.

I saw footage of angry students fighting police and each other, which greatly resembled what had happened so many years earlier. The only significant difference was that the video is now in color and watched on computer screens rather than TV.

The rhetoric was similar, filled with passion and outrage.

As I watched, it seemed to me that my generation had been there and done that—often at the same institutions, using the same rhetoric and taking over the same administrative offices. Columbia, which was among the first institutions to be shut down by students in the 60s, was once again leading a national student protest against war and the killing of innocents.

To me, it was Deja vu.  Instead of meeting and listening to students, those in power called in the police and, in the name of keeping the peace, used what seemed to me to be excessive violence. Over 200 students were arrested, and authorities often blamed it on unknown, unnamed “outside agitators.”

Once again, academic decision-makers have demonstrated an inability to learn lessons from their own recent histories.  In the ‘60s, college administrators learned the best route to restoring peace was to sit down and listen, talk, and compromise to the protesters and then adjust course accordingly.

The best way to deal with protesters is to listen, talk, and find a common ground.  In the ‘60s, such authorities slowly learned that the best way to end campus protests was to listen and compromise rather than show force to suppress.

Death to Innocents

I want to clarify a few points about myself. I have been to Israel as a speaker and have friends who live there. I lost my family in the Holocaust and believe with all my heart in Israel’s right to exist.  I also deeply dislike killing civilians by any military force. Israel and Palestine both have legitimate historic claims to the same land, and previous attempts to make a lasting peace have not succeeded. Israel simply will not be pushed from the river to the sea.
On the other hand, I do not think much of Benjamin Netanyahu and never have been. He is not a man of peace and news reports continue to state that 70 percent of Israelis want him to resign.

I want nothing less than a lasting peace in the Middle East and it cannot happen until the Israeli people take action to change leadership. But the mistakes we are seeing there are very similar to mistakes we have experienced here, in the US, and we responded in the same way Israel is doing now:

At 6:30 am on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas sent a barrage of an estimated 2,200 missiles into  Israel then attacked and killed over 1200 Israelis, many of them still sleeping in their beds. Many atrocities are well-documented: Over 1200 hostages were taken, 250 remaining captive now.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded with overwhelming force. An estimated 35,000 Gazans who probably had nothing to do with the Hamas attack have been killed by the Israeli Defense Force.

I oppose war in general,  and I oppose this over-response by Israel’s prime minister.
Their overreaction has led to student protests, and as a lifelong advocate of peace, I detest the military extermination of civilians anywhere. I strongly oppose the continuing brutal killing of Gazan civilians by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

Casting Epitaphs

But let those of us who are without the sins of war cast the first epitaph against Israel. It is certainly not the United States, which has a long history of over-response. For example, in 1964, gunfire was exchanged between Vietnamese and US hips on the Gulf of Tonkin. No Americans were killed or wounded. We responded by invading Vietnam and eventually killing over 3 million Vietnamese—overwhelmingly civilians.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the US suffered its most severe terrorist attack by the assault on the World Trade Towers.  Between 3000 and 4000 Americans died because of it. In our pain and rage, the US responded by invading Afghanistan, where we killed an estimated 3.7 million non-combatants.  Then we packed up and left without accomplishing much of anything, as I see it.

Small countries are ill-equipped to start a war against the US, so they are prone to use terrorist tactics. It seems to me that any terrorist we capture should be severely punished. But I just can’t get behind killing millions of people for no other reason than they live in a country that is hostile to us. The same goes for Israel, as far as I’m concerned.

It seems to me that when a strong country cannot capture and execute terrorists, they just go off and kill a lot of people who have nothing to do with the incident. It has been going like that for many years and I doubt it will end anytime soon.

In my heart, I am still marching on the streets of the 1960s, shouting to stop wars, slow global warming, and end governmental injustice. I am still hoping that college presidents elect to listen and respond to protesters rather than attacking and punishing them.

I can neither forget nor forgive the atrocities that Hamas has committed that caused. I feel pain for the remaining hostages, but I do not think killing innocent Palestinians will do anything more than build resolve against Israel worldwide.

Conclusion
I usually try to wrap up these ItSeemstoMe newsletters with a clever or visionary statement. They have usually been optimistic. I cannot do that in this case. I fear that college presidents and others in authority will continue to use unnecessary force at times when it may be wiser and more effective to resist force, lower voices, and try to foment understanding.

In the case of Israel and Palestine, we have two peoples claiming ownership of the same land, and neither side seems willing to negotiate peacefully.

It is what Buddhists call a Great Mandala, a wheel of life that is expected to bring harmony to our planet eventually. People have been expecting it for thousands of years, and still, it has not come.

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Shel Israel writes books, articles, presentations, and white papers for executives, mostly from the tech industry. He is the author of six tech business books under his own name. Text (6504304042) or email him at Shel@shelisrael.com.