Pricey anti-Israel campus protesters:
Although it could take a couple of years earlier than you understand it, supporters of Israel like me have causes to provide due to militant anti-Zionists such as you.
Not too long ago, a pal requested what I might have manufactured from your protests if that they had been much less fervently one-sided. If, for example, pro-Palestinian pupil teams at Harvard and Columbia hadn’t castigated Israel instantly following the worst bloodbath of Jews because the Holocaust. Or if Jewish college students and professors hadn’t confronted violence, harassment and antisemitic imagery from you or your allies from Harvard to Columbia to Berkeley to Stanford. Or when you had made a degree of acknowledging the actuality of the Oct. 7 rapes or the struggling of Israel’s hostages and their households whereas demanding their protected return. Or when you constantly condemned and distanced yourselves from Hamas. Or if all of you had merely adopted guidelines that gave you each proper to free expression with out trampling on the rights of others to a protected and open campus.
In brief, what in case your protests had targeted on Israel’s insurance policies, whether or not in Gaza or the West Financial institution, slightly than demanding the whole elimination of Israel as a Jewish state? What when you had prevented demonizing anybody who helps Israel’s proper to exist — which features a overwhelming majority of Jews — as modern-day Nazis?
In that case, I instructed my pal, I might have disagreed together with your views however I wouldn’t have despised them. Nor would a broad plurality of Individuals, together with many to my left. The outcome might have been a motion that will have had stronger arguments and larger impression. You’d have been in a position to win over undecideds to your trigger. And I might have needed to combat tougher to make my case that Israel should eliminate Hamas.
I understand this isn’t how a few of you see it. Essentially the most hard-line amongst you need to “sharpen the contradictions,” because the Marxists say. Your actual purpose was to not form U.S. authorities coverage, at the very least within the close to time period. What you actually need to do is normalize anti-Zionism, significantly on elite faculty campuses, whereas hoping that the larger payoff will are available in 20 or 30 years, when these you’ve transformed to your trigger develop into senators and governors and college presidents.
However the issue with sharpening the contradictions is that the contradictions being sharpened are your individual. For each pupil who turned ardently pro-Palestinian through the protests, one other one, maybe a Jewish pupil with beforehand detached emotions about Israel, lastly noticed the connection between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. For each professor who’s proven as much as your encampment to lend assist, you’ve misplaced a fair-minded liberal together with your Maoist-style sloganeering and your conceited disdain for the real fears of a few of your Jewish friends.
And for each graduation ceremony whose cancellation you’ve successfully pressured, or which you propose to spoil, 1000’s of apolitical college students — who didn’t get to have a correct highschool commencement due to Covid — have taken an intense and everlasting distaste to you and the whole lot you stand for.
In brief, if sharpening the contradictions is the sport you’re taking part in, it’s paying larger dividends for my aspect than it’s for yours. It’s additionally nothing new. These 1968 protests you’re making an attempt to emulate? What they primarily helped obtain was the election of Richard Nixon adopted by almost 40 straight years of right-of-center governance in the US.
Neither is this the one allow you to’re giving my aspect.
I’m a Zionist not solely as a result of I assist Israel’s proper to exist as a Jewish state — an summary level about one other nation. I’m additionally a Zionist for probably the most private of causes: as a result of I see Israel as an insurance coverage coverage for each Jewish household, together with mine, which has endured persecution and exile up to now and understands that we might not be protected endlessly in our host international locations. For anybody with a historic reminiscence of France till Dreyfus, Germany till Hitler or Iran till Khomeini, that form of insurance coverage is one Jews can’t afford to lose.
What occurred on Oct. 7 shook my religion within the high quality of that insurance coverage: What else does the Israeli state exist for, in spite of everything, if to not shield its individuals from the form of butchery they endured that day? However what occurred on Oct. 8 — the second your protests started — renewed that religion, as a result of it gave me a glimpse into what America may but develop into for Jews, at the very least if individuals such as you had been to realize actual energy.
I get that many if not most of you see yourselves as devoted idealists who need to finish struggling for Palestinians, champion equality and oppose all types of bigotry. There are methods you would do this with out making frequent trigger with individuals who hate Jews, need to kill us and sometimes do. Supporting a two-state resolution could be one such method. Insisting that Palestinians deserve higher leaders than Hamas is one other. Constructing bridges with Israelis is a 3rd.
As an alternative, with out understanding it, you’re my each day reminder of what my Zionism is for, about and towards. For that, if nothing else, thanks.
