I suppose I need to say something

I'm usually reluctant to post here about whatever the BIG STORY is of the day, because everybody else is talking about it and, unless it has to do with medical sociology or health services policy, I don't necessarily have anything of particular value to add. In this regard I am unlike the columnists who get paid high six figure salaries to become instant experts on everything in the New York Times. However, I don't think I can avoid the Israel-Palestine conflict (it isn't exactly a war because it's so massively asymmetrical) and the student protests around the country.

I'm not going to spend a lot of words on the merits of the conflict. Unless you believe -- as many people do -- God gave "the Jews" -- a fictitious entity -- all the land between the Jordan and the sea, and that they are entitled to take it by force and murder or expel the people who already happen to be there, as Joshua did -- then you have to believe that something is amiss with the Israeli state. Put simply, that is what they have been trying to do since 1967. The Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, and in violation of numerous UN resolutions. 

 

The people of Gaza and the West Bank have essentially no political or civil rights, they are economically wholly dependent, and they have been subjected to relentless violence, oppression, and dispossession. If you do not believe every word I just wrote, you are not living in reality. I should add that the Hamas attack of October 7 was obviously an atrocity, but the dirty non-secret is that Hama was originally a creation of the Israeli security forces and they have made sure to keep it in operation in order to undermine the Palestinian authority and claim they have no viable negotiating partner. Because they don't want to negotiate, they want to steal the land and exterminate the Palestinians as a political and social entity. 

However, "The Jews" are not doing this. As a matter of fact, much of the leadership and participants in the protests against the Gaza genocide are Jewish. Certain, specific people, a faction that currently controls the Israeli state, are doing this. They also happen to be the same people who claim that any criticism or dissent from what they do constitute denigration of Jews as a people and antisemitism. They are the ones who intentionally and publicly attach their own sins to all Jews, ergo they are the worst of the antisemites. 

Now, as for the protests, there is first and foremost the question of effectiveness. Is this really a means of changing the facts in Gaza and Palestine and stopping the mass murder of civilians? Well, it's certainly gotten people's attention and made it clear that there is dissent. As a practical matter, the only entities they might have any leverage over are their own institutions, and whether a university endowment fund divests from weapons manufacturers or the university boycotts Israeli institutions (the latter of which I do not support, BTW) will have no significant effect.  But I was young once, I can relate to how a sense of moral urgency translates into a demand for action, in whatever form it may be available. 

Yes, there have been instances in which specific people have made statements or held signs that denigrate the Jewish people in the midst of all this. There have also been similar slurs against Muslims and Arabs and Palestinians, and actual physical attacks. That is bad, but it is largely a separate issue from the protests per se. Also, yes, breaking into university buildings and occupying them so that business cannot go on is neither morally justifiable nor of any avail whatsoever in advancing the cause.

On the other hand, many of the university administrations -- and they're largely presidential dictatorships, the faculty get to yell and scream and vote after the fact but they don't make the initial decisions -- reacted inappropriately to peaceful demonstrators. If they were occupying space that would be needed in a couple of weeks for commencement ceremonies, then sure, something needed to be done about it eventually. So at Brown, they made a deal. The corporation will reconsider its investment policies, the students will get to make their case, and it will happen in public. That may not sound like a bit change but believe me, it is. When I first got there the investment manager made a presentation to the faculty and he made it very clear that their one and only purpose was to make as much profit from the endowment as they could, and they weren't about to listen to any of that bleeding heart nonsense. BTW, he had come over from the family office managing his own family's fortune. He was wearing Topsiders and an alligator shirt. Really. 

Anyway, that's all I've got to say for now. I'm sure you despise me.