During a recent visit to the student encampment on Cornell University’s campus, I tried to understand why anyone would want to threaten or punish these young people for their opposition to the killing of thousands of civilians, many of them children, in Gaza. According to the media, a war is raging in Gaza. People are dying, schools and hospitals blasted to bits, entire families destroyed. But this is not a conflict between two well-armed well-trained armies. This is one heavily armed army attacking Palestinian civilians. It is soldiers bombing children who have done nothing to harm the state of Israel, children who happen to live in Gaza, who want to grow up, go to school, play, have children of their own, live in peace.
Throughout the world, students are protesting the massacre of innocents in Gaza. Demonstrating not out of a hatred for Israel, but out of a desire to create peace in the Middle East. Like those who took to the streets during the Vietnam War, these demonstrators are demanding that the killing stop, that the world community find ways to secure a just peace in places like Gaza.
At the height of the war in Vietnam, the war’s opponents faced tear gas, beatings, jail, and death. We were demonized for demanding an end to what was clearly a monumental tragedy for the Vietnamese people and for our own nation.
Today, students throughout the world are asking for an end to the killing of children in Gaza. Institutions of higher learning are reacting to these protests by calling in the police to assault nonviolent protestors, by expelling and threatening to expel demonstrators. Administrators complain that students are disrupting the flow of normal academic life. Students are interfering with campus life by camping out on university lawns. In short, students are refusing to support the violence being done in their name in the Middle East.
This feels like déjà vu, an astonishing lack of support for students and all people of good faith who are speaking up for life, working for peace, and taking risks for justice. I believe we owe these students our gratitude for refusing to be silenced by those who obviously do not really believe in the right to free speech and of assembly.
Those who tear gassed, beat, and jailed anti-war protestors claimed they were attacking us in order to protect democracy. Really? Now, we hear the same rhetorical nonsense. Students who speak up for life should be censored, kicked off campus, forced into silence. All in the name of freedom and Democracy.
That never worked. It won’t work now. “The whole world is watching,” we used to shout as police batons rained down on our heads and we chocked on teargas. We experienced the violence of those who espoused freedom, but did not believe in legitimate protest.
Will the Ithaca Community stand in support of students, faculty, and staff at Cornell University? Will we demand that the university stop threatening and start listening to courageous people? Punishing peace activists will do nothing to create a better, more peaceful, world. It didn’t stop those of us who wanted to end the killing in Vietnam, and it won’t stop those who are calling for an end to the mass destruction in Gaza.
I support, admire, and applaud all who are protesting the wholesale killing of Palestinian children. Let us hope that academia will one day agree to support advocates of social justice and to reward those who work for peace in our violent world.
(4) comments
For the sake of humanity and civilization, Hamas must be destroyed. The IDF is fighting a just war. Hamas consists of sociopathic monsters as evidenced on October 7. Unfortunately there will be some innocents unintentionally killed or wounded as in all wars. However the vast adult majority of Gaza created Hamas, elected it, supported it, supplied it, worked for it, hid it, sheltered it, joined it and celebrated its many atrocities.
No sympathy or support for the pro Hamas demonstrators. They have little knowledge of history and no morality. Shame on them and shame on all the so called educators who indoctrinated instead of educating them.
NEVER AGAIN!
Paul Costantini
Paul Constantini is exactly right.
There have been chants at the “encampment” essentially calling for genocide against Jews.
Creepy enough to yearn to commit genocide against Jews but even more perverse to then accuse Israel of doing what they are trying to do and would do if they could - and which Israel is precisely NOT doing.
May we set up a STOP DEI or DEFUND CORNELL encampment? If not, why not?
I visited the encampment early on and found the students to whom I talked to be friendly and respectful. They either are missing some vital information in their demands, or they ignore half the story. I would support peaceful protests calling for peace, which would mean blaming Hamas as much as they blame Israel for the current war. Even Palestinian peace activists don't like how campus protests are focused. Palestinian peace activists want the end of Hamas, which is a terrible oppressor of Palestinians AND has promised they'll continue to attack Israel as they did on October 7 until the Jews are annihilated. Many Arab countries want the end of Hamas. Students chanting antisemitic chants and pro-Hamas chants is unacceptable at Cornell. Iran supports Hamas, including financing, equipping, training and planning attacks. Hamas and Hezbollah continue to this day bombing Israel, attacking, injuring and killing civilians, displacing 80,000 Israelis internally. We want peace, but campus protests won't result in peace. Peace has to be offered from both sides of a conflict. Since Hamas plans to continue attacking Israel, Israel has decided it will provide more security for their civilians if Hamas is incapacitated. As the Biden administration says repeatedly, the war would have ended if Hamas had returned hostages and laid down arms. Calling for university to divest from Israel without making a peep about our complex financial relationship with Qatar, another militarized country, is hypocritical.
“'The whole world is watching,' we used to shout as police batons rained down on our heads and we chocked [sic] on teargas." - Fred Wilcox
Speak for yourself, buddy. Not all of us who opposed the war in Vietnam were left-wing rioters!
Sincerely, barmayden Annette-Rose Blayk, COMETMONGER
PS: I've been Right-Wing, Anti-Nazi, AND anti-war since the age of 14 in 1970. They're not at all incompatible, you know, if you think about it? - "Capitalists just HATE seeing property damage, and Christians generally disapprove of mass murder!"
In my opinion, the protestors ought to be condemning US support for the right-wing regime in Ukraine led by that war-mad maniac Zelensky!
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