What we all remember from participating in a protest march, or a demonstration for social justice, human rights, or peace, is the almost overwhelming feeling of being part of something. Long after the chants have echoed away, that sense of belonging, an undefinable experience of fellowship, remains. From the refusenik demonstrations I attended as a small child with my patents, to anti-apartheid and anti-WTO protests as I grew older, Occupy Wall Street, and the Women’s March in 2017, the feeling was always the same. “The people united will never be defeated,” we chanted perhaps overly-optimistically, but the people were united; and that was the point.
In Zuccotti Park in 2011, I listened to Naomi Klein put it in perfect perspective. “Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: ‘We found each other,’” she said, with Mark di Suvero’s sculpture Joi de Vivre looming behind her “That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can’t be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.” Thousands applauded.
She concluded: “Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is.”
That is what we have to understand about the students who have been demonstrating for peace, human rights, and justice for the Palestinian people in college encampments across the United States and around the world. In this moment, this is the most important thing in the world and, even more crucially, the protesters are all part of something greater than themselves; it is a moment of communion with friends and strangers who have become comrades, brothers, and sisters in a shared struggle. It is more than important – it is the most beautiful thing in the world.
You wouldn’t know this from reading the news. The headlines at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and even The Guardian speak almost exclusively of confrontation and crisis. The fear merchants in the right-wing media, like Fox News and the New York Post, run fictionalized screeds promoting the myths of chaos unleashed and unbounded hate. In fairness, they have eyeballs to grab and ads to sell; as we said in the news business when I was reporting for newspapers still printed on newsprint with ink that came off on your hands: “If it bleeds, it leads.” There is no margin in telling stories of community and fellowship in a shared cause.
Karen Attiah, writing in the Washington Post this week, is a rare exception. A graduate of, and now a journalism lecturer at Columbia University, Attiah took the time, in a way that so few of her colleagues have, to actually go to the university’s protest encampment and see how it looked on the ground. “Around me, students were reading, studying and chatting,” she wrote. “Some were making art and painting. I saw an environment rich with learning, but I did not see disruption.”
“Gazing on the solidarity in the camp, I forgot about the choppers, the threat of violence in the sky,” Attiah continued.
Make no mistake, the whole point of protest, in whatever form that it takes, is confrontation; if we aspire to speak truth to power, we must be prepared to confront power. Even Bayard Rustin and the activists of the American Friends Service Committee, all committed to moral suasion, deployed the language of confrontation in their formula for nonviolent resistance against the oppressor. “The whole success of the resistance depends on meeting the enemy on a level and in a manner against which he cannot retaliate effectively,” they wrote in Speaking Truth to Power. “He understands violence, and he is prepared to cope with it ruthlessly and drastically. He must be given no excuse to do so.”
We have seen at Columbia, at Dartmouth, and on the front lines of the movement for peace, justice, and for the freedom of the Palestinian people everywhere, that “the enemy” needs no excuse to resort to ruthless violence. It is, after all, the very nature of power in 21st century America; it is inconceivable today, as Baroness Shafik has demonstrated so clearly at Columbia, that power could even be exercised without violence. Protesters confronting power know well today that the police will beat and brutalize them with no more a sense of shame than one cracks an egg. And most Americans, inured to violence through a decade or more of political churlishness and cruelty, will just look away.
Yet, the demonstrators, armed with the deep wells of fellowship, communion and, yes, love, stand up to the inevitable crack of the truncheons anyway. To be part of something to this degree is to know that one’s moral and political commitments are existential; that, if they are to be actualized and mean anything at all, you have to “put your body on the line.” After the World Economic Forum protests in New York in 2002, Carwil Bjork-James wrote that “as in the days following the Kent State shootings in 1970 or the Sharpeville massacre in 1961, we were a movement overcoming our fear of death, drawing power from our collective vulnerability.” That is what the demonstrators know today and why, despite the violence visited on them by state power, white power, and their Zionist tools, they persist.
The power of the “collective vulnerability” in the encampments is firmly rooted in their fellowship, and that is something that the media, officials in the academy and in government eager to curry power’s favor, and so many casual onlookers whose knowledge of the world extends no deeper than their smartphone screens are unable to see. They could not understand it even if they could see it.
The moments of collectivity, of shared experiences, of the calls to prayer in the encampments, the songs, the seders and Shabbes services, and that ineffable sense of fraternity, are something so far beyond their experience that they can only find it incomprehensible – and even frightening. But it is there, in the nexus of those connections, where generations of demonstrators for social justice, human rights, or peace have always found their strength.
5 May 2024
***
Molly and I went to a concert last night at the Richardson Auditorium at Princeton University’s Alexander Hall. The encampment is just outside, in Cannon Green, in front of Nassau Hall. We walked past the demonstrators on a beautiful late-spring night, with a cool breeze freshening the air. We could see their signs and their flags illuminated by the lamps lining the pathways. Lights from phones and camp lights revealed young people in the darkness wearing keffiyehs, baseball caps, t-shirts, and light jackets. I could make out at least one yarmulke, but there might have been more. The night was so quiet that passersby, like us, spoke in muted tones, and I could hear the murmurs of conversations on the green and the sound of prayers. The world felt at peace.
“It is so beautiful,” Molly said, as we stopped for a few minutes and just watched. I wanted to go over and thank the students, but I didn’t want to disturb the moment of quiet fellowship that I know they were experiencing in a shared cause. A couple standing next to us watched in reverent silence; he was recording video on his phone, and she turned to him and whispered “this was not what I expected.”
Molly was right, Cannon Green at Princeton University last night was a heartbreakingly beautiful sight. It was as if a world of peace, justice, dignity, and love is possible. I hope to hold its image in my memory for the rest of my life.
Peace. Salaam. Shalom.
3 May 2024
***
Israel to close Al Jazeera news network in the country | CNN
My brother brought this to my attention. Look… Whether you are a Zionist, an anti-Zionist, or a non-Zionist, you must acknowledge that shutting down a legitimate news operation is not something that democracies do. Whatever your feelings about the State of Israel, this should make you very, very uncomfortable. After almost 30 years (with a few breaks) of one-party, strongman rule, it should be clear that the State of Israel is a “Democracy in Name Only.” For the sake of Israelis, their neighbors, and the Palestinians living under Israeli bombs and oppression, Benjamin Netanyahu must go. That is the immediate precondition for peace and justice.
5 May 2024
***
When violence came to the peace encampment at UCLA, it was brought by Zionists. That should not come as a surprise since Zionism is an ideology of violence. Jewish American Zionists will protest that this is not so, that Zionism is merely the ideology and instrument of the national aspirations of the Jewish people. They will point to the mythical Sabras in bucket hats “making the desert bloom” and singing “Hineh ma Tov” – “Behold how good and pleasing/For brothers to sit together in unity” – in a wadi as the sun sets over the sands. They will say that the “true Zionism” is Labor Zionism, a benign movement infused with the principles of European Social Democracy, which seeks friendly coexistence with its Palestinian neighbors, just like Paul Newman’s Ari Ben Canaan friendship with John Derek’s Taha in the film Exodus.
And they are dead wrong. That Zionism does not exist. American Jewish Zionists cling to a delusion of Liberal Zionism, a belief in a State of Israel that embodies what they believe to be their political and social values of equality, democracy, freedom, and respect. They sing Ha Tikvah, dutifully fill their pushkes, vocally defend and pray for the welfare of a fantasy State of Israel. American Jewish Zionists honestly believe that the oppression and brutalization of Palestinians is an aberration, a perversion of Zionism’s true path by scoundrels like the “triumvirate of evil:” Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich.
It is a way for American Jewish Zionists to distance themselves from the quotidian brutality of State of Israel, to allow them to support and love the state “with all their heart, and all their soul, and all their strength,” while performatively lamenting its violence and its slide into fascism. What they refuse to see, lest they succumb to a crippling cognitive dissonance, is that the State of Israel is brutality, violence, and fascism, and that is exactly what Zionism produced. Certainly, there was a broader range of possibilities in the past like Ahad Ha-Am’s cultural Zionism, Martin Buber’s Ihudism, and the Blue-Red movement of the 1970s. But that was the past; the Zionism of the 21st century has narrowed to mean one thing, drawing on the single ideological strand of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s revisionism. It means power, domination, and all the violence and cruelty necessary to accomplish it.
This, at least, is something that America’s Christian Zionists well understand. Their support for the State of Israel draws on the deep wells of hate and aspirations to absolute domination in Christian nationalist and Dominionist ideology. For them, real-world Zionism’s viciousness and cruelty are neither a flaw nor an aberration, it is part of the design. In their imaginations, the State of Israel is enacting the Biblically-mandated genocide of the Ammonites, Aramites, the Jebusites, and all the other Canaanite tribes. “Write this in a book as a memorial, and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” (Exodus 17:14)
That, too, is how real-world Zionism, the ideology which animates the State of Israel, understands the task, no matter what the liberal Jewish Zionists of America might imagine from the other side of the world. This is the basis of the Christian nationalist extreme right’s unwavering support for the State of Israel, and why hardcore bigots like Elise Stefanik can simultaneously embrace the Great Replacement conspiracy theory while cosplaying as the great defender of America’s Jewish community against the mythical dragon of “campus antisemitism.” Real-world Zionism, the ideology of Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich, which justifies the ruthless oppression of the Palestinian people, and can narrate the murder of tens of thousands, destruction, and famine as an objective “good” is their Zionism.
It is the Zionism which denies all other possibilities of Jewish life anywhere in the world. It is the Zionism that conceives of the world as a bitter contest for national survival, where no tribe can coexist with another, and where survival is only possible by gathering each into its own armed camp whose boundaries are defined by force. It is a Zionism that aspires to collect all Jews within the fortifications of the State of Israel. Not incidentally, this is where the aspirations of America’s Christian nationalists, who want nothing so much as the expulsion of all non-Christians – Jews, Muslims, atheists, etc. – from America to create the Christian Commonwealth of their dreams, coincide with the goals of real-world, maximalist Zionism.
Zionism is violence. The fundamental premise of Zionism, as-it-exists and not as liberal Zionists might imagine it, is domination; it cannot exist without violence. So, it is no surprise that, after weeks of peaceful protests demanding an end to the bloodbath in Gaza and the liberation of the Palestinian people, violence came to the encampments with the fists and clubs wielded by Zionist thugs.
1 May 2024
***
Nothing shows that you are “protecting the Jewish members of the campus community” quite like viciously assaulting a Jewish professor and the head of the Jewish Studies department and throwing her to the ground for arrest as she is defending her students’ right to protest.
3 May 2024
***
I really do appreciate the comments from friends about my “courage” for speaking out about the War on Gaza. Make no mistake; it is very gratifying to know that people believe that I am brave and courageous, and I value my friend’s high opinion of me. Maybe we all want to be heroes or, short of that, perceived as heroes. It does my self-esteem well. But it does not really take any courage to speak truth to power. Indeed, I worry that many people believe that it does demand courage and that they might feel that they are not brave enough to do so. We are all brave enough. Speaking truth to power, standing up and making an Amidah that sanctifies life in the face of ideologies of death and violence, only demands a firm conviction in the absolute necessity of pursuing justice. For those of my friends who are, like me, Jewish, it is important to remember that this is exactly what the Prophets enjoined us to do; it is how we enact our Jewishness.* It requires no more courage to speak up than it does to be a Jew. For my Gentile friends, it requires no more courage to speak up than it does to be a human being, a mensch.
Be a mensch.
I recognize my privilege, of course. I will not lose my livelihood for this. The potential for violence is extremely remote and, in social media, the worst that I face is insults and name-calling. It is no fun to be called a “kapo” or a “nazi,” as I am several times per week, but you know… I’ll get over it. While I recognize that many people do not share my privilege but, if you do, then please remember that standing up and speaking truth to power demands no more courage than what you already have by embracing justice and peace as your ethical standards.
So, if you are already speaking up – and most of you are – then keep doing it and don’t let your commitment waver. And if you have been hesitant about speaking up but have the means and the privilege to do so, then know that you do have the courage. Stand up, shout from the mountaintops, speak for those who cannot.
I am always uncomfortable with being any kind of role model – I am too-well aware of my own shortcomings – and I am inspired by others, including all of you in my social media sphere. So let us all continue to stand up together and be each other’s’ role models.
1 May 2024
***
If the campus protests were violent, then the police would have the authority to respond to the violence. The fact that the police are standing-by (with snipers and assault squads) and waiting to be ordered-in by university administrators is actually very eloquent testimony that there has not been any violence for them to respond to.
30 April 2024
***
One can argue that the State of Israel has a “right to exist,” and that Israelis have a right to national self-determination. However, it is not illegitimate to ask HOW the State of Israel should exist, and what shape Israeli’s self-determination should take, even if the answer is that it cannot, and should not exist as the State of Israel.
Did the Republic of South Africa have a right to exist? Yes. Should it have existed as a white-minority, racist state based on Apartheid? No.
30 April 2024
***
In the spring of 1968, university administrators and public officials called in the New York City Police to violently clear student protestors from the Columbia University campus. Smaller demonstrations at other campuses in the US were met with similar responses. After 22 May, when the Columbia strike was finally cleared, the students mostly went home, and university administrators and public officials believed – and said to the press – that that was the end of it.
Many of the leaders of the campus protests, and many of the demonstrators spent the next three months organizing a mass protest outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. They chose to demonstrate at the DNC because the incumbent president was a Democrat (Lyndon B. Johnson), and they regarded the unresponsive, indeed hostile administration as the enemy far more than the Republicans and Richard Nixon.
About 10,000 demonstrators occupied Grant Park on 23 August, and later on Michigan Avenue in front the Conrad Hilton hotel, where the convention was being held. Six days later, embarrassed and under pressure from the Democratic Party leadership to respond (as Baroness Shafik is under pressure from Republicans), Mayor Richard J. Daley called in all off-duty Chicago Police officers, and units of the Illinois National Guard to “clear the park.” The police and National Guardsmen so vastly and violently overreacted with overwhelming force that the U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence characterized it as a “Police Riot.”
Significantly, the Commission also found that the sequence of bad decisions that led to the police riot was based, in part, on the example of the NYPD’s actions at Columbia University three months earlier. History does not repeat, but it certainly rhymes, and we really need to keep that fact in mind, as we watch the next move of university administrators and public officials, as they bend to the anti-university forces in the redhat right. We might also note that the Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago this August.
More than any other issue, Nixon was able to use “law and order,” specifically in relation to the antiwar protests and the “chaos on the campuses” to sail to victory in 1968. Before Chicago, he had been regarded in the media as an outside challenger to the mighty Democratic Party, whoever it chose as its nominee. I am one of those historians who believes that Chicago, and the narrative that Nixon was able – with the help of the sensationalist media – to promote that the students and young people were out of control, was one of the main determining factors of his 1968 election victory.
This is a history that we really should remember.
30 April 2024
***
Every single example of “campus antisemitism” that I have read about in the media is of anti-Zionism and anti-Israel sentiment. Every one. Some of these incidents, like the water-throwing, and the inflammatory language, might be characterized as aggressive, but they are not aggression or animus toward Jews, but against the State of Israel and the ideology of Zionism. The only way that these incidents can be characterized as “antisemitic” (and even that would be a stretch) is if one presumes that the State of Israel is all Jews, and all Jews are Israelis. That is: That all Jews are citizens of a foreign state, and that this foreign state advocates and speaks for all Jews.
And you know what? That presumption is, in fact, antisemitic.
30 April 2024
* This is not an original thought. I am drawing on Abraham Joshua Heschel.