Hear Our Voice

My son just graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelors degree in Political Science.  We were at The Big House (football stadium) for the giant commencement ceremonies and we witnessed the anti-Israel demonstration performed by 100 or so keffiyeh-clad students. I was annoyed.  So, from the ceremonies, I posted the following message on Facebook:

“At Sammy’s graduation at the University of Michigan and unfortunately, I have to watch this small % of graduates cos-playing their chosen roles as “Hamas-ragettes,” stealing from our children their rightful moment of pride and celebration. The police have now pushed them to the back of the stadium, but they are still yelling through the acceptance speech of Oluwami Dosunmo-Ogunbi, the first African American woman to receive a PhD in Robotics from UM. Oh the irony!”

Later that day, I received the following Facebook message from an individual who knows me through some interfaith work I did several years ago:

“I feel your frustration and disrespect of protesting the speaker. But it is reductive, and quite frankly racist to call these students suffragettes of Hamas. To be honest, I expected better from you.”

I wrestled in drafting my response. There was a lot packed into this person’s brief message to me.  Of course, I could have just ignored it, but to me, it felt like a fight had been picked and I am not always great at “walking away.” So here is my response. 

Dear friend, Its good to hear from you.  And thanks for your feedback. Ironically, I am really glad to know that someone is paying attention to a post like this and is willing to challenge me.  Truly.  I apologize it took me several days to get back with you, but as you know, I was away this weekend for graduation.

In an odd way, I am touched that you wrote that you were disappointed in me. I appreciate the higher opinion of me that you apparently held. In reading the following, I would ask that you try to give me the benefit of the doubt, that if up until the Facebook post, I had been in your eyes, someone worthy of respect, perhaps you might be willing to stay open to my critique.

I am not a name caller.  My mom generally disabused me and my siblings of that overly banal of human habits.  But my mother’s proscription came to be so meaningful to me when I heard her employ certain derogatory statements in the rare moments when the shoe really did fit.  Thank you for your care and concern for the disruption of my son’s graduation ceremony. Allow me now to confront your accusation that my words were at least reductive, if not racist.

If these protesters had disavowed the keffiyehs, because they align with Yasser Arafat, the father of modern terrorism, and instead had they worn and utilized the Palestinian flag as their primary adornments for their graduation robes, I might be more forgiving.  However, keffiyehs are what they wore and apparently no one who knows better taught them to reconsider. But as any good ally of Arafat would, these students were and are calling for “Intifada” and no matter how much they may wish to protest otherwise, to anyone watching, to anyone who knows just a little bit about the history of the Middle East, “Intifada” means nothing more than “warring against the Jews.”  I understand that the etymology of the word originally meant “shaking it off,” but they cannot really claim this, because what matters is that “Intifada” was the call to murder Jews not more than a couple of decades ago, and today, when Hamas calls for Intifada, that is exactly what THEY mean.

It very much feels like we are in a crisis of language and meaning.  Intifada is just one genocidally appropriated term.  Another horrible statement that should die on the vine because it is factually incorrect, not to mention pregnant with genocidal intent, whether it is because of ignorance or academic and professorial manipulation, there is no justification for a claim like, “Zionism is racism.” The only reason why some in the world speak in these terms is because in the 1970s, the USSR, the nemesis of the entire free world, cynically sought for this statement to be voted on and approved by the UN. Why did they do this? Were they really rabid anti-Semites? Well, yes, considering they are the same charlatans who wrote the Protocols for the Elders of Zion, a completely false text, ostensibly written by the Jews about how the Jews control all of the assets of the world, but their Jew hatred, just as in the 1890s and then in the 1970s, was not the drive, it was the context. Jew hatred has been so prolific for 2000 years, that often it feels like it’s just in the water. The USSR raised up this platform for a vote for one reason and one reason only - to align themselves with the Arab countries, and therefore against the US.  Israel was just caught in the middle.  I called the students “cosplaying Hamasragettes” because they are presuming for themselves the roles of victims, and in an irony that will confound future generations, affirm that somehow Hamas, a self-proclaimed genocidal, militant, homophobic, misogynistic, and dictatorial body, is their champion. 

Israel is NOT white (the ethnic/national origin of most Israelis today is Middle Eastern, Spanish, or North African); Israel is NOT colonialist. Israeli Jews did not act on behalf of European powers, even as they cooperated at times to get by and survive – why did they do this? Because the most important thing you need to understand about Israel is that it is comprised of first-generation refugees, and the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of refugees. The vast majority of the first Israeli citizens were running from Hitler’s Europe, DP camps that were emptying out, and upwards of 700,000 who were kicked out of their centuries-long families’ homes in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and more. Refugees, forswearing their allegiance and national connections, do not a Colonialist Empire make. Did you know that prior to 1948, 25% of Baghdad was Jewish?

Israel is NOT apartheid. Israel’s minorities are protected by law and courts; there are Arab Christian and Arab Muslim members of the government; there is injustice no question, but in that case, Israel is no more apartheid than the US, France, or Germany (that is, assuming you want to use the word apartheid as a catchall for any and all national crimes committed by a government). Israel has tried to build peace through land deals for 75 years. Israel is comprised of 9 million people - 7 million Jews, and 2 million Christians, Muslims, Druze, and Bedouin.  In what Arab country do non-Arabs/non-Muslims live with the right to vote, own land, and can safely pursue justice in the nation’s courts?  Do you know there’s one country in the Middle East whose population of minorities has grown since 1948? It’s Israel.  There are essentially no non-Muslims in the 42 countries that make up the Middle East. You want to criticize the Israeli government for not being as committed to minority rights as it aspires?  Great.  Join me and my crew.  But at least it aspires, and it holds itself accountable.  Which other middle eastern country even aspires?

Let me be clear in case there are any questions.  Israel has not behaved well all the time. Israel has done awful things. Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk are a blight on our history, and it was certainly their laissez-faire approach to Gaza/Hamas that helped make Oct 7 possible.  Potential but not actual.  For it to happen, Hamas, the heroes of these college protesters, had to systematically build replica kibbutzim to practice attacking, knock out communications, bulldoze fences, break down doors of homes in the middle of the night and kill children in their beds; they had to write manuals for weapons use; they had to write manuals for HOW TO rape and mutilate women’s bodies; they had to write manuals for HOW TO be sure to take as many hostages as possible.

“Cos-playing Hamas-ragettes” is a gentle critique – at least it assumes no truly terrible intent on the part of the students. When my kids were little, I would never have let them dress up as Jason or Freddy Kruger even as a joke, but at least, those characters were make-believe; by the colleges allowing the students to wear the kaffiyehs, scream Intifada, and threaten Jewish students, the college students are dressing themselves up as real, actual monsters that came across the border and killed, maimed, tortured, raped, pillaged, kidnapped, and humiliated Israelis living inside of worldwide recognized borders; and these weren’t the monsters of our children’s dreams.  They didn’t hide under the bed and disappear when the lights came on.