The Gaza War has never quite been at the fore of the national conversation like it is now. College protests have spread across the United States, featuring encampments and other forms of civil disobedience. Some universities have had police clear such encampments and protests, while others have resorted to dialogue.
If my previous columns were not proof enough, I lean left in how I view the conflict. The Palestinians should eventually receive greater autonomy, even as the two-state solution becomes increasingly less viable. The preservation of civilians’ lives and the continuous flow of aid is the highest priority – not to say the threat from Hamas should not be addressed, of course.
Although I believe Gazans’ faith in Hamas is severely misplaced, it is understandable given the living conditions they have endured. Finally, it is moral to protest the abhorrent number of deaths among Palestinian civilians and the lack of control they have over their affairs.
It is wrong to cancel a commencement speaker because of their beliefs. I find it ironic a university can educate and trust a person enough to choose her to be valedictorian but somehow not trust her enough to give an apolitical commencement address.
The above beliefs are ones I consider important, which is why it’s even more important to conduct these protests in the proper manner. I support the idea of protests in general, based on freedom of speech. I am not even against the principle of encampments, so long as those setting them up understand and are prepared to deal with the consequences of breaking university rules. This is acceptable based on ideas best posed by Henry David Thoreau in his works on civil disobedience.
However, there are certain trends in the current protest movement I cannot abide. The first is the tendency to resort to extreme rhetoric or even violence. I thought the cases of anti-Semitic rhetoric and violence were anecdotes, highlighted by certain news sources in a selective manner. However, the number of stories I’ve heard keeps growing from both the news and from my classmates regarding verbal harassment of Jewish students. Some are being called terms like “murderer,” as if they caused all this. The same does happen the other way as well but at a seemingly much lower rate on campuses.
Additionally, after talking to many people participating in the protests at the University of Minnesota, I am alarmed by the extremism of many individuals’ positions (again, not all, but perhaps too large of a minority or even a majority). A number of individuals described their ideal as a Palestinian government ruled by a coalition of Palestinian groups. Not only would no Jewish group be part of said government, but when pressed on what groups would make up this coalition, one person told me Hamas and Islamic Jihad would be among them. I used to excuse “from the river to the sea” as simply a rhetorical flourish rather than an actual desired geographic reality, but after talking to these individuals, I’m not so sure.
When fellow “liberals” tell me the way to atone for the subjugation of the Palestinian people is to have the most violent and extreme Palestinian groups subjugate the Israelis back, I want to scream. Any basic student of history should understand the first step in stopping the cycle of violence is to not start the next cycle.
This should not be about justice foremost. If it were, many leaders and politicians in Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Netanyahu’s coalition government would be on trial.
What we all should be talking about is the quickest and most effective route to prevent people, regardless of nationality, from dying. On Oct. 7, it was 1,200 Israelis. Currently, it’s thousands and thousands of Gazans. Justice cannot bring the dead back to life, but straightforward logic and rationality can prevent more from joining them.
Janagan Ramanathan is a Sartell High School alum, former U.S. Naval Academy midshipman and current aerospace engineering major at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
