I have a bunch of college-aged kids in my life—step-kids and my own kids—and they all go to different kinds of schools. One institution saw mass arrests and police violence. One college is rural and remote, and though the students held a small demonstration, no one disagreed or made much of it at all. One kid goes to a school that is more conservative and didn’t have much demonstrating—but her boyfriend’s school did. One kid is committed to a university that is in DC at the very heart of everything, and he is watching all of it unfold.
My house, it strikes me, is like a little microcosm of the country right now. We are a somewhat uneasily blended family with different temperaments, different viewpoints, different experiences of the world. Naturally, we have different strengths of opinions about the conflict in Israel and Gaza. One kid is in a sorority with a lot of Jewish members and can see how nervous and sad her friends are. One kid is very much in support of Palestine. One kid thinks we should be more worried about our own country.
They’re all right. They’re not wrong. And yet, if you read/listen/watch the media, everyone is screaming. Everyone is demanding we pick sides, threatening that we don’t want to end up on the wrong side of history, that we stand for right, that we protect Judaism, that we protect Palestine, democracy, free speech, but also that we see justice is served.
How do you do all that when everyone is wrong, but also when all sides have a point?
Everything is all mixed up. Israel wants to be both an ethno-state and a liberal democracy, but can’t manage both. Palestine has to root out Hamas if it wants peace, but has also endured years of encroachment and broken treaties. The history of the Jewish faith includes centuries of suffering, prejudice, and genocide, but the state of Israel is committing mass suffering on its neighbor. Do two wrongs make a right? Who gives in first?
You could argue that the West created this whole mess and so we are obligated to broker it, to pick sides. That we are complicit, responsible, that this is the end result of colonial games and what did we all expect? Again, you wouldn’t be wrong.
I am uneasy with all of it. I don’t want to take a definitive side because I’m not an expert in any of it. But I don’t want my silence to be mistaken for tacit approval—of anyone. Taking civilians hostage and committing terrorism is wrong, but so is bombing huge swaths of civilians and denying them food and water. Using hospitals and apartments as militant bases is wrong, but so is using that as an excuse for indiscriminate destruction of infrastructure. I am against violence. I am for mothers and children. I am for students, for doctors, for the elderly, the hungry. It’s not a side, though. That’s the problem, I suppose.
I saw something on Instagram that said if we didn’t want our young people to change the world, we shouldn’t have told them they could. I think, deep down, we all know the university demonstrations are about so much more than Israel and Gaza, and I think the powers that be know this, too, and are starting to shake in their boots.
Pay attention to the rhetoric of reporting on the protests. The demonstrators are often referred to as “spoiled kids” or “unruly kids” when they aren’t being identified as outside troublemakers—radical agents who aren’t even students and who have infiltrated and set up these protests. The underlying message is that students are naive, manipulated, unfocused, and just looking for conflict. I think that is so unfair.
Whether or not you agree with the messages and demands of these protests, one thing I don’t think you can accuse this generation of is looking for trouble. They were born into it, raised in the long and bitter shadows of constant school shootings, a global pandemic, racial unrest, and the existential threat of climate change. They were given these problems and now, when they have loud and messy opinions about them and solutions for them, they are told to be quiet.
I am a writer. I am for publishing and voicing opinions, and thoughts, for public dialogue, and critical analysis of political rhetoric. I am for respectful dissent, and humor, and art. I am for imagination and free choice. Above all, I am for being allowed access to the whole goddamned story.
We have to talk about all of this around our dinner tables with our children and friends. We have to bite our tongues and listen to each other, and when we do speak, we have to remember that some of the people we love the most might believe things we don’t. We have to agree to disagree and also agree that there are acts of inhumanity that no one should disagree with ever. We have to start letting our young people have more say. And when they do talk, we have to start believing them.
Otherwise, we are going to end up in a nation of martial law. We are going to end up with all of our tongues tied and maybe our hands, too. We are going to end up silent as mass graves. And that’s not the future I want for any of our children.