Harvard, we have a problem

[I was hoping for this piece to be posted as an op-ed in the Crimson, since I really want to reach students that are well-intentioned but may not realize they are harmful. However, it was rejected and so I am posting this here]

The events of October 7th, 2023, hit many Israeli-Americans personally. My immediate family was thankfully spared, but I have several friends who were not so lucky. At Harvard, where I  teach, one student lost four members of her family; three generations: grandmother, father, and two kids were murdered. The Idan family were the next-door neighbors of another student’s family. Parents Roee and Smadar were murdered. Their children, Michael (age 9) and Amalya (age 6), survived by hiding in a closet for 14 hours. Little three-year-old Avigail ran out and is now a hostage in Gaza. As is well known, Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,400 Israelis that day. They gunned down hundreds of innocent partiers, raped women, tortured and mutilated their victims.  Entire families were slaughtered in their homes. Hamas also took over 200 hostages, including mothers, babies, and the elderly. 

The same night, more than 30 Harvard student groups issued a statement holding Israel “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” without mentioning Hamas at all. The statement claimed that “massacres in Gaza” are taking place. The attack was still ongoing, with Israeli forces rescuing citizens held hostages in their homes, all under a barrage of thousands of rockets. This statement was equivalent to condemning the U.S. as entirely responsible for the 9/11 attacks and decrying the response while firefighters were still in the building. Not to be outdone, at Tufts, Students for Justice in Palestine praised Hamas’ “creativity,” and even added emojis of the paragliders used by the terrorists.  

The Harvard statement justly drew criticism, including in a letter I co-authored and signed by more than 400 faculty members. An anonymous resolution condemning our letter was proposed to the Harvard Graduate Student Union and emailed to all writers (myself included). The resolution states that the goals of some (though not all) in the “Free Palestine movement” is the “total reconquest, total evacuation, or total eradication of the Jews,” and some pray for Israel’s destruction by an Iranian nuclear bomb. While the destruction of Israel and the death of all its Jews are also advocated by the Hamas charter, at least Hamas doesn’t have the gall to call itself a “human rights movement.” 

If public statements were not bad enough, Israeli and Jewish students soon saw on social media that fellow students were not just condoning the murder of their family and friends but even celebrating it, often using classical anti-semitic tropes. One Harvard student posted how the “innocent festival goers line does nothing for me,” and they couldn’t “give a f**k” about them. I know four different Harvard students who lost friends in the Nova Festival massacre— can you get more callous than that? 

On Sidechat, students posted “Let ‘em cook” and “gotta get them all” with the Palestinian flags; one even posted an emoji of a baby with a severed head. Another student wrote about “how much power the Jewish population has over the media.” One student posted that the “two Israeli defeats” in October (1973 and 2023) make it a “great month.” October 2023 might have been a great month for American keyboard warriors, but it has been and continues to be an awful month for both Israelis and Palestinians. While Israel has no choice but to defend itself against Hamas, the images from Gaza are heartbreaking. I am glad that (long overdue and too little) humanitarian aid is now going in. Israel would be wise to heed President Biden’s warning that it should follow the laws of war. But such criticism is best received when it is not a knee-jerk reaction from people who seek your country’s destruction. 

Let me be clear: not all criticism of Israel is anti-semitism. You can harshly criticize Israel’s policies and even call for sanctions or boycotts without being anti-semitic. But you cannot condone, let alone celebrate, the slaughter of Jewish babies, mothers, and grandparents without being anti-semitic. While I would hope that basic human decency should be enough, the failure to condemn Hamas also hurts the cause of a free Palestinian state alongside Israel, a cause that I personally support.  Furthermore, like the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a Hamas-controlled Palestine would not be truly “free,” especially for women, sexual and gender minorities, or anyone who does not conform to Hamas’ narrow definition of Islam.

These offensive social media posts are reminiscent of the famous 2017 Harvard “meme scandal,” but the current situation is much worse. These are not high-school students but supposedly adult college students. They are not making hypothetical jokes in a private group chat but celebrating the murder of actual people on a platform shared by the friends and relatives of the victims. Of course, there is another difference. While in 2017, Harvard had no compunction rescinding admittance for the students, now it is setting up a task force to protect students from any consequences to their careers. I have repeatedly voiced my disapproval of “shaming” students via (often inaccurate) blacklists or trucks. But the hypocrisy is palpable. How is it that on a campus so intent on promoting equality and inclusion, condoning the murder of people due to their ethnicity is even up for debate? Why do Harvard students, ever sensitive to the slightest micro-aggressions, feel OK to repeat anti-semitic stereotypes? How is it that some of the smartest and most educated people on Earth seem to have lost the ability to distinguish between supporting a cause and supporting all actions done ostensibly in the name of this cause?