Column: There’s a difference between intifada and genocide

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., speaks during a hearing of the House Committee on Education on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023 in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., speaks during a hearing of the House Committee on Education on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023 in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) ap — Mark Schiefelbein

University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill listens to a question during a hearing of the House Committee on Education on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023 in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill listens to a question during a hearing of the House Committee on Education on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023 in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) ap photographs — Mark Schiefelbein

Harvard President Claudine Gay, left, speaks as University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill listens during a hearing of the House Committee on Education on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023 in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Harvard President Claudine Gay, left, speaks as University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill listens during a hearing of the House Committee on Education on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023 in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein) ap — Mark Schiefelbein

By JAMES HEFFERNAN

For the Valley News

Published: 12-16-2023 11:30 PM

Though yet another deer season has just come and gone, it is now open season on Ivy League presidents.

Dartmouth’s Sian Beilock has so far been spared, but Elizabeth Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, was made to resign on Dec. 9, and though Harvard President Claudine Gay has just survived a vote of its board, sharpshooters still have their sights on Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT.

Why? Because they are all thought to be tolerating student calls for the genocide of Jews, or more precisely for not saying clearly that such calls violate college rules. Instead, a key question posed on Dec. 6 at a Congressional hearing to investigate Anti-Semitism on College Campuses made them weasel.

But consider just what led up to this question.

The stage was set by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C. After lamenting the rise of anti-semitism on college campuses along with the spread of courses on race, she played brief videos of students demonstrating at Harvard and MIT soon after Hamas invaded Israel. I’ve just watched those videos. At Harvard, students shouted, “Intifada! Long live the intifada! Free, free Palestine!” At MIT they shouted, “Intifada! Solidarity with Palestine!”

Foxx thus set the stage for a killer question by Representative Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., a staunch supporter of Donald Trump. Verbatim, here’s her Q and A with Harvard’s President Gay:

STEFANIK:“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment?”

GAY: “It can be, depending on the context.”

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Alas, President Gay, you wriggled your way right into the molasses of academese when you could have answered plainly in two simple parts:

Unequivocally yes. Calling for the genocide of Jews violates our rules.

Our students never called for genocide. They never shouted “Death to all Jews” or “Death to the state of Israel.” They called for “intifada,” the Arabic word for rebellion. And rebellion is not genocide.

Many people may disagree. They may feel that shouting “Intifada” in the wake of Oct. 7, when Hamas killed around 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240, almost all civilians, is tantamount to calling for genocide. Or even that anything short of condemning Hamas for its atrocities is tantamount to genocide. But it is not.

So here’s my question for Elise Stefanik: When this nation’s founders rebelled against British colonial rule, did they call for or even remotely imply that they were calling for genocide of the British? Of course not. They were calling for rebellion against British rule, against the hardships and humiliations of living under its colonial government. They were calling for the right to govern themselves.

And in spite of the horrible things that Hamas has done in their name, most Palestinians seek nothing more. They yearn to govern themselves in a state of their own.

Consider their plight right now. To this date (Dec. 12 as I write), the Israeli drive to eradicate Hamas from Gaza has killed about 5,000 of its estimated 30,000 militants now lurking there, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces told CNN. According to UN estimates, the Israeli drive has also destroyed or damaged about 60% of housing stock in the territory and displaced up to 85% of the civilian population of 2.3 million.

Further, according to the health ministry in Gaza, the Israelis have killed about 16,000 of its people. Even if this figure includes 5,000 Hamas militants, as the IDF claims (Gaza’s health ministry makes no distinction), the IDF reckons that it has killed just two civilians for every one militant, a ratio it finds “tremendously positive,” CNN reported. I wonder how many Gazans would agree.

Now look at the West Bank, which is nominally governed by the Palestinian Authority but occupied by Israel and inhabited by half a million Israelis, whose settlements have been declared illegal by both the UN and the International Court of Justice.

In spite of these conditions, West Bank Palestinians are not calling for genocide of Jews. Recognizing Israel’s right to exists, they want nothing more than peace on a piece of land they can finally call their own. But with full support of Israeli forces, which even before Oct. 7 killed 38 Palestinian children just this year, according to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, West Bank settlers are brutalizing Palestinian villagers: bulldozing their houses, uprooting their olive groves, and wrecking their lives.

Is it anti-semitic for me to say this, or to criticize anything being done by the Netanyahu government just now? If so, Israel itself must be an anti-semitic nation, because — according to a recent poll — 94% of Israeli Jews think their government’s negligence is at least partly responsible for the attacks made by Hamas.

And speaking of protest, let me say a word on behalf of Dartmouth’s President Sian Beilock, who has been criticized for asking the Hanover police to arrest two student protesters for camping all night outside Parkhurst Hall on behalf of the Palestinian cause. Like students elsewhere, all Dartmouth students should be free to stage protests on behalf of anyone whom they believe has been mistreated. Arguably, they might even be allowed to break college rules against overnight camping — on grounds that it’s a form of non-violent civil disobedience a la Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

What they can’t be allowed to do is threaten “physical action” against people or property, which is what they did. Just as Donald Trump can be justly prosecuted for inciting a “protest” that became a bloody attack on the Capitol and its police, anyone who threatens physical harm in the name of “protest” deserves arrest and prosecution.

But no matter who gets arrested, we live in a time of zero-sum animosity. Anything good for my side is bad for yours. Anything I say against your side can be taken to mean that I want to annihilate you. And no matter how much pain and misery and mayhem and death my side inflicts on yours, my side’s pain and suffering will always and forever trump yours. Can we somehow find a way to stop this mindless tug of war, stop demonizing each other, and start reaching out across the gulf between us?

James Heffernan is Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth College. His most recent book is “Politics and Literature at the Dawn of World War II.”