Tensions spill across universities like Columbia and Harvard as students on each side accuse the other of a kind of bloodlust
To one side, Columbia students stood silently, wrapped in the blue and white of Israel as they gripped pictures of the murdered and abducted. Across the grass and brick divide, a slightly larger cohort of students chanted “Free, free Palestine.”
The faultline between the two ran along the claim by each that the other was pursuing a kind of bloodlust – a charge that has divided university campuses across America in the wake of the bloody Hamas attack on Israeli communities and Israel’s ongoing military assault on Gaza.
Reactions within US universities to the killing of at least 1,300 Israelis and the abduction of about 100 more have swung from celebration of the Hamas assault as a legitimate act of resistance to occupation to condemnation along with a demand that it not be used to ignore the deaths of Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliation on Gaza.
I strongly believe that in this case, being on the side of the civilians in all cases is not enlightened centrism…it’s just the correct side… Do you think the civilians of one side deserve retribution?
Siding with the Israeli government is to support Netanyahu and his fascistic genocide of the Palestinian people
Siding with Hamas (Hamas =/= Palestine) is to support violent extremists.
I never took a side. I called out smugness. Not everything in life boils down to two sides that people MUST be on.
I don’t think I ever said or implied that there was only two sides to this conflict or anything else in life and if that can be inferred from my comment then I need to edit it for clarity.
But to be clear, you did take a side. It just happens to be against whatever smugness you’re interpreting from those who are only for the civilians in this conflict.