A View of Princeton’s Encampment from a Counterprotesting Alum
“I did not feel any fear, just discomfort and deep disappointment at the portrayal of a historic and complicated conflict in a simplistic, ‘us or them’ fashion”
Shalom friends,
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” As hateful as I view that statement to be, it was among the least hateful things I heard and saw at the student demonstration on Princeton’s campus over the past few days. As a Princeton alumnus and local resident who has spent years in and around campus, the level of misinformation and misunderstanding within this new movement is disturbing to say the least.
My Israeli wife, Riva, organized a few people to simply stand quietly at the protest holding up pictures of the hostages. We did not speak unless spoken to, no chants, just quietly holding up the photos; it turned out to be very powerful. A few people joined us, some students said “thank you” as they passed by.
I did not feel any fear, just discomfort and deep disappointment at the portrayal of a historic and complicated conflict in a simplistic, “us or them” fashion — particularly by those purporting to be progressive. On a campus that should facilitate deep exploration of the nuances of history and conflict, this movement has instead fit the situation in Israel and Gaza into its own prescribed narrative of causes.
I got nasty looks as I held my pictures up high — of a 4-year-old Jewish boy and a 53-year-old Muslim man. For one of the first times since my days as center on Princeton’s basketball team, I welcomed the attention that my height drew. A few individuals holding a Palestinian flag tried to block me so I wouldn’t appear in the photos as I wasn’t too far from the speakers. They couldn’t raise the flag as high as I raised the pictures. They moved to their right, I moved to my left.
I wish the protesters would have spoken to me. They would have learned that two weeks earlier I attended protests in Tel Aviv, demanding the government do more to release the hostages in the context of a ceasefire and seeking new elections to oust the Netanyahu government, which I despise. They would have learned that I grieve for Palestinian deaths, due in part to Israel’s actions, but also to their own leaders in Gaza — Hamas — the murderous intolerant terrorist group that started this iteration of the conflict with unspeakable violence (including brutal murders and sexual violence) and shows little interest in stopping it to protect their own people. The protesters would have learned of my longtime and continuing support for a two-state solution.
But to them I was a Jew, a very tall one, complicit in what is being called genocide. Forget Syria, Sudan, Turkey, China, North Korea — it is only this conflict that this movement deems deserving of that label. The Princeton protesters put out a list of demands, all of which seem far removed from the real problems in the region: divestment, stopping Birthright trips, stopping Defense Department research that might benefit Israel, refraining from relationships with Israeli academic institutions and businesses. The demands are more about the act and performance of protesting than about the core issues or authentic humanitarian concern.
I’d like to learn where the protesters come out on the following: Does Israel have a right to exist, do you believe in a two-state solution, and how do we get there? If the answers are “yes,” then we should be working together to call for releasing the hostages, getting rid of Hamas, and replacing the Netanyahu government. That should be common ground for rational concerned people. Sadly, I think these protests are counterproductive in every way. They embolden Hamas to think there is support for keeping the hostages and that they might be able to get a ceasefire without releasing them. They also might back the Israeli government against a wall where they feel there is nothing to lose by going on offense in Rafah to try to destroy Hamas once and for all, despite the impact on ordinary Palestinians.
While I am not sure that most of the protesters are antisemitic, (though some clearly are), their rhetoric is intellectually weak, inaccurate, and has leapt past the line of legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’s actions to demonization of Israelis and Jews generally. Occupants of the encampment seem eager to be part of a “movement,” but I worry that continued protest with repetition of the same hateful rhetoric will move even more of the protesters toward antisemitism, making productive dialogue even more difficult. Hamas must release the hostages now. Then we need a ceasefire. The Israelis and the Palestinians need new leadership, and with the help of friendly nations, Gaza needs to be rebuilt and discussions need to begin on building a better future for the two peoples. The protests in McCosh Courtyard or Cannon Green won’t get us any closer to those goals.
Howard Levy ’85 is president and CEO of HYP and the head men’s basketball coach at Mercer County Community College.
14 Responses
Loretta Williams *81
3 Months AgoThank You Mr. Levy for Your Essay
Thank you Mr. Levy for your essay. I am all about free speech, and I think that should apply to everyone, not just a group of very well organized and very loud protesters whose motivations frankly aren’t clear to me at all. Most recently, these protesters for Palestine disrupted the Denver Pride Parade, which I was attending, as I do every year, as an ally of a dear friend. The organizers later responded with an apology to attendees that included:
“The mission of The Center on Colfax is to engage, enrich, empower and advance the LGBTQIA+ community of Colorado. We recognize that the pride movement was born in protest. We support the rights of free speech and assembly. Regarding Israel and Gaza, our position is simple. We support calls for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the region. However, we cannot accept incidents of hate speech that occurred at the festival. Following the protests at the parade and festival, we received several reports of antisemitic language used by protesters. These incidents included statements such as ‘Jews and Zionists do not belong at PrideFest’ and worse, along with harassment of Jewish community members at their booth. To be clear: this is unacceptable. The Center does not endorse or condone the hateful language used by people in the protest group. Just as we would condemn homophobic or transphobic incidents, we condemn hate speech in any form, including antisemitism.”
I am not Jewish, I am not Muslim, and I am straight. What I am not, and what I don’t condone, is close-minded, loud usurpers of other people’s rights to a peaceful gathering. And I agree 100% with Howard Levy’s point that these folks don’t seem to care about genocide and oppression anywhere but in Gaza, and they seem to totally ignore that it was Hamas who started the conflict, and Hamas who show no concern for the well-being of their own people. Also, I agree that the list of demands these protesters put out are not relevant to humanitarian concerns. If they really care, they would learn to cooperate, not just disrupt.
In my opinion, it is time to stop enabling the bad behavior that is becoming so prevalent in the public forum these days. Rights come with responsibilities, and the right to free speech comes with the responsibility to shut up and allow other folks to speak as well, and to honestly consider what they say and work to actually solve the problem at hand.
Ramsay Harik ’85
3 Months AgoCounterprotester Misses the Point
Howard Levy’s essay has some thoughtful moments, but he quickly devolves into the standard tropes engineered generations ago to stifle criticism of Israel (accusations of antisemitism, the bizarre notion that Israel is being singled out for special condemnation, the self-serving charge that such protests are counterproductive, etc.). He seems to altogether miss the point of such protests. They are political theater, not policy papers, and their purpose is to act as the conscience of a nation and a university that unabashedly contribute to what I view as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s indigenous population. (Imagine the shame of a college campus where nobody raised a peep about 36,000 civilians killed with our weapons and our blessings.)
He rightly laments that none of the protesters engaged him to get his perspective on things. Did he consider that perhaps he might have something to learn from the protesters? He could have learned, for instance, what chants such as “from the river to the sea” mean to them, rather than assuming the worst. He could have learned why collective punishment, starvation as a weapon of war, torture and indefinite detention, the targeting of journalists and doctors, etc., have so upset this generation of students. Though why that wouldn’t already be obvious to him is a bit puzzling.
Jean-François de Laperouse ’81
4 Months AgoKilling of Palestinians Should Spark Outrage
No one gets to choose their ethnicity or where they will be born in this world, and no one should be persecuted or killed based on those facts. In that regard, we should support the ICC prosecutor’s allegation that both the horrific attack by Hamas on Oct. 7 and Netanyahu’s indiscriminate response to it constitute crimes against humanity.
Howard Levy wonders why Israel’s actions in Gaza have aroused such a strong response by students at Princeton and elsewhere in this country while other instances of ethnic-based slaughter around the world have not. The answer is simple. While our country has not been directly involved in those cases, we have been supplying Israel with the weapons that have been killing Palestinian civilians in the tens of thousands. If being an accomplice to such a crime doesn’t spark outrage, what will?
Stephen H. Kimatian ’63
4 Months AgoNot My Princeton
After reading the reports of protesting on the Princeton campus, I have only a feeling of sadness for my alma mater. That those protesting on behalf of the Palestinians did so in such a clumsy, anarchial manner, so beneath the expectations for Princeton students, is mortifying. Intimidating classmates and campus employees, barricading Clio, and shouting crude epithets only shows the protesters don’t have sufficient knowledge of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian lands to make an intelligent argument, resorting to disruption to make up for their ignorance.
In times of controversy, I always believed Princeton would find a higher ground. But, instead of taking an elevated discourse of the issue, Princeton has opted to remove a rung of its stature. Princeton becomes just another copycat protester.
At this point, I don’t recognize the students, the faculty, or the administration of the Princeton I attended.
Froma Zeitlin
4 Months AgoBeyond Slogans, a Voice for Sanity
Bravo to Howard Levy for exposing the shallow, counterproductive sloganeering of the protesters on Princeton’s campus. It contains the arguments that many of us have been making over this long hard spring that most often seem to fall on deaf ears and makes us worry about the failure of Princeton’s education to recognize fairness and facts when faced with simplistic dichotomies.
Carol Kaplan
5 Months AgoThoughtful and Intelligent
It was so good to read this well written, thoughtful piece. It deserves to be seen in many more publications, online and in print.
Eve Gendron ’88
5 Months AgoA Call for Productive Understanding
Howard Levy’s balanced analysis and assessment of the situation on the ground in Israel and Gaza provides the necessary historical and real-time context that is sorely lacking from much of the protests. His assessment of the situation on the ground at Princeton makes me sad. While I imagine some protesters mean well, “intellectually weak, inaccurate” and demonizing rhetoric have no place on our campuses; especially those like Princeton that pride themselves on diversity, depth of knowledge, intellectual rigor, and a spirit of inquiry. I thank Howard for his quiet counterprotest, and hope that at least a few students will engage in dialogue with him, forgoing blind hatred in favor of productive understanding.
Roni Berger
5 Months AgoThanks for a Thoughtful Perspective
I am an Israeli living in the U.S. and teaching at Adelphi University. I applaud your thoughtful, clear, and so relevant lens in the issue. I wish there would be more like you and many more would listen to your words of wisdom. Thank you.
Hyunmoon Kim ’13
5 Months AgoFor This Conflict
For this conflict it seems to me it is more important to watch for what criticisms are unspoken more than what criticisms are stated. I am only willing to spare my attention to those who are willing to criticize their own side. Otherwise I cannot distinguish the intentions for genuine dialogue from manipulative propaganda.
I view the fact that you were holding up a poster of hostages, and not the Israeli flag, as a sincere sign of peace. Thank you for your contribution.
James Corsones ’75
5 Months AgoOn the Need for Intellectual Discourse
Kudos to Howard Levy. Well written article and excellent viewpoint on this complex situation. It’s very distressing to see disruptions of normal academic activity without even a hint of an attempt at intellectual discourse on the difficulties in finding a reasonable solution to an extraordinarily complicated issue. The hope is eventually, prudent discussion to finding a workable solution can emerge from the chaos.
Mark C. Biderman ’67
5 Months AgoImportant Questions for Protesters, Supporters
Thank you for saying and writing this. The lead story was all about support for the demonstrators, but this needs to be said. These questions need to be asked of those in the encampment and their supporters. I’d like them to watch the movie “Screams Before Silence” and get their reactions.
Edward G. Bernstine *72
5 Months AgoWhat’s in a Name?
Q: What’s in a name?
A: A great deal.
The current wave of protests on American campuses provides an example: The war in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran is between Israel and its western allies and Iran and its terrorist proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis. Its origin was an unspeakable massacre by Hamas of everyone in the path of thousands of its terrorists who crossed the border between Gaza and Israel last Oct. 7. In addition to murder and rape, these marauders kidnapped over 200 people, some of whom are believed to be buried, dead or alive, in tunnels in Gaza.
The attack was in the spirit of al-Qaida’s mass murders of 9-11. Israel launched its forces to destroy Hamas in the spirit that the U.S. sought to kill the all the terrorists and their leaders, who were then entrenched in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I recall no protests aimed at saving al-Qaida and its entourage of camp-following supporters. I believe this was the case because, unlike Hamas’ kill-fest, those Jihadists’ mass murder was not disingenuously called pro-anything. It was just what it was — anti-American slaughter of innocents.
Returning to the importance of a name, I ask why the protesters flooding our campuses are called “pro-Palestinian.” They are obviously primarily anti-Israeli; in addition, their actions indirectly (and on some campuses, directly) support and excuse the terrorist methods of Hamas, Hezbollah, and their masters in Tehran. We need a new name for these folks.
Augustus Rush ’64
5 Months AgoThank You for Being Thoughtful
I share your disappointment in the protestors seemingly wishing to simplify issues into either/or dichotomies and employ “emotional reasoning” rather than thoughtful, problem-oriented discussion and solutions. Hopefully, in and out of class conversations among students and faculty will dive more deeply into the complexities and surface solutions to these issues that we have not yet been wise enough to imagine or implement.
Kristin Belz ’84
5 Months AgoThank You for Highlighting How Complicated This Is
Thanks for this thoughtful account based on your lived experience. I so hope we can move past this spread of conflict. Your words are rational and informed. We need that.