Getting Along and Ending Tribalism

Thank you Ted Folkman ’96 for inviting discussion about reciprocal ethnic suffering — Palestinians, Israelis, Muslims, Jews, immigrants in Everytown, Princeton — everywhere. As I was an undergraduate just after World War II, prejudice was unspoken; Jewish students gravitated perforce to only one of two welcoming eating clubs. There was no chauvinistic Jewish organization, or Muslim. Rather, off campus there was the ongoing Nakba — mass population displacement with unpublicized Zionist massacres of thousands of peaceful Palestinian natives and razing of their towns and villages. Subsequently there were many “mowings of the grass” in Gaza. At Princeton, recent veterans were concerned with people of all kinds getting along; I became active in the Princeton Liberal Union.

Now there’s the heavily publicized Oct. 7 resurgence. Must this event be uniquely horrific — Jewish suffering? Where’s the history and psychology — established fields of study — to clear current campus smoke and bring light? Where’s true religion — “re/ligio”: tying back — of all peoples? What may finally end tribalism?