Protesters Protect Yourselves, Not Hamas

If you think all Palestinians are evil or all Israelis are evil, you're out of your depth. You have no idea what you're talking about. If you engage in protests, you will only end up hurting yourself by the actions that you take with such limited ability to understand what's happening.

Most colleges are interested in teaching critical thinking so that you might be able to understand a complex situation and protect yourself from doing the wrong thing. However, at the beginning of your post-secondary education or for those who did not take social science courses, it is doubtful that your critical thinking is up to par concerning the crisis in the Middle East.

Many Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students appear, perhaps unwittingly, to be aligned with the goals of Hamas. This is important as Hamas is a cult, and cults manipulate not just their members but the general public for purposes that do not serve their members or the general public. You must get out immediately if you have been suckered into such a situation. Your parents did not send you to college while paying considerable sums to keep you there to have you supporting terrorists, and even worse for you to end up with a felony on your record. You may think that would never happen; You may assume that, at worst, you might be charged with a misdemeanor. However, the far right in the U.S. is intent on making sure that you are stopped in your tracks from doing what you are trying to do.

Much of the far right is made up of people who are authoritarian. Unfortunately, most authoritarians only know how to control other people through laws and physical force, perhaps exercised by the police. They are now very active and have successfully increased anti-protest laws and penalties. Decades ago, you might have spent the night in jail. Now, you may get a felony charge and eventually go to prison. Your career will be over, your ability to get that education you need will be over, and we will have one less intelligent, well-educated person to help us deal with this complicated world.

The present events in the Middle East are horrifying and thus highly emotional. Yet, most college students are not old enough to have a fully developed brain and, therefore, are less likely than persons who do to keep their emotions out of their calculations regarding what to do about these terrible events.

It's hard to know what Hamas's leadership intended. Still, it would seem that the intensity of the attack on Israel was designed to provoke Israel into an overreaction, leading to political gains for Hamas and a terrible blow to the image of Israel.

If we look at what's going on with the present student protests in the United States over the situation in the Middle East, Hamas could not have asked for anything better. This is precisely what they want. Their message of hate is being spread very widely as a result of the protests and the conflict over protesting. Please understand that hate is not just a moral issue. In social systems, hate does not lead to outcomes that people can look back upon and say, “Well, that worked out the way we wanted it to.” The individual protesters espousing hate need to ask themselves if they have been manipulated.

What can protesters in the United States do about a conflict in the Middle East? The answer is not a whole lot, but it is more than nothing. Every protestor needs to be very careful about what they do here in the United States to prevent the situation from worsening both here and in the Middle East. Engaging in hate speech is going to cause huge problems.

Before we can act, we must understand that the problem in the Middle East is the mindset of You attacked me and mine, and now I have to attack you and yours. This is a useless but popular idea supposing the advantages of blood feuds that, concerning the Middle East, have been going on for almost 80 years. It won't stop unless many involved decide to take a different direction. As far as I know, there has never been an Arab equivalent of Mohandas Gandhi. However, there have been Israelis and Palestinians who have tried to reach across the divide of their ethnicities to work for the cause of peace. They haven't been listened to sufficiently because terrorist attacks tremendously anger people on one side, and then they overreact by attacking people on the other side.

There is no end in sight. If Americans or students studying in America want to have some influence on the Middle East, they cannot take sides. One side working alone, even for decades, cannot solve the problem. Constant terrorist attacks cannot wear Israel down until it finally gives up. That's a stupid idea, and letting things go on as they have been is a terrible burden on the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. The continued attempts to destroy Israel give the Israelis what many of them have come to consider a license to think that if they hate us so much, then when they attack us, we can do anything we want to them. As a result of this thinking, we've seen, for example, many attacks on Palestinians from Israeli settlers and from Israeli troops. The situation is not getting any better. It is, however, getting worse.

If you think that I am being overly harsh by claiming that some people hold ideas that, under the circumstances, are “stupid,” please note that I would also argue that cults and cult-like organizations can lead you to stupid ideas. When you join a protest movement, you are joining a cult-like organization where specific ideas are propagated, and deviation from those ideas is frowned upon by both the leadership and fellow protestors. Under these circumstances, independent thinking will likely get one expelled from the group.

Yet, there are some things that students in the United States can do. They can call for limitations on the use of certain weapons in cities. For example, they can demand an end to aerial attacks, especially with 2000 lb bombs in highly populated areas. They could advocate for more supplies of food, water, fuel, medicines, and shelter to be sent to the residents of Gaza. Such a goal does not attempt to force a university to conform to the will of the protesters, as Hamas would have universities participate in disrupting the Israeli economy. Indeed, the universities would likely support such aid to the civilians of Gaza. And even more importantly, Jewish students would do the same. This kind of cooperation could lead to an even more important goal.

We have the idea that has become part of folk wisdom that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while always getting the same outcome. Getting the same result is almost set in stone in the Middle East, and achieving change will be tough. Perhaps in a more peaceful environment that we could have here in the United States, pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students would be able to show how peace can be attained. A major advantage of doing such work in the U.S. is that the military arm of Hamas would not be able to disrupt such efforts as it could in any of the Palestinian areas.

Working together could lead to more than relief aid. Plans for the redevelopment of Gaza would show that such cooperative work can give Gazans a reason to reject the destructive influence of Hamas. The people of Gaza have the creativity and intelligence to build a thriving state. This state could be economically interconnected with Israel for both states' benefit. The losers in such an arrangement would be the hate-mongers of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian Islamic extremist regime.

Perhaps this is too much to ask of angry human beings, but the alternative will make the tens of thousands of dead and even more wounded from the 2023-2024 conflict look like a minor skirmish as bad as it is. The debates necessary to begin such peace planning may overcome some initial roadblocks to peace. Of course, this could take years, but it is still better than never attempting to address the recurring violence that solves nothing.

So, your choice comes down to this. Betray your country, be it the U.S., Palestinian territories, or Israel, by doing the bidding of one of the worst terrorist organizations in the world or trying to deal with the real problem, However, if you are particularly unlucky, you will have plenty of time in prison to think about what you could have done differently.  Of course, I hope you will think about that now and show the world the way forward.