‘Only the dead have seen the end of war.’
Plato, Greek philosopher.
When living in New York City for an extended period, the pervasive Jewish presence becomes evident. With a significant population outside of Israel, it’s almost certain that you’ll develop friendships with Jewish individuals who offer unique perspectives.
Alena Zevi, a postgraduate student at Columbia University, experienced profound emotional distress during the Gaza War in 2014.
Like many Jews across the country at that time, Alena spent much of the weekend on the phone with family members, fearing for the safety of friends and extended family in Israel.
As the residential assistant (RA) at a social justice and antiwar house, a place dedicated to peace and support, her housemates provided comfort during her moments of panic.
They physically held her as she trembled with fear. Witnessing her vulnerability and hearing her express her powerlessness deeply affected me.
One day, a friend asked Alena if she had seen the banner her housemates were preparing to hang on the front of their communal residence.
The banner displayed the slogan “Zionism is genocide” in red letters that appeared to be dripping with blood. It would join other celebratory banners already displayed on prominent university buildings, including one in front of the Butler Library that declared, “The illusion of Israel is burning”.
Our alma mater was caught in the middle of a troubling situation, a real “teachable moment” but not one to be proud of.
The following day, the school paper published an article by Students for Justice in Palestine, referring to Hamas’s actions as “part of the ongoing, decades-long struggle against Israeli oppression” and asserting that Palestinians have a “legitimate right to resist occupation, apartheid, and systemic injustice”.
During a Literature Humanities (LitHum) class, the lecturer singled out Jewish students, asking them to raise their hands and then segregating one of them from the rest, illustrating what he claimed Israelis did to Palestinians.
In a subsequent session, another classmate asked an Israeli student about the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust.
When the student replied “Six million”, the lecturer retorted that many more millions died due to colonisation, which he equated with Israel’s actions towards Palestinians.
He then assigned labels of “colonised” or “coloniser” based on students’ answers about their origins. When a student identified as “Israeli”, the lecturer immediately labelled them a “coloniser”.
One statement from our philosophy professor stuck with me: “If you’re not open to having your traditions, beliefs, or views questioned, then a university —especially one focused on humanities—isn’t the place for you.”
Later that evening, following a vigil held by Chabad, the Israel Association, and our fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi to honour the victims of the attacks, chalk messages appeared on the sidewalks where we had gathered.
The messages included phrases like “No peace on stolen land”, “Long live the intifada”, “From the river to the sea”, and “Resistance to occupation is legal, collective punishment is not”. As far as I recall, these messages remained untouched throughout the following day.
On Wednesday evening, Students for Justice in Palestine organised a Palestine Teach-In, which attracted over two hundred students. Several students spoke about legitimate Palestinian grievances and tragedies. The most applauded moment came when an Egyptian student, whose family resided in Gaza, passionately expressed her pride in resistance and dismissed questions about condemning Hamas.
While the university maintains that it does not take positions on geopolitical issues and news events, it does issue statements supporting climate change conferences and condemning police brutality.
Given the history of anti-Semitic incidents on campus, particularly against Jews, the university should have taken a stronger and timelier stance against terrorism.
During my time at the university, I did manage to take a moral stand against hate speech. However, this occurred only after swastika flags and pictures of Hitler were posted inside student dorms, including the one I shared with my German roommate.
For Alena, events on campus had already reached a breaking point. She pleaded with her housemates not to hang the banner, but they engaged in hours of debate, suggesting they would relent only if a satisfactory justification for Israel’s existence could be presented.
They argued that as student activists, they needed to display a message that aligned with the right side of history, advocating for marginalized communities. When Alena questioned if this included Jews, the group scoffed.
Alena shared with me how her Jewish identity had been used against her during the war, isolating her in her grief. She had joined a social justice co-op precisely because it aligned with her Jewish values.
She sought humanity and space to mourn, but instead, her friends put her through a public trial, questioning whether the deaths of her family deserved their empathy.
She expressed her disappointment, saying, “People were so fixated on being ideologically correct that they couldn’t see me as a human deserving of compassion.”
In an environment where people are divided between colonisers and the colonised, oppressors and the oppressed, with individuals judged solely by their identity, many students fail to recognize that condemning terrorism does not require being Jewish, Zionist, right-wing, or taking sides.
Denouncing violence, the rape and murder of civilians, and upholding basic morality should be acknowledged by everyone at universities and beyond.
‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’
– Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968); an American civil rights leader and Baptist minister. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
