Student Protestors – Emotion vs Rationale


Prompted by the recent student demonstrations against Israel, I re-read the article I wrote on October 27th, just three weeks after Hamas let slip the dogs of war. Rarely have I felt as prescient as I did upon reading what I wrote in October. It’s probably self-congratulatory, but allow me to quote from my own work.

Sadly, I believe that Israel has charged right into a trap set by Iran and its proxy terrorist units in the Hamas and Hezbollah. The fact of the Hamas invasion has mostly disappeared from the evening news…I believe that world opinion will slowly but surely turn against the Israelis if this nightly parade of suffering (in Gaza) continues…If the constant news drip continues to focus on the plight of the Palestinians it wouldn’t take much to see public opinion in support of Israel begin to waver.

Seven months later world opinion has,  indeed, turned dramatically against Israel. South Africa has brought charges against Israel in the International Court of Justice, alleging that Israel is conducting a genocide. Columbia and Turkiye have applied to join in that suit. Although the American government continues to supply Israel with arms, Human Rights Watch, a humanitarian watchdog, advises that Israel’s assurances that they are doing their best to protect civilians are not credible, and they are pressuring for America to suspend military aid. And now student around the world are demonstrating support for Palestine and condemnation for Israel. Protests have spread from American campuses (Columbia and UCLA notably) to McGill here in Canada and then to Australia, the UK, France and several other countries. The protestors commonly assert support for Palestine. They allege that Israel is committing war crimes amounting to genocide, and they call for academic institutions to divest themselves of investments in companies that provide support for the Israeli war effort.

As I was writing this today, President Biden announced that he would severely limit arms supplies to Israel if they conduct an all-out assault on Rafah. In my opinion, the student protests are at the root of that announcement.

Poor Biden. He’s in a no-win position. If he supports Israel he is seen as an oppressor of Palestine and Palestinians. Student protestors are laying the blame for the mess in Gaza on Biden’s head and accusing him or participating in genocide. If he abandons Israel, he is linked to the anti-Semitic hate world and loses support of the American Jewish community. This morning the Republican party (Lindsay Graham, a slimy snake in the grass if ever there was one) are heaping abuse on the Administration for abandoning Israel.

It’s not as if Biden hasn’t tried hard to end the war in Gaza. Biden’s Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, has visited Israel so often he’s on a first name basis with the Customs officers there. Biden himself has been increasingly insistent that Israel find a way to end this slaughter. But Binyamin Netanyahu hasn’t bowed to American pressure and continues to pursue his policy of slaughter leaving Biden no choice but to apply some discipline.

A war that Hamas started, and that Biden has been trying to end, might result in enough erosion of the traditional Democrat youth vote, and now of the Jewish community vote, to cost Biden the Presidency.  I can imagine only one more dangerous outcome for the world this year than the re-election of Donald Trump, and that would be Putin deciding to use nukes. 

So, the student protests appear to be consequential. But are they right?  What war crimes might Israel be accused of? Are they really carrying out a genocide? I decided to look into the war crimes allegations.

War crimes are laid out in a UN document and include (in part):

  • Wilful killing 
  • Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly; 
  • Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities.
  •  Attacking or bombarding, by whatever means, towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which are undefended and which are not military objectives 
  • Declaring that no quarter will be given
  •  Intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies as provided for under the Geneva Conventions 

Hamas claims casualties in excess of 34000 civiliansIs that wilful killing? Gaza cities are being systematically destroyed, and Israel has even attacked some hospitals. Are those cities and hospitals valid military objectives? From the outset Israel has declared that Hamas must be totally destroyedIs that the same as declaring that no quarter will be given? Famine is widespread in Gaza, and international efforts to provide relief are often delayed by Israeli interventionIs Israel intentionally using starvation as a weapon?

Although I could offer defences for some of these actions, I would agree that there is at least a pro forma case against Israel for war crimes. But what about Palestine? Are they really helpless victims of a vicious oppressor?

Here is where the Israeli position becomes problematic on the world stage. The world is seeing Palestinian civilians having their homes destroyed, their food sources destroyed, their children orphaned, young people mutilated. The world sees “Palestinians”, not “Hamas”. Unfortunately, Israel has problems seeing the distinction because the Hamas murderers who attacked their settlements are hiding among the Palestinian civilians.

Not all Palestinians are Hamas members. But all, or most, of the Hamas members who crossed into Israel on October 7th were Palestinian. And there is no doubt at all that they committed war crimes, because they filmed them and proudly displayed them on social media. Among the war crime definitions that Hamas would appear to be guilty of are the following:

  • Wilful killing 
  • Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement; 
  • Taking of hostages.
  • Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities 
  • Committing rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, as defined in article 7, paragraph 2 (f), enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence also constituting a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions; 
  • Utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations. 

0ver 1400 innocent Israeli civilians were killed on October 7th. There can be no doubt that this was wilful killing; murders of unarmed people.  The attackers took 253 hostages; 130 remain under Hamas control. There is no doubt about this crime either, since Hamas boldly and openly uses the hostages as bargaining chips in cease-fire talks. A UN team says there is “convincing information” that hostages held in Gaza have been subjected to sexual violence including rape and sexualised torture….”reasonable grounds to believe” sexual violence, including gang rape, took place when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October.

Gaza is riddled with tunnels. Those hospitals that Israel has attacked are connected by tunnels to Hamas weapons caches etc. There appears to be no way to distinguish those towns, villages or dwellings which are not military objectives, because Hamas has underground connections to so many places. So, arguably, Hamas is guilty of the war crime of hiding their military presence under civilian cover.

Before this mess in the Middle East ever started, I wrote an article in which I tried to puzzle out the logic of having rules for war. I doubt that there has ever been, or ever will be, an armed conflict in which both sides could be declared innocent of war crimes as described in the UN articles on war crimes. Personally, I can’t get too hung up about war crime accusations. Both sides are likely guilty, and as I suggested before, that’s probably true of both sides in every war. What the Hell did we expect? I don’t think it advances the cause of peace in that region to level accusations of war crimes.

Do those war crimes rise to the level of genocide?

According to UN definition, “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 

  1. Killing members of the group; 
  2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 
  4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
  5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

One might argue that we are witnessing all of the first three clauses. Palestinians are being killed and seriously wounded, and their conditions of life have been reduced to the level of famine. So, some people argue that Israel is guilty of genocide. But a clever lawyer would argue that the key to the definition is “acts committed with intent to destroy” another group. Without holding any brief for Israel’s management of the Palestine question, I would argue that they were not the aggressor on October 7th. Hamas was. And what Israel has done since then is a totally reactive response, not an intent to destroy another people.

Indeed, the organization which has acted with intent to destroy a religious group is Hamas, which has declared the intention to eliminate the state of Israel “from the river to the sea and from the south to the north”. 

So once again, I can’t get too hung up on the hyperbole of discussions about whether this is or isn’t a genocide. It’s ugly stuff and it needs to stop. And it doesn’t help for us to be all self-righteous and say “ooh that’s genocide”.

I’m happy enough to see students protesting about the war in Gaza. Their hearts are in the right place. But I think they need to protest about the right things and in the right way. Almost half of the 282 protestors arrested at Columbia University turned out not to be students. It’s possible that they are just concerned citizens participating in a protest. But it’s also possible that there are some “agent provocateurs” out there stirring up unrest.

The great danger in the rhetoric being thrown around is that it all becomes very divisive. So let’s stop having the protests be pro-Israel or anti-Israel; pro-Palestine or anti-Palestine. Let’s stop using emotive words like genocide and war crimes. Forget silly shit like asking the universities to re-make their investment profiles in the image you’d like. Phrases like “Jewish Nazi” and “From the River to the Sea” are anti-Semitic and have no place in a rational discussion of how to solve this problem.

There are really only two things to be demanding in your protests, people. The second is that you should demand that Netanyahu accept a cease-fire and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. Those poor people have suffered enough. The original Israeli objectives were the release of all hostages and the total eradication of Hamas. Killing civilians has not yet achieved those objectives, so it seems to be time to step back now, and seek other ways to get there.

But the very first demand for those protestors to make ought to be to demand that Hamas immediately release all their hostages. Surely it must be obvious that this is the key to even a temporary peace in Gaza, isn’t it? Realistically, how can any government in Israel – even a more reasonable and responsible government than the current hawkish collection under Netanyahu – how can any Israeli government accept that hostages remain under the control of Hamas? No lasting peace is possible while those hostages remain captive. 

If you feel the need to blame someone for the deaths of some 35000 Palestinians in Gaza, you might consider sharing a great portion of the blame out to the Hamas leadership. Israel might be firing the bullets, but Hamas are the ones with the power to make it stop. In what insane world does a leadership group sacrifice 35000 civilians and allow destruction and famine on the scale being experienced in Gaza without agreeing to release their illegally held hostages? Palestinians are being betrayed and sacrificed by their own leaders. Hamas’ callous disregard for the consequences of their own decisions is appalling.

It’s important, I believe, to cool down the heat of the rhetoric around the calls for peace in Gaza, if only for its impact on the American political scene. 

We, in Canada, need to be quintessentially Canadian about this. Let’s be low-key publicly and rely on quiet diplomacy to push Israel towards a peace agreement. Let us understand and support Israel’s need to have hostages returned unharmed. Don’t allow sympathy for Palestine turn you against Israel. And if you must find someone to blame, then blame Hamas. Not only did they start all this, but their refusal to return hostages is at the root of why the horror in Gaza continues.


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