“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – Friedrich W. Nietzsche
It was the summer of 2014 and Operation Protective Edge was in full swing. My family was on a leisurely car ride in Israel, discussing my cousin’s upcoming bar mitzvah – the reason for our trip. While I gazed out of the window at the Tel Aviv setting sun, the tranquility of the evening was shattered by sirens, rockets, and the Iron Dome. It happened in an instant.
As the smoke of the missile dissipated, I found a text on my phone from a classmate back in the States: “How could you possibly support Israel?” I was bereft of an answer. Confusion, frustration, and righteous indignation all welled within me, but no words surfaced. Then and there, at the tender age of 13, I vowed that I would not find myself in that situation again. So, I began to read endlessly about Israel.
Nearly a decade later, I’ve been reflecting on that pivotal moment. While I never had the opportunity to respond to my middle school classmate, I am now a college student who shares a campus with a significant number of peers who greeted the murder of over 1,200 Israelis with silence, excuses, or even praise.
To my fellow students who are choosing this moment to call for an intifada, who are once again demanding to know how I “could possibly support Israel,” I can only respond: How dare you?
How dare US university students support Hamas against Israel?
How dare you sit in the comfort and security of an American university and demand to know how I could defend the one state whose armed forces now stand between my family and their would-be murderers? How dare you sit in your ivory towers, setting the rules of engagement with minorities and breaking every single one of them when it comes to the Jewish people?
You claim that minority groups should define what hate looks like, yet you dismiss Jews’ legitimate claims of antisemitism. You purport to champion indigenous, women’s, and LGBTQ+ rights but tacitly ignore Hamas’s disdain for them.
You’re quick to label anyone who disagrees with you a Nazi, yet when modern-day Nazis emerge and publicly display their handiwork, half of you support them. Your world-saving ideology has allowed you to become apologists and propagandists for those who murder and rape women and children. Allow me to defy the campus safe spaces where your unexamined claims have held sway for far too long.
You declare, “This is what Palestinians have endured for 75 years” – this is the price of apartheid, decolonization, and a (nonexistent) genocide. Apartheid? Israel’s two million Arab citizens enjoy the same rights as their Jewish countrymen while Gaza has been Judenrein (Jew-free) since 2005. One must also recall that this “open-air prison” had freedom of movement until rocket fire and terrorism forced Israel and Egypt to place blockades.
Hamas’s actions are not a reaction to a blockade or occupation; Hamas plainly seeks the genocide of the Jews. We both acknowledge the suffering of Gazan civilians. Yet, who bears responsibility for the diminishing access to drinking water and hospitals? How does humanitarian aid mysteriously morph into terrorism and the lavish lifestyle of Hamas leaders?
While Hamas views deceased Gazans as a tool for global sympathy, Israel places immense value on every human life. This is evident in their persistent efforts to safeguard civilians, despite Hamas’s relentless attempts to jeopardize them.
You may even pay lip service toward denouncements of the October 7 massacre, a stance that somehow eludes certain professors and international institutions. Nonetheless, you cling to a false equivalence between the Israeli Defense Forces and an internationally recognized terror organization.
Why? Is it because in your abundant compassion and mercy, you find yourself unable to resist blaming the Jewish state for having the temerity to exist? Unwittingly, I am sure, you have proliferated Hamas’s modern blood libel via anti-Zionism.
Please do not look too closely at the meteoric rise of global antisemitic incidents and the plethora of pro-Hamas rallies, some predating Israel’s retaliation. Pay no attention to the anti-Israel protesters in Sydney, Australia who chanted “Gas the Jews.” Not “Gas the Israelis”; gas the Jews. Facing these realities might force you to confront the prevalence of Nazi ideology (the true European occupier of Palestinian society) in the anti-Israel movement.
Given these inconvenient truths, I can conclude that you, my dear classmates, fall into one of three categories. Perhaps you are so under-informed and deeply insecure that virtue signaling about a cause of which you know little is your only coping mechanism.
Alternatively, you may be unable to tolerate the cognitive dissonance the truth brings to your Hegelian worldview, opting to dismiss it in favor of your own obtuse narrative. A third possibility is that you are infatuated with Jew-hatred, which, as history demonstrates, is not an unlikely reality.
You can exist in a world where the truth is inconsequential because you have the privilege of not having to confront it. It’s easy for you to dismiss Jewish life when it’s nothing more than pixels on your phone screen. I do not have that privilege. My cousin – whose bar mitzvah opened this narrative – is currently on the front lines, risking his life for the Jewish state.
My people are bleeding and I cannot look away. Understand this: you embody the privilege you claim to so desperately seek to dismantle. You have become the very monster you were trying to fight. I am the abyss, and I am gazing right back at you.
The writer is a student at the University of Maryland, College Park, and executive assistant for the Endowment for Middle East Truth.