Angry
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mEC54eTuGw
The Rolling Stones lead off their new album with a song called Angry. Here’s the video.
I have tried to understand the point of view of those demonstrating on college campuses in support of Hamas using what is essentially a message of anti-Zionism that borders awfully close to antisemitism. These young people believe that the Palestinian Arabs ought to control all the territory from the “river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean).” Perhaps these demonstrators do not comprehend that this would be the end of the Jewish state of Israel, something for which the Jewish people have fought for 3500 years. That makes me angry.
If these young people were simply demonstrating to end the war, that I might get. The problem is that the demonstrators are ignorant of the history of the region and the many opportunities the Arabs have had for an independent Palestinian state going back to 1936—before there was an Israel. Now that October 7 has occurred, it has become impossible for Israel to live next to Hamas. Israel will dismantle Hamas in Gaza even as Hamas persists elsewhere. For Israel, this is an issue of national security given that Hamas has vowed to repeat the horrors of October 7 for as long as they occupy Gaza. That makes me angry, too.
I am furious at these demonstrating nincompoops advocating for the eradication of Israel and the promotion to statehood of terrorists.
But, that’s only the beginning of my anger.
What in God’s name are the college presidents thinking when it comes to securing their campuses? Surely it must be against university policy to occupy common ground with tents and break into buildings and destroy furniture. If the students want to gather in a safe place and demonstrate for a few hours, fine. They have no right to camp out on the quad and vandalize university property.
They should all be arrested and an arrest record created permanently. Let’s see them pass that background check! Then, they should be allowed to return to class peacefully. If they are arrested again, they are expelled—permanently.
Any faculty member arrested will also have a permanent arrest record created and they should be fired for unprofessional behavior.
Any outside people gathered in the police net should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
These actions should be led by the university presidents who must guarantee the safety of all students and the integrity of the university campus.
To date, the presidents have been far too lenient with the demonstrators who have disrupted campus life and made many Jewish students feel unsafe. The demonstrators want the university leadership to choose sides in a foreign war. That’s not what universities do. I’m angry about that as well.
If you want to be a president of something, you must want to lead. These university presidents, particularly the ones negotiating with these terrorists on their campuses, should all be fired by their boards.
I am angry about all of this.
In the second piece above from The New York Times on May 9, Tom Friedman does a great job of laying out how everyone has gone wrong in Gaza: Hamas for October 7, Netanyahu for playing the Palestinian Authority against Hamas to stay in power, the demonstrators for being so dense about the historical context, and the IDF for maximizing the destruction and killing of civilians in Gaza. Probably the only group involved who is innocent are the Gazan Arabs who oppose Hamas and were purposefully shut out of the shelter of the tunnels.
The end game is obvious as Friedman states: “two nation-states for two indigenous people.”
It is just that no one is ready for that. When the Israeli leadership gets off the notion of having a Jewish state “from the river to the sea,” when the Palestinians get non-terrorist leadership, and when the rest of the world stops treating the Jewish state as special in all the wrong ways (like at the UN), then we can get started.
We are all too angry for that now.
