Israar Ahmed’s recent opinion piece, “Open the Discussion on Occupied Palestine,” does anything but open meaningful discussion on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Instead, it demonizes Israel and Zionism and demands that Yale and the News condemn them. Ahmed’s unilaterally damning approach leads to grave errors in his assessment of the conflict and, worse, a counterproductive vision of what Yale’s students and institutions should do about it. 

Ahmed’s statement that “Israel has continuously bombed the Gaza strip” leaves out necessary context: much of Israel’s military action in Gaza in recent years has been prompted by terrorism or threats of impending terrorism against Israel’s citizens. Ahmed omits that the purpose of the operation carried out in Gaza in August was to neutralize the terror group Islamic Jihad, which was threatening to launch rockets from Gaza at Israeli civilians. 

Equally unfair is his comparison of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank: Russia’s invasion was unprompted, while Israel’s actions in 1948 and 1967 were a response to invasion by all of its neighbors. In both arguments, oversimplification of the conflict into a one-sided one loses sight of key nuance. 

Ahmed wants Yale, the News and you to condemn “the Israeli occupation.” But what exactly is he referring to by “occupation?” Is it the West Bank, the Golan Heights or the Gaza Strip (which is not, in fact, occupied by Israel)? Or is the whole of Israel occupied territory? If so, what would it look like for that land to be “unoccupied?” Jewish college students in America often hear, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which geographically considers all of Israel’s sovereign territory to be occupied and implies that Jewish self-determination in Israel is inherently problematic. 

This is the same position held by Hamas, the openly antisemitic governing party in Gaza, whose emblem portrays crossed swords over the entirety of Israel.

You might think it is unfair to point to an internationally-recognized terrorist organization as an example. But similar rhetoric has reared its head at Yale. As recently as 2019, Jewish students entering and exiting the Slifka Center were, according to an article in the Yale Journal on Israel and Palestine, “subjected to a wide variety of verbal attacks, ranging from ‘colonialist’ to ‘baby killer.’” This abuse makes it critical to understand when “ending the occupation” is a legitimate, concrete move toward Palestinian self-determination and when it is a dangerous euphemism for opposition to Israel’s very existence.

Ahmed also asks for condemnation of Zionism without clarifying what he means by the term. Zionism refers to the belief in and support for a Jewish state in the Jewish homeland of Israel, and, crucially, has nothing to do with political opinions on Israel’s government or its actions. This makes Ahmed’s statements, “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” and “Anti-Zionism opposes antisemitism” particularly murky. 

Does “anti-Zionism” mean criticism of Israel’s actions, which Zionists are equally capable of? Or does it mean criticism of the existence of Israel as a Jewish state? Does Ahmed seriously believe that advocating for an end to the Jewish state is not fundamentally hostile to the Jewish people? I am sure he would not deny the many obvious ways in which Jews around the world are connected to both the Land of Israel and the State: indigenously, historically, religiously, culturally and by the fact that Israel is the Jewish nation-state. A call to dismantle one is a call to dismantle the other. 

Ahmed says, “Do not hide your support of Zionism behind false claims of antisemitism.” We rarely see it legitimized, let alone popularized when any other minority group is accused of abusing “false claims” of prejudice against it, and yet Jewish people — on any scale, from our nation-state to our Yale community — find ourselves charged with misconstruing the very terms describing prejudice against us. These allegations leave space for antisemitism to seep through their rhetorical cracks. 

I challenge the idea that Yale, the News or any other Yale-affiliated institution’s condemnation of Israel and/or Zionism would be positive for Yale or the conflict. Would Yale students, handed a proclamation of guilt from on high, feel the need to think critically about the conflict for themselves? What would be accomplished other than making Yale a less safe space for its Jewish community? 

Look at the Yale College Council condemnation from May 2021, written and advocated for by Yalies4Palestine and the MENA association, which accuses Israel of genocide and ethnic cleansing. I wonder: how many other geopolitical issues has the YCC passed judgment on? If its job is to pass such judgment on violence wherever it occurs worldwide, then where is its condemnation of truly one-sided issues, such as the genocide of Muslim Uyghurs in China and of the Rohingya people in Myanmar or the persecution of Kurds in Turkey? And if the answer is that the YCC “doesn’t know enough” to pass judgment on such issues, how was it so sure it knew enough to pass judgment on Israel? 

This double standard was made even more obvious when the YCC condemnation did not even include so much as a mention of Jewish victims of Palestinian terror. As a result, I know Jewish high-school students who will not apply to Yale because they feel unsafe in the atmosphere created by their would-be college council. I understand them. They aren’t eager to be labeled apartheid supporters, baby killers and abusers of the definition of antisemitism for bigoted purposes just because they support Zionism.

Pressuring students, organizations and universities to condemn Israel without a full understanding of the conflict is irresponsible and counterproductive. Yale, the News and their respective peer institutions ought to avoid making that mistake. Instead, we should recognize one another’s unique perspectives and work together to envision a better future. I agree with Ahmed’s suggestion that the Yale Political Union hold a “sincere discussion” on this important issue. I hold out hope that Israel, Zionism and the Jewish people can remain part of a discourse at this university that asks us to repair the world rather than divide it.

NETANEL SCHWARTZ is a sophomore in Timothy Dwight College. He is the grandson of a Holocaust survivor as well as Moroccan Jewish immigrants to Israel. He can be reached at netanel.schwartz@yale.edu.