Editor’s Note: This is a faculty submission.

We write to express our dismay at the petition recently circulated by Students for Justice in Palestine, “Statement on Justice in Palestine: A Letter to Our Communities.” We too express deep sympathy for the victims of the fighting in Gaza sparked by the October 7 terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas. We too are horrified by the brutal violence of the war in Gaza and call upon the U.S. administration to use its power and influence to help bring about an expeditious end to the fighting, the return of the hostages, and a negotiated path toward peace.

But we are appalled by the many misrepresentations and the worrisome implications of the statements in the open letter. We call upon our community to come together in the tradition of civic discourse to listen, discuss, and learn about the complexities of the situation, not to chant slogans that fan the flames of discord and cause many of our students, faculty, and staff members to feel silenced, hated, and unsafe.

One of the most shocking and dishonest aspects of the letter is its failure to mention the Oct. 7 massacre that sparked the broader conflict in the Gaza strip. Reading the letter, one would never know that anything happened on Oct. 7 and might think that Israel spontaneously launched a “campaign of mass terror against the Palestinian people.” This is not the case.

The indisputable facts are these: on October 7th, Hamas, the Iran-backed Jihadist terror group controlling Gaza, launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, violating the standing cease-fire, invading kibbutzim, and attacking a music festival. With thousands of rockets raining down on Israel, Hamas fighters brutally and gleefully massacred, raped, tortured, and burned alive at least 1,200 civilians, including infants, and took more than 239 men, women, and children hostage. This un-
speakable, deliberate, hate-fueled evil was the worst single day of violence against the Jews since the Holocaust.

The letter does not acknowledge these atrocities, much less express empathy or remorse. The Israeli military assault on Gaza aims to break the terrorists’ hold on power, secure the border, and bring the Israeli hostages home. This is no easy task. Israel’s efforts to avoid harming civilians have been complicated by Egypt’s reluctance to open the Rafah crossing into Egypt, Hamas’ impediments to the Israeli request for civilian passage out of Northern Gaza, and by the fact that Hamas fighters are dug into a maze of tunnels deliberately located beneath hospitals, schools, mosques, and refugee camps, deliberately turning Palestinian civilians into human shields.

The events of the past three weeks must be seen in the context of the history of the region over many centuries. The authors and signers of the “Statement on Justice” are not simply advocating for Palestinian rights, as they claim, but siding with the terrorists of Hamas, who have for years brutally repressed the Palestinians, particularly by imprisoning, torturing, and killing political moderates who favor a two-state solution and anyone else who dissents from their ideology or who is LGBTQ, not to mention using women, the elderly, the sick, and children as human shields.

In denouncing “the occupation and subjugation of Palestinians and their land, which has been ongoing for more than seven decades,” the authors and signers of the petition make it clear that they consider all of Israel—not just the occupied West Bank and Gaza—to be an illegitimate state. They are not simply protesting civilian deaths in war or what some view as Israel’s disproportionate military response—matters about which reasonable people can disagree. Rather, along with Hamas, they are calling for the elimination of the state of Israel and the Jewish people. Their goal is to deny Jews the right to self-determination.

The deaths of many thousands of Palestinian civilians and the lack of food, water, fuel, and medical care are clearly a humanitarian catastrophe which must be alleviated. We also believe that much more must be done to stop the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and pave the way to Palestinian autonomy and peaceful coexistence. But no lasting or just peace will ever be brought about by support and sympathy for jihadist terrorists, or for one side alone. The freedom of the Palestinian people cannot come through the destruction of the Jewish state. Both Israelis and Palestinians deserve “to safely sleep in their homelands, the freedom to love, live, grow, dream, breathe.”

Signed by:
MARGOT SINGER,
ADAM DAVIS,
MIKEY GOLDWEBER,
ANDY KATZ,
LISBETH LIPARI,
AMANDA GUNN,
MATT KRETCHMAR,
WES WALTER,
JOAN KRONE, &
MATT NEAL

*Editor’s Note: Laura Russell, an original signer to the print version of this piece, has since requested her name be removed from the list.