Pro-Palestinian protesters are misguided in reality

A hand-lettered, brown cardboard sign at the pro-Palestinian rally on the New Haven Green drew me in.

"ANTI-ZIONIST JEWS FOR PALESTINIAN LIBERATION" seemed stark, held by a young man wore an Arab keffiyah around his shoulders.

"I'm here to protest the genocide in Gaza," Adam Bulmash told me.

His goal, if he were in charge: "I'd like to see a secular, singular, bi-national state between Israel and Palestine," he said.

Bulmash, of Hartford, raised in Redding, graduating next weekend from UConn with a masters in social work, stood among eight or ten mostly young people behind a banner, "CT Social Workers for Palestine." The sign had a Palestinian flag and the phrases, "End the Occupation Now" and "From the River to the Sea."

We have a lot to unpack here. Everyone, or let's say almost everyone, wants to see peace. Everyone wants justice.

Do the chanted goals at this rally for the liberation of Gaza, which attracted about 1,600 protesters Sunday afternoon to the New Haven Green, advance those ideals of peace and justice? In some cases, absolutely not.

The message sweeping college campuses carries serious contradictions. Gaza, with or without a war, is not a free place and its Hamas leadership is dedicated to destroying Israel. It has no civil liberties and no government other than a terrorist group that engineered the barbaric attack on Israel last Oct. 7.

And yet, we're supposed to not only condemn Israel's response and clamor for an end to human suffering but also welcome the Hamas-led Palestinians into the family of nations? Bulmash understands the fundamental dilemma in calling for "liberation now" for the Palestinians in Gaza, even as he does exactly that.

"I'm not here to support Hamas," he said, "I'm here to support the Gazan people."

Laudable. But how do we separate them? Gaza last held elections in 2005, when Hamas took power that it has not relinquished.

No slogans, no marches, no demands for universities to exit stocks of weapons-makers or for the United States to halt arms shipments to Israel, will move the Middle East toward long-term stability. There is, however, a quick path to a ceasefire and a robust resumption of humanitarian aid, two main goals of the protesters.

It's called unconditional surrender. And the immediate return of all hostages, dead or alive.

Japan and Germany have stood as allies since soon after World War II. They surrendered unconditionally. And we occupied and rebuilt them for as long as it took. Very clearly, Gaza must be occupied by an international force when the fighting stops. I pray that's soon.

Of course, occupation and rebuilding were hardly the sentiment we saw on the New Haven Green Sunday afternoon. The rally leaders called for complete and total liberation for the Palestinians and I heard few real ideas on how that might work.

Bulmash understands the complexity better than most Connecticut students. He spent three months in 2016 as an American Jew living in the biblical town of Hebron in the West Bank with a Palestinian family, where he bought the keffiyah he wore Sunday. He would have preferred to see Hamas accept the U.S. brokered, 6-week ceasefire offer it rejected earlier this month although he understands the opposition to it.

"At this point," he said, "it's about peace for the Gazan people, not continuing resistance."

Precisely. But that's not the rhetoric we heard through the loudspeakers. "We will never stop fighting until liberation is ours," the rally speaker bellowed. "Long live the Indifada!"

Key to the Intifada, or uprising, is the phrase "From the River to the Sea" — which sent shivers through me Sunday when shouted by protesters for peace. I thought it meant the destruction of Israel from the Jordan River westward to the Mediterranean Sea. No, Bulmash said, it's not antisemitic and in fact it has been used by Israel's Likud Party.

That's the party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who does appear to be overseeing an overzealous action by the Israeli Defense Forces. Just as Bulmash can favor the Palestinians without supporting Hamas, others of us can be unabashedly pro-Israel without supporting Netanyahu.

But, "From the River to the Sea?" Really? "Everyone here is using it as a call for freedom in that region," Bulmash told me.

The problem is, many protesters don't know what they're calling for. I spoke with one young woman from the Hartford area who held a sign about liberation and peace. Like many, perhaps most of the protesters, she demanded the so-called right of return, under which Palestinians displaced in the Israeli war of independence in 1948 could reclaim their old homes and properties.

"People shouldn't have to beg for their own liberation," she said.

Aside from the lack of recognition that Israelis hold a claim the same land historically, what, I asked her, would become of the Israelis? "They're able to go back to their homelands where they came from," she said, safely and in peace.

Um, no. That's an old trope, that people of any group can go back where they came from. It illustrates the widespread misunderstanding of history that we're seeing. Israel is here to stay and the Palestinians aren't going anyplace either, as we see no Arab country taking in refugees and few breaking ties with Israel.

Another misguided reaction: Many protesters I spoke with will not vote to re-elect President Joe Biden, saying he supports genocide. One group of a half-dozen friends built a giant, paper mache Biden puppet, with a bloody apron, a (United Nations) veto stamp in one hand and missiles in the other. Genocide Joe and Butcher Biden, they called him.

First, what's happening in Gaza is war, not genocide. Let's reserve that word for the Holocaust, Cambodia under Pol Pot, Armenia at the hands of the Turks in World War I, Rwanda in 1994 and other examples of mass, deliberate ethnic cleansing.

Second, this opposition to Biden could well hand victory to former President Donald Trump, who is likely to take a harder line against the Palestinians. Bulmash disagreed that the issue will derail Biden's re-election but, recognizing the big picture, said he intends to vote for Biden in November.

We honor the protesters for voicing their horror at the war in Gaza. We should and must support action against war crimes on either side. That can all be clear in these protests.

Also clear: These well-meaning protesters might see the irony that they're recoiling against the only nation in the Middle East that shares our values of free expression in favor of not just an end to the fighting but victory for a terrorist regime. That's the part that goes too far.