Initially, to avoid possible misconception of our thematic meaning, we would assert two caveats:[First]: This writing is not relevant to the pending Hamas-Israel War or Gaza.
[Second]: While we unquestionably support the State of Israel, we do not approve of any act of violation of legitimate Palestine territory. We do believe in a peaceful, two-state solution. The latter subject is similarly, irrelevant to our present theme and contextual intent.
Student-led rallies and mass protest events, historically seem to be, a concomitant feature of University life. In our Nation, at present, University Student mass demonstrations appear to be in full season from coast to coast. There are psychiatrists and other behavioral professionals who would relate the underlying dynamics of this notably youthful phenomenon to the specific stage of the individual’s developmental turmoil, of adolescence and youth, professionally termed, “Storm and Stress,” (“Sturm und Drang”) empirically, evinced by parental conflict, mood disruptions, and risky behaviors.
Whatever the commonality may be, we have noted many student protests whose articulated causes contain cognizable moral or philosophical merit and others about which we would have some question. Public expressions of mass concern regarding, academic freedom, book banning, “Black Lives Matter,” voter interference, excessive tuition charges, and affirmative action, are examples of causes with a meritorious aspiration. Additionally, the youthful participants would seem to have an understandably, zealous motivation, having been relatively recently in life, exposed to the more sophisticated context of justice and its opposite; albeit, somewhat lacking in empirical experience, which latter consideration, at times, may offer to a more mature perception some degree of objective mitigation.
As stated in the outset of this essay, we do not support any acts of Israeli settlers that violate Palestinian territory, as prescribed by International Law. Student protests against the same, however, often appear to lack propriety in view of America’s past history. With regard to its 19th-century history program of expansion under the quasi-religious rationalization, proclaimed, “Manifest Destiny,” regarding which, protesting American students seem myopic and completely disinterested. In our view, this entirely, ignored consideration makes the uninformed, perhaps, misled, student protester lack equitable standing or credibility, regarding the contested issue of Israeli-Palestine borders.
But first, a snapshot of some relevant Middle East history: In 1947 the UN drafted a” Partition Plan” which officially divided the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and Jewish States. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was legally created. The foregoing act sparked a pan-Arab war against Israel, which, unfortunately, continues to this day. The issue of boundaries, it seems, has since been in contention.
Our criticism relative to the mass protests on the contentious subject of Israeli-Palestine borders is two-fold: the protestors’ understandable zeal for principled justice, often far outweighs their information, and second, their expressed aspirations for territorial justice in the Middle East, inappropriately, perhaps, even sophomorically, ignores our own, American History, concerning the immoral displacement of the aboriginal American Nations and the plunder and territorial aggrandizement of the entire continent. To repeat, we do not approve of acts of illegal trespass or incorporation of legitimately established Palestinian land by zealous Israelis, nor the reverse. It, however, seems reductionist and sophomoric to loudly protest claims of specific trespass by wrongdoing, over-patriotic Middle East wrongdoers, by “idealistic,” possibly, inadequately informed protestors, vocally seeking territorial justice while, at the same time, ignoring and tacitly, accepting our Nation’s felonious theft of an entire continent, and continuing to remain, “Manifestly, myopic.”
-p.
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