Today, our humanity must unite us more than our political views and tribalism divide us.
Oct. 7, 2023 should have brought the Tufts community together. The gruesome murder of hundreds of civilians, from infants to the elderly, the use of torture and sexual violence as tools of war and the kidnapping of over 240 hostages should have been flatly condemned by every Tufts student, faculty and administration member.
Many of us did. University President Sunil Kumar released a “personal note” on Oct. 11, 2023, stating: “The events that have come to light are pure barbarism. The attackers made no distinction between young and old, military and civilian, healthy and infirm. Hostages were taken and many still remain unaccounted for. I denounce these heinous acts in no uncertain terms.” Regardless of our political views, we should all have been able to denounce evil when we saw it.
Many who support Israel spoke empathetically about the suffering of innocent Palestinians caught in the middle of the subsequent Israel-Hamas war. Rabbi Naftali Brawer, executive director of Tufts Hillel, modeled such empathy when he wrote in a letter to Tufts students: “One can be fully supportive of Israel’s right to exist … while at the same time being deeply concerned, not just about the suffering Gazans but about the Palestinian people and their national aspirations more broadly.”
Kumar and Brawer showed us the right way to respond: with basic humanity that trumps political differences. Whatever political perspective you may hold, the death of innocents is a tragedy. We should be able to agree on at least that.
Instead, over the course of the last year, we have watched our campus tear itself apart as many members of the Tufts community chose to make open displays of bigotry and hate in the immediate aftermath of this atrocity.
Just two days after the Oct. 7 massacre, Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine praised the “creativity” of Hamas’ massacre of civilians. Although Tufts’ administration and media outlets have denounced their statement, Jewish students, shocked by the largest mass murder of their people since the Holocaust, still had to hear fellow Tufts students praising the murderers and kidnappers who committed this massacre.
Shortly thereafter, 200 Tufts students occupied the Mayer Campus Center, chanting antisemitic slogans including “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” 377 out of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have declared this chant overtly antisemitic since it calls for “the eradication of the State of Israel.” Anyone who knows basic geography knows why: The entire country of Israel exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Whether they meant it that way or not, chanting this calls for Israel’s destruction, and for the forced removals or deaths of millions of Israeli citizens, including Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze and more.
Tufts must be better than what we saw last year.
This year, Oct. 7 should be a day of unity on the Tufts campus, one where we come together as a community to reject hatred and embrace humanity. We must condemn Hamas’ intentional, planned brutality. We ought to be able to express sadness both for the Israelis and Palestinians who have died in this war. Those who can do both are the humane, rational majority at Tufts; everyone else is, at best, deeply morally confused. Bigoted and ignorant attacks on members of the Tufts community must be uniformly condemned.
No matter where you fall on this or other issues, attacking people for their religion, ethnicity or race is never acceptable. If we can agree and act on that principle, today can be the day we start bridging the divides that separate us and move forward as one community.
