i don't understand what the student protesters want

The humanitarian situation in Gaza is dire. Estimates are that 30,000 people have died since the beginning of the war. Gaza is one of the two or three worst human rights situations in the world right now. The IDF is not regaling itself in glory with its high tolerance for civilian deaths, and a lack of aid is causing all kinds of issues apart from IDF activity. Rather than a focused, surgical operation to take down Hamas leaders who engineered a brutal attack that left 1200 people dead on October 7th of last year, the IDF is really killing a lot of civilians and—presumably—also nabbing some Hamas fighters.

My feeling on the war is that given the brutality of Hamas’ attack, it was perfectly legitimate for the Israeli government to conduct military operations to disrupt/displace Hamas’ command structure. But that is a sort of an abstract thing. The specifics of how you do that really matter, and in that the IDF has fumbled the ball and I think taken the situation from “it’s reasonable to retaliate” to “indiscriminate and unjustified use of force.”

Given this situation, it’s completely reasonable for people to be upset about the situation. The US provides tons of material and soft power assistance to Israel, so it makes sense for Americans to have opinions if that help is being used to do bad things. I personally don’t think continued military aid to Israel is justified if it is going to be used to do things like bomb nonprofit workers feeding hungry Gazans. I don’t really understand Israeli policy, I think the amount of violence is ultimately self-defeating, and I want the fighting to stop.

But also, I get that the situation is very complex. Israel is a separate country that the US influences but does not control. Cutting off all aid of any sort comes with a different set of risks, and possibly endangers innocent Israelis. There are all kinds of longstanding legitimate grievances on both sides of the conflict that make it very difficult to resolve.

In the middle of this situation, somehow students at elite US universities have started protesting with what appears to be an assumption that the violence is entirely from the Israeli side, and what’s more this Israeli policy can be stopped by a wave of Joe Biden’s hand. This seems wrong to me. Hamas killed 1200 people and took dozens of hostages, including small children. That is bad. You sometimes see in academic circles elaborate justifications for Hamas’ violence that basically go “they’re so oppressed it’s only natural that they will blow shit up.” But that’s just wrong. If you are oppressed that is wrong, and then if you respond to that oppression by kidnapping a child, you are also wrong. Two wrongs. They don’t cancel out, you’ve just added to the badness in the world.

The student protesters are calling for university divestment from Israel. Which seems like, who cares? There are also continued calls for “ceasefire now,” which is dumb because both sides have rejected proposed ceasefires. It’s not like Hamas is hanging out going “WE WANT A CEASEFIRE” and the Israeli government is saying “nah.” Hamas does not want to give up hostages!

I sort of had hope when student protests started. I was like, cool maybe the students will protest for peace and that will focus the world’s attention on peace in a helpful way. But no, it’s like they’re rooting for the Palestine side in a conflict, which seems to be totally the wrong way to think about it to me? The only plausible way to secure a better life for people in Gaza is to to get Israel, likely under extreme international pressure, to agree to some kind of settlement. This is going to mean measures like demilitarization of Gaza that Israel is going to want, and a removal of Hamas from leadership. International monitors. Etc.

I don’t mean to pick on the students—they have every right to protest and should not be met with violence for doing that. That again adds more misery to the situation. But I am kind of crestfallen because I don’t see any particular group doing actual peace protests. I want the Israel-Palestine conflict resolved. I want the threat to people on both sides to end. I want Gaza to be prosperous and part of a nation Palestinians can be proud of, and I want them to elect their representatives and have good lives and so on. End of history stuff.

But I feel like this particular conflict breaks people’s brains in such a way that all of our normal aspirations for people go out the window. Instead of saying “yes people in Poland should get to live in peace and vote for their government”, we get all kinds of crazy takes condemning the civilians on both sides. Stuff you’d never put up with in any other context.