We Need to Rethink How We Think About the Holocaust
Professor Marianne Hirsch on how the way we teach the “crime of all crimes” informs our understanding of Gaza.
Professor Marianne Hirsch on how the way we teach the “crime of all crimes” informs our understanding of Gaza.
A month after the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, I believed there was evidence that the Israeli military had committed war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity in its counterattack on Gaza. But contrary to the cries of Israel’s fiercest critics, the evidence did not seem to me to rise to the crime of genocide.
Even before President Trump was re-elected, the Heritage Foundation, best known for Project 2025, set out to destroy pro-Palestinian activism in the United States.
The New York Times interviewed two people who described being detained by Israeli soldiers and looking on as they opened fire on ambulances and a fire truck, killing 15.
The U.N. has said Israel killed the workers. The video appears to contradict Israel’s version of events, which said the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals.
Israeli soldiers and Palestinian former detainees say troops have regularly forced captured Gazans to carry out life-threatening tasks, including inside Hamas tunnels.
On the surface, this is a small story: A college canceled an event planned by a magazine. But it seems to be a story about something bigger: fear. Rather, it’s a story about many fears — including the fear of antisemitism, the fear of being accused of antisemitism, and the fear of controversy generally — and how they can combine to turn an institution designed to facilitate open discussion into something that makes open discussion impossible.
By Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
Hundreds of professors at the university weighed in on the resolution, which said the president, Nemat Shafik, had committed an “unprecedented assault on student’s rights.”
Mr. Awartani is a Palestinian American student at Brown University.