Megan Marzec clearly stated her position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It speaks volumes about her opponents that they'd rather silence her than attempt to argue against that position. From the online death threats to that masterpiece of passive aggressive condescension Rabbi Danielle Leshaw authored, those demanding Marzec's resignation from Student Senate (and/or her head on a platter) don't seem to want to talk about the issue at hand any more than they want Marzec to talk about it.
Megan Marzec clearly stated her position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It speaks volumes about her opponents that they'd rather silence her than attempt to argue against that position. From the online death threats to that masterpiece of passive aggressive condescension Rabbi Danielle Leshaw authored, those demanding Marzec's resignation from Student Senate (and/or her head on a platter) don't seem to want to talk about the issue at hand any more than they want Marzec to talk about it. That's because Marzec's detractors aren't supporters of Israel. They are supporters of ethnic cleansing. And ethnic cleansing is a hard thing to advocate openly, especially if you want to keep fooling Americans into paying for it.
Israel was established as an ethnic and religiously Jewish state in 1948 in an area primarily inhabited by Palestinian Muslims and Christians. To make way for a Jewish majority, 700,000 Palestinians were pushed out of Israel, many to the West Bank and Gaza–territories Israel then conquered in 1967. Ever since, Palestinians there (now numbering 4 million) have lived under Israeli military occupation. While continuing to expel Palestinians from the West Bank and incorporating their land into Israel, Israel has turned the less desirable land of Gaza into an overcrowded, open-air prison where Israel controls the borders, imposes an impoverishing trade embargo, and routinely attacks trapped Gazans with the world’s 4th most powerful military in actions Israeli military strategists callously refer to as mowing the lawn.
During Israel's latest attack on Gaza this summer, Palestinian militants killed 66 Israelis, including 61 soldiers, three adult civilians and one child. Israeli soldiers, meanwhile, killed over 2,000 Palestinians, an estimated two thirds of whom were civilians and 30 percent children. After Israel had finished bombing Palestinian hospitals, schools, shelters, and even children playing soccer, U.S. Congress followed up on the Senate's unanimous declaration of support for Israel in July with its early August decision to increase funding for improvements to Israel's missile defense system. No one in Congress suggested giving any missile defense system to Palestinians.
For decades, Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. For the past 20 years, the U.S. has given Israel between $2.5 and $4 billion annually, including $8.5 million in military aid each day of fiscal year 2014. The U.S. gives more money to Israel than to all of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined, even though Israel is a country just one fifth the size of Ohio, whose citizens enjoy one of the world's highest per capita incomes and longest life expectancies.
There are several explanations for the so-called special relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Political scientists Mearsheimer and Walt focus on the power of the Israeli lobby. I think U.S. elites want a well-armed, non-Arab, oil-free dependency in the world’s most important energy producing region. But there's also a natural cultural affinity.
Israel and the U.S. are both settler colonial states founded on ethnic cleansing. The Palestinians of today are the Native Americans of 200 years ago. Just as Columbus discovered America and our slave-owning, Indian-killing, religious, freedom-loving forbearers civilized this country, Israel was a land without people (because Palestinians don't count) just waiting for a people without land to take the desert and make it bloom. Or, as an Israeli-funded subway poster campaign in major U.S. cities put it recently: In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel.
Yet as much as our shared national mythology might appeal to the Fox News demographic, young Americans just aren't buying it anymore. A recent Gallup poll found that while 55 percent of Americans age 65 and older supported Israel's latest massacre in Gaza, the same was true of just 25 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29, 51 percent of whom opposed the offensive. So when OU's supporters of ethnic cleansing say Megan Marzec doesn't speak for most of her fellow students, remember this: Megan Marzec speaks for most of her generation.
And when Leshaw and company have the audacity to attempt to speak for all Jews on campus, remember not only all the members of Jews Against the Occupation and Israel's own Peace Now, as well as prominent Jewish commentators like Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein, Medea Benjamin, Phylli Bennis, Max Blumenthal and the late Howard Zinn. Think also of OU film professor Louis-George Schwartz. With regard to Marzec's detractors, Schwartz has stated, I'm named after two great uncles killed in Auschwitz, I say unequivocally that those who threaten anti-racists in the name of the Jews do not speak for me, and they dishonor my ancestors. I say unequivocally that those who support the murderous state dominating the territory of Palestine do not speak for me.
Think about all of this and recognize that people like Leshaw (so hip because she texts swear words just like a student!) are trying to hijack the horrific history of Jewish persecution in order to use it for their own racist political agenda. Keep that in mind, and you'll never fall for their attempts to portray long-overdue criticism of Israel as unconscionable hatred of the Jewish people.
And finally, if you've ever wished you could undo the horrors of America’s own settler colonial past, remember that you have the power to stop history from repeating itself in Palestine. It is your government that is spending your fellow citizens tax dollars on Israel’s murder us ethnic cleansing campaign. It is your university and those like it that are invested in Israeli companies. You have the power to change all of that just like the student activists before you who helped end U.S.-backed apartheid in South Africa. Realize that, and you’ll come to see that the real goal of the effort against Marzec isn’t to silence Marzec, it’s to silence you.
Stand up for her, and you stand up for yourself. Stand up for yourself, and your generation can bring hope and possibly even justice to the people of Palestine. Now is your chance.
Damon Krane lived in Athens from 1999 through 2009, during which time he attended Ohio University, wrote a column for The Post, and contributed to several local publications.
