The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
Whenever I hear the word “Israel,” I think of Sivan Elkabets, a 23-year-old Israeli woman who was brutally murdered with her boyfriend by Hamas on Oct. 7. “The only reason she was killed was because she was Jewish,” Sivan’s father told me when I met him a few weeks ago in Kfar Aza on a student trip to Israel.
I saw the ashen remains of personal belongings, destroyed homes, and washing machines riddled with bullet holes. I left the decimated Israeli town that day deeply disturbed, haunted by what I had witnessed.
That rush of anguish and distress returned to me this past week — only this time, I felt it on our own campus. In Princeton’s ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment,’ Sivan’s murderers are lionized by some of my classmates as legitimate resistors of oppression, and their attempted genocide of Jews is wholeheartedly endorsed through students’ calls for “intifada” and the presence of a Hezbollah flag. It is unacceptable that some of my peers are supporting the rhetoric of Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
Like many other students, my classes were disrupted by thundering drums and chants from the protests last Thursday and Friday. As the pounding persisted, I kept thinking to myself: How could I explain this to Sivan’s father? Why are some of America’s brightest young minds endorsing as justifiable resistance the murder of innocent lives, and the taking of hundreds of hostages?
Princeton protesters are mistaken to think that Israel is not right in defending itself. Israel’s war is a case-study in a just war. Princeton’s own professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study Michael Walzer — the world’s leading “just war” theorist — makes this very argument. The elected government of Gaza, Hamas, attacked Israel on Oct. 7 and intentionally targeted innocent Israeli civilians in their homes and at a music festival. Israel has returned the attack on its people and sovereignty by trying to rid Gaza of Hamas. Israel’s war is righteous in cause and action.
Despite this, some protestors have promoted Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization guilty of murdering dozens of Americans and Jews. Students held a Hezbollah flag at the center of their protest circle. It is sad that some Princeton students felt comfortable supporting terrorism in public. While others may claim ignorance as an excuse for being caught standing proudly next to a terrorist banner, make no mistake: There is no justification when you’re a bystander to the blatant support of terrorism.
The protests against Israel are all the more remarkable because of the unprecedented care Israel has taken in gruesome, challenging urban warfare. John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Madison Policy Forum, has said that “Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history.” He writes that Israel’s combatant-to-civilian ratio is “historically low for modern urban warfare.”
For however many students joined the encampment, I know thousands more have stayed away. Perhaps they are too busy, without time to learn about this distant conflict. Perhaps it is because they recognize that it is possible and tragic for thousands of Palestinian civilians to be killed in a war without that war being a genocide. Or maybe it is because they feel uneasy standing shoulder-to-shoulder with students who openly support designated terrorist organizations with their choice of flags and cheers.
There is a difference between protesting when civilians are killed incidentally in a war and endorsing the terrorism that kickstarted it. So before you lay down a blanket at the encampment, ask the student next to you: With whom are you showing solidarity?
Jacob Colchamiro is an undergraduate ORFE major from the Class of 2025. He can be reached at jc4557[at]princeton.edu.
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