Although the pro-Palestine protests at my university have been nothing close to the magnitude that we’ve seen at others, we had a couple of small protests here, the first of which ended with some arrests. There have been many outspoken faculty members expressing disappointment with the way the protests were handled, and more than 200 faculty members signed a letter asking for a review of policies and for charges against the protesters to be dropped. I’m fine with this. I’m a free speech kind of guy, and have a soft spot for activism. If Nazis wanted to have a non-violent march on my campus, I’d argue that they should be allowed to do so (especially because we’re a public university, so all should be welcome). But as much as I support the protesters’ right to protest, I’m disappointed in what feels like a real lack of critical thinking by the people I expect to be the most skilled in critical thinking: the professors.

First of all, while I might agree that the actions of the protesters was peaceful (they’re repeatedly described as peaceful protesters), chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is not a call for peace. It is a call for the eradication of Israel. That is vastly different from any other protests. Imagine calling for the end of Mexico because we don’t like that they aren’t helping with our immigration problem. People protest to call attention to human rights violations in China, but they aren’t calling for the end of China. Even when we go to war with another country, we aren’t trying to eliminate that country from existence.

It makes it worse when the protesters alternate between “from the river to the sea…” and any of the many slogans calling for the end of genocide. Worse because “from the river to the sea…” is a clear call for a genocide of Jews, and because it is erroneous to call what’s happening in Gaza a genocide. Let’s compare war-related deaths by a function of the population.

In Gaza, to date, an estimated 35,000 people have been killed. Of course, the war isn’t over, and that number could grow, but as of now, that represents 1.6% of the Gaza population (the population of Gaza is estimated to be 2.24 million). Compare that with numbers from WW2. Before WW2, the population of Japan was approximately 72 million, and an estimated 1.972 million died in WW2. That’s 2.7% of the Japanese population. Neither comes close to the eradication of an entire group of people. What about Jews in Europe? Before the Nazi attempted genocide, which was a genuine documented attempted genocide, there were approximately 9.5 million Jews in Europe. The Nazi campaign killed an estimated 6 million, which is 63% of the Jewish population in Europe. A skeptic might say that’s an unfair comparison because there were Jews elsewhere, but approximately 60% of the world’s Jews were living in Europe before the Nazis, so that’s still 37.9% of the world’s Jewish population killed by the Nazis.

I’m not sure where the threshold is for calling something a genocide, but 1.6% of a population doesn’t seem above that line by any real measure. It’s upsetting to me that there’s not much mention of that on my campus, and that faculty themselves are using the word “genocide” when discussing the war in Gaza.

But, with all that said, it’s entirely possible to think it’s wrong to call it a genocide and think it’s awful that people are dying in the conflict. I know it’s possible to think these two things because I think these two things. It’s also entirely possible to think that the protesters aren’t making a lot of sense, especially the ones with “free Palestine” on pride flags (LGBQT+ rights aren’t exactly a priority in Gaza), and to think they should be allowed to chant non-sensical things in the quad on a college campus. I know it’s possible to think these two things because I think these two things. It’s entirely possible to be worried about protests on our campus devolving into the very disruptive protests on other campuses and think the police were a bit heavy handed. I know it’s possible to think these two things because I think these two things. There are plenty more, but I feel better by ranting about these things, so I’m going to get back to work now.