Sarah Dajani ’26
Opinion Editor
Usually, I know how to start. I have a clear outline of what I want to convey and I am able to reduce my thoughts into short bullet points. Today, I am stuck. There is nothing that can be said. A whole population is being annihilated and American taxpayers are supplying Israel with yet another $8.7 billion ‘aid package’ to continue its genocidal assault in Gaza and expand its settler colonial territorial aspirations in Lebanon. This, of course, is amidst sincere calls for a political solution from the White House.
I am advised to focus my pieces on campus issues, so I will try to do that. After Oct. 7, there were calls from Trinity students and world leaders, to condemn the Oct. 7 attacks, the same way one would condemn 9/11. Last year on 9/11, Chaplain Halley wrote that “Trinity College Remembers 9/11” and its events which “represent the single greatest loss of life resulting from a foreign attack on American soil.” As an Arab and a Muslim, any mention of 9/11 without addressing the bloodthirsty, savage response of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan is criminal to me. There is an inherent higher appreciation of American life in that statement itself. To convey the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks, Halley emphasized that they caused the highest number of deaths on American soil. So, part of the tragedy is quantitative. Unfortunately, no such quantifier applies outside of American soil. In fact, it doesn’t apply precisely where American intervention lies. When this article was written, there were 24 martyrs in Gaza, killed instantaneously by an Israeli airstrike on a school and a mosque. Quantitatively, this is not the greatest loss of life caused by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, or on a mosque or on a school. The loss of brown life is so normalized that no such similar statement could be applied. There are no ultimatums to our loss of life. There is always more. More U.S. interests in the Middle East, more 1 and 2-year-old baby terrorists Israel needs to eliminate in a mosque or a school.
In an address by the most eloquently spoken war criminal, Benjamin Netanyahu ‘slams ICC Prosecutor’s Decision to Seek Arrest Warrants’ by saying that these arrest warrants for Israel and Hamas leaders is like creating a moral equivalence between President Bush and Osama bin Laden after 9/11. This idea received wide popularity among younger generations. We started wondering if it’s still possible to issue arrest warrants for President Bush and Osama bin Laden. I sit in western political philosophy classes and I listen to how “the state of nature” is lawless, ruled by chaos and that we need laws to function as a civilization. That same Western tradition, that is the basis of international laws, is completely ignored when a Western state is in a “state of war.’” The International Criminal Court has deemed Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal, and the great United States invites him to address Congress. The total impunity Israel, the United States and Western liberal democracies enjoy whilst committing atrocities in every single corner in the world is the most gaslighting act for every non-white individual (this is a quantifier I can assert).
We have an obligation to demand that the Oct. 7 attacks are not used to excuse genocide and further settler colonial territorial expansion. We failed to make this clear about 9/11, we cannot fail now. An anti-Zionist Jewish student told me that acknowledging that the root of the violence is the genocidal colonial apartheid system “can and should coexist with empathy for people in our communities who have direct proximity with people killed or harmed by resistance attacks.” I assure you, the Trinity Students Coalition for Justice in Palestine is full of empathy for those harmed in the Oct. 7 attacks. We are fighting a legitimate fight in good faith, at the same time our administration and members of the student body chose to ignore all the complexities and nuances that are crucial to achieve justice. Our administration and religious leaders on campus rarely have interest in attending our events or hearing our perspectives. Yet, we are expected to justify our position on a genocide to not hurt anyone’s feelings as our families, friends and loved ones are under constant bombardment. Our demands, our feelings and our beliefs are not a matter of concern for our administration. Arab and Muslim students are expected to attend classes that talk about the ethnic cleansing of indigenous nations; dehumanizing language and upholding a common law of nature as if an identical violation against their nations is not happening as they speak. Still, here is my position on a year of genocide.
I suppose a college “education” still can’t produce a writer with coherent thoughts or cogent arguments… sad, really. This was a repulsive, horribly (and intentionally) timed deluge of disjointed ramblings, and the author (a generous term) should reconsider picking up the pen again.
You mention that not addressing a “bloodthirsty, savage response [to 9/11] of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan” is criminal to you. You know what really is criminal? Terrorism: the bloodthirsty and savage onslaught of innocent people for that purpose alone. You also mention International Criminal Court charges against Israel, yet fail to acknowledge the medieval war crimes by Hamas and their accountability. In fact, you used the word ‘Hamas’ only once in your collection of words. You used ‘terror/terrorist/terrorism’ only once in your senseless drivel — to make a falteringly sarcastic and misleading ‘joke’ about “baby terrorists.” These burning exemptions make your real moral position oh so clear.
And how could I possibly forget your opener? Where you turned the line from the article: “Israel is currently fighting on two fronts, against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon” into Israel’s “settler colonial territorial aspirations in Lebanon.” Yes, you literally did that — is this a real newspaper or a blog? You’ve thoroughly convinced me that Operation Overlord was a mistake with your inspiring deductive skills. This was an excruciating read.
Every article you’ve written about this topic, you reference October 7th as “resistance attacks” please explain how entering peaceful kibbutz’s to slaughter families, rape young women and take hostages is resistance. You assert there are complexities and nuance, what is nuanced about entering someone’s home and murdering them in cold blood on one of their Holidays during a mutually agreed upon ceasefire? You speak about dehumanization in your article, for the last 366 days innocent men, women, and children including American citizens have been kept hostage and it is you who dehumanizes them and justifies the actions of your “resistance fighters”. If Hamas returned the hostages and turned themselves in for their heinous crimes the bombardment you speak of would stop. I am shocked and disgusted that the tripod continues to publish terrorist propaganda.