CNN has published an op-Ed written by Ian Berlin, a philosophical Hasidic Yale student who is participating in the protest against the perpetuation of war in Gaza with continued arms transfers. As a member of the Class of 2024 majoring in ethics, politics and economics, he sheds light on what the protests represent for him. He argues that when people see “pro-Palestinian protesters arrested”, they should eschew the tendency to rely upon “the same tired framework — supposedly antisemitic pro-Palestine activists pitted against Jewish pro-Israel activists — to Yale.”
This young man’s intellectual sophistication is quite evident as his understanding of the protest is not limited by the facile, binary constructions favored by political demagogues or rabid partisans of the Israel-Hamas conflict. He is sensitive to the plight of the thousands of innocent Israelis and Gazans killed and injured, the hostages and their anguished families. His unconstrained empathy motivates him to sing “Mi Shebeirach,” the Jewish prayer for healing, and “Olam Chesed Yibaneh,” which calls for building a world where compassion leads” with students of all faiths during the protest. He argues convincingly that those who use a broad brush to paint all anti-war campus protests as fundamentally anti-Semitic “deny his experience and invalidates the Jewishness of those calling for an end to the violence in Gaza.”
He points to the enormous possibilities for ending human oppression when individuals of all faiths and no faith collaborate in the service of peace as he and his classmates are doing.
I tip my hat off to Mr. Ian Berlin and his broad, multi-faith and multi-racial coalition of anti-war students who have taken a stand against suffering.
Read Ian Berlin’s op-Ed republished by Yahoo News here: www.yahoo.com/...