Over the past few days, we have seen videos and images of pro-Palestinian protests on University campuses. Protestors have been setting up camps with the intention of staying there day and night to pressure their administrations to divest from companies that support Israel or are Israeli-owned. The students, and non-students in some cases, are also showing solidarity with the citizens of Gaza who are being killed in numbers that should give us all pause to question whether or not what is happening is actually what we are being told that it is.
Over the weekend, some of these protests have begun to be disbanded as the university administrations called in police with riot gear to get the groups off campus, calling the groups antisemitic or accusing them of promoting such ideas and saying that ant-Jewish rhetoric has no place at their schools.
The anti-protest language is eerily similar to the kinds of things that were said about the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd. Claims of anti-white racism and inciting riots were used as excuses to attempt to tear apart the entire movement, not just to stop individual protests that got out of hand.
Since October 7, 2023, there has been a concerted attempt to silence dissenting viewpoints regarding this current escalation between Israel and Hamas. The rhetoric has been extreme from the start. Any discussion of empathy for the Palestinian people is twisted to sound as though the person or group is calling for the death of all Jews and the destruction of the nation-state of Israel. Saying that Israel is behaving badly by killing 30,000+ Palestinian civilians in response to the killing of around 1,200 Israelis is taken as saying that Israel does not have the right to protect itself.
I remember this one interaction I had with an individual on Threads that is a perfect example of what I am talking about.
It was only a couple of days after Hamas invaded, and stories and videos were plastered all over the platform. I had become suspicious of the way the story was being framed and increasingly curious about what was actually happening because the narrative from literally every news source seemed to be this unquestioning and unwavering support for what Israel was doing. It all read and sounded like propaganda to me. Most stories about big events are at the very least peppered with nuance and the occasional dissenting opinion.
On this day, a particularly gruesome story was making the rounds. People were posting and saying that Hamas militants were beheading babies and lining their bodies up by the side of the road. These posts never had pictures or any kind of link or source. There was no screenshot of a Tweet from an official government or news channel. People were just saying it was happening and the story was spreading virally. I spent a few minutes searching and could only find stories stating that there was no evidence that this had actually been happening. Even the IDF was saying that there was no evidence of this atrocity. I commented on one of these posts and simply said, “Can you provide a link or article about this? I can’t find anything and I don’t want to risk sharing bad information.” They responded, “So you’re okay with light terrorism as long as it doesn’t involve the killing of children? You’re a nazi.”
Notice I never said that I was okay with anything happening. I never said anything defending Hamas or terrorism or genocide or anything remotely resembling antisemitism. Yet, the fact that I was questioning the dominant narrative of the moment was met with contempt.
I am not here to talk about the ins and outs of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, though. I am not today defending the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses (though as long as it is students leading the protests and they do not become destructive and bigoted, I am not convinced there is anything wrong with them).
Instead, I want to pivot in a different direction.
How often do we do the same thing to ourselves? We maintain a narrative about who we are and what we are capable of and, when a person or circumstance comes along and questions these stories, we become immediately defensive. Only not defensive of ourselves. Defensive of the stories we are telling ourselves.
Even when those stories have little basis in reality.
“I could never write a novel.” “I am not capable of meditating.” “I will never pass that class.” “I am always going to be single.”
And similar stories we are telling ourselves about ourselves.
We are all guilty.
And when someone comes along and calls these stories into question, we immediately go on the offensive. We find ways, no matter how convoluted, to maintain the narrative in our minds. It is almost as though we do not want to write that novel or meditate or pass or find a partner. We have become our stories in a way that is actively harmful to the truth. In fact, we even take the truth and turn it into an excuse for inaction. Like I said last time, we use the truth to mask our laziness or unwillingness to change.
We become content with the stories we are telling ourselves and either do not want to expand on them or we do not want them to change. Even though we might be carrying unrealized potential within ourselves that could become our new reality if only we would ask the right questions or allow the truth to find a resting place in our souls.
If those people spreading the lie about beheaded children had taken a moment to reflect and “do their own research”, they might have found that the reality they were being fed was actually not a reality at all. We live in a post-truth culture, exacerbated by the embrace of the rebranding of lies as “alternative facts”. And we have allowed this rebranding to take root in our minds and we use it as an excuse to continue living in a false reality that we have created for ourselves, and instead of defending ourselves with those “realities” are confronted, we defend the falsehood.
At the expense of who we could be.
The pro-Palestinian protest movement has the potential to open the door for conversations about where our loyalties lie and what it means to support our international allies. We could be having conversations about the limits of self-defense and retaliation. We could be advancing or even changing our policies that make the potential for genocide increasingly likely.
Instead, we are cracking down on even asking the questions. We are silencing those dissenting views, unless they are presented on the accepted channels and do not ask the questions too seriously. We are defending the prevailing narratives of our culture regardless of their flaws or validity and hurting people in the process and preventing positive change and forward momentum.
Which is exactly what we are doing to ourselves.