My father survived the Holocaust. Why are students taking part in a new call to violence?
It was freshman year. I was home for a holiday weekend, and the nation was awaiting the outcome of a Supreme Court case that was the talk of campus. Over dinner I shared my views. “The right to burn the flag,” I told my parents with 18-year-old certainty, “is a far more beautiful thing than the flag itself. We should be inspired when we see the flag being burned, because it means we are free!”
I can count on one hand the number of times I saw my father, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, angry. This is the only time I can remember him being angry at me.
My father’s face darkened as he pushed back his chair and stood up from the table. “If you had been there,” he said in a voice I had never heard him use before. “If you had been there when Buchenwald was liberated, if you had seen that flag being carried that day.”
“Dad, I ...”
“If you knew what that flag meant to the soldiers who had seen their brothers killed trying to reach us," my father, a Holocaust survivor, said to me. "If you knew what that flag meant to me then, and means to me now, you would never utter such foolishness at my table.”
I was ashamed. My obsession with one truth − that civil liberties were a treasure to be protected − had prevented me from seeing a truth that stood just as strongly beside it. Not everything that is legal is right. Not everything that can be said, should.
My parents had endured unspeakable horrors to arrive at this promised, if imperfect, land, to make common cause with her most deeply held values. I had been not only ungrateful, but blind.
I tell you this story to share how he taught. What he didn’t do mattered as much as what he did. My father didn’t threaten to cut off my tuition. He didn’t love me any less the next day. But symbols have meaning. Words have meaning. There was history I needed to hear to inform the ideological viewpoint I was developing, and he made sure I heard it.
Hamas, Israel aren't morally equivalent: My father, Elie Wiesel, survived Auschwitz. He'd ask these questions about Israel-Hamas war.
To be young is to explore. Students are expected to experiment with different ideas and worldviews. And universities, like parents, have a responsibility to guide them.
Students repeat genocidal chants against Israel
Not every student in the ongoing pro-Palestinian demonstrations has burned the American flag or screamed “Death to America” or expressed fervor for Osama bin Laden, although these are shocking moments caught on camera that we cannot unsee or unhear.
But by the hundreds they are shouting genocidal phrases in a cult-like call-and-response fashion, led by the demagogue extremists who have taken over their campuses: From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Globalize the intifada. We don’t want two states, we want all of '48.
Why are so many taking part in this call to violence?
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Some are surely there not because they have a deep understanding of the Middle East, nor even necessarily tremendous empathy, but for the excitement, the illusion of camaraderie, the chance to demonstrate to their classmates that they are as righteous and revolutionary as anyone else. The demagogues offer them a chance to be part of the club. All one needs to do is treat the Jews as the “other,” the one nation not allowed to defend itself from rape, terror and murder.
And surely some are there out of genuine compassion and the desire to follow their conscience. We have no way of knowing what is in their hearts. But all who chant these slogans must agree to the same price: Blame the Jews.
Universities are obliged to allow free speech. They are also obliged to make sure that every one of their students can attend their classes free of harassment and verbal assault. But above all, they are obliged to teach.
Our enemies accuse us of colonizing Palestine.
Where are the professors of history, who have studied the archaeological and written records, which include the New Testament and the Quran, that connect the ancient Jews to Israel? Why are they silent?
Our enemies insist that the Jews do not need our own nation.
Where are the faculty who should be pointing out that when European Jewry needed shelter from the Nazis, no other nation would offer them refuge?
Our enemies accuse Israel of genocide.
Where are the history lessons on the blood libel, the historical precedent for accusing Jews of murder? On the repeated Palestinian rejection of Israel’s offers of self-rule, land and peace that dispel the genocide lie completely? On the actual definition of genocide?
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Universities need to hold extremists accountable
Universities need to deliver severe consequences for the extremists who have fanned this hatred on campus.
For all the other students involved, universities should create a path for education and forgiveness, without shying away from pointing out the depth of their error.
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What might have happened − what might have been prevented − had German universities given students the knowledge to question what they were taught about the Jews in the 1930s? What if enough students had decided to stop parroting the words their classmates uttered? What if they had broken free of the machine that slaughtered my family?
If antisemitism depends on the context, then give these students the context they need to temper their ideology, just as my father did for me so many years ago.
It’s time for university leaders to do their job. It’s time for them to teach.
Elisha Wiesel is the son of Marion Wiesel and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: My dad survived the Holocaust. College protests get Israel wrong
