I write in response to Professor Bret Gustafson’s opinion article dated November 16, 2023.
Here is a small slice of what Israel is facing:
From an eyewitness:
They bent a woman over and I understand he’s raping her, and then passing her to someone else. She was alive. She was standing on her feet and bleeding from the back. I saw the situation. He pulled her by the hair – she had long hair. She wasn’t dressed. He sliced off her breast and played with it. [Then] someone really penetrated her, and shot her in the head…. He didn’t pick up his pants. He shot while he was still inside.
And others:
[A volunteer found a woman with] a knife stuck in her vagina and all her internal organs removed.
Women have been raped, children through elderly women have been raped, forcible entry to the point that bones were broken.
There were sadistic sexual acts, cutting off limbs…. A woman’s stomach was cut open and her baby taken out.
They were given very clear orders to rape, to target women. They were given Hebrew translations of words like ‘take your clothes off’…. Terrorists interrogated by the Shin Bet specifically said they came to rape everyone, including children and babies.
Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas leader, stated that the October 7 attack against Israel was just the beginning and vowed to launch “a second, a third, a fourth” attack until the country was “annihilated.”
Yet your article screams Israel is at fault and can’t defend herself or her people.
Professor Gustafson, you may know anthropology but you don’t know Jack about the Law of Armed Conflict (though I question even the former if you don’t agree that Jews, as the indigenous people of the land of Israel, can’t defend themselves from barbaric attacks).
Briefly, the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) requires nations to adhere to a number of principles, including the principles of military necessity, distinction, and proportionality. Military necessity means that a party to a conflict can use all measures needed to defeat the enemy as quickly and efficiently as possible that are not otherwise prohibited by LOAC. Distinction requires parties to target only combatants and military targets, not civilians or civilian targets. And proportionality requires a party to weigh whether the advantage gained by hitting a target out of military necessity outweighs the potential loss of life to noncombatants or civilian structures.
War is a terrible thing. People die and buildings get destroyed. Applying these principles is difficult in any war. It is especially difficult when the enemy you are up against uses its own civilians as shields and its own civilian structures for military purposes, and vows to annihilate your country as a physical entity and kill every last Jew.
Your screeds (“[t]here is no justification for Israel’s slaughter of innocent people in Gaza”; “…Israel’s crimes of apartheid”; “Israel has murdered…”; “In 1948, the Israeli state was created through the seizure of Palestinian land…”; and the invocation of the notorious phrase “from the river to the sea”) underscore your biases as well as your lack of knowledge of how war is conducted.
You also have called out in your X posts to “Free Palestine.” Is it “from the river to the sea”? If so, where do the Jews go? Stay on the land and live peacefully under the rule of Hamas? The indigenous people of the land can’t have their own country but Arab nations can have 23?
Your other X posts and reposts: “These hostages will get their minds right” (Nov. 21). Israel is “ethnically cleansing Palestinians” (Nov. 21). Israel “cannot allege [sic] the right of self-defense” (Nov. 21). “Israel is committing crimes of apartheid among others” (Nov 20). “Zionists trying to split the climate movement” (Nov. 20). Israel is committing “genocide and ethnic cleansing” (Nov. 18). “#FromTheRiverToSea” (Nov. 19). This latter link includes such statements as “Israel steals the bodies of Palestinians [sic] to profit off of their skin and organs” (Nov. 20); “Zionists must be wiped out from the earth” (Nov. 20), “Zionism will crush the globe” (Nov. 19). “Imagine there’s no Israel” (Nov. 21). And these are only the tweets from the last few days. Not quite the Kumbaya scenario you want your readers to believe from the last sentence of your article where you state you want all people to live in freedom.
Some of your statements, posts, and reposts are prime examples of antisemitism as defined by the U.S. State Department and the State of Missouri. They are antisemitic because they call for aiding or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology, they make stereotypical allegations about the power of Jews as a collective, they deny the Jewish people of their right to self-determination, and they invoke the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (such as the blood libel) to characterize Israel.
Your attempt to conceal your blatant antisemitism with spurious links is not convincing. Your statement that all should condemn antisemitism in the midst of all of your antisemitic statements is akin to the white guy saying he’s not racist but he just doesn’t want to live next door to Black people.
Now, in an X post from the evening of November 25, 2023, you tweeted about demonstrators who set off smoke devices and threw red paint on the driveway of the president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC):
“Pretty cool I’d say. Let those who enable mass murder not live in peace.”
Students and staff: you can make a formal report of abusive conduct and harassment on the basis of national origin and religion through the WashU Confidential Concern Portal. “Abusive conduct” is “behavior that creates an intimidating environment and is likely to interfere with an individual’s work or education.” It includes intimidating words. Harassment is unwelcome conduct, on or off campus, that is based on, amongst other things, national origin, and religion and that is (1) subjectively and objectively offensive, (2) is severe or pervasive, and (3) has the purpose or effect of creating an abusive, hostile, or intimidating environment for work or learning.
I thank the editors of Student Life for bringing Professor Gustafson’s words to my attention. Having said that, a word for you: in the February 18, 1992, edition of Student Life, the editors at the time decided to print a full-page advertisement stating that the Holocaust did not exist. In an editorial in the following week’s paper, those past editors reaffirmed their decision to print the advertisement stating, “It is the re-examination of truth, over and over again, that gives it new meaning and perpetual life.” The editorial in 1992 also stated that the editors valued “the freedom of ideas.” Just because you can print something doesn’t mean you should. You have the power of the press and you need to exercise it appropriately. You have the discretion to reject ads — and articles — with blatant and harmful lies. The paper’s publication of the Holocaust-denying ad was a stain on the paper. The stain got worse with your publication of Professor Gustafson’s words.