Thank you to J Street for giving me the opportunity to address the community at this crucial moment. And thank you to Senator Durbin for 43 years of public service.
For over two years, everyone has cared what I think. This is the strange reality of being a Jewish college student today. I was a sophomore on October 7th, 2023. Now, I am a senior, and still, all eyes are on me.
News reporters reach out to students like me to talk about what we are experiencing on campus. During the war, when I would call my relatives in Israel to ask how they were doing, they’d ask me how I was faring with the hostility on campus, as though I, too, lived in a war zone. And, of course, the Trump administration looks onto Northwestern’s idyllic lakefront campus with horror.
Some of the things you may have read about Northwestern and other schools like it are true. There have been moments on campus when I’ve felt alienated due to my identity as a Jewish person with Israeli heritage. Before I tell someone that my dad is Israeli, or that I spent a year in Israel, I now take a beat. I try to gauge whether it will end the conversation. Because, with a small minority of students, it can.
Mostly, however, I read news articles about how tense things are on Northwestern’s campus as I walk down the sidewalk wearing my Magen David. I’m uninterrupted except for strong gusts of Chicago winds and friends saying hello to me.
I love my Friday nights at Hillel, where I’ve met some of my best friends. And I regularly have conversations about Israel with both my Jewish and non-Jewish peers, as well as professors. You won’t hear this in the media because alarmism sells. Nuance doesn’t.
Complicated narratives are rare these days. That’s why I’ve taken it upon myself to try and add them to the conversation. I write a weekly political column in The Daily Northwestern. In one of them last May, I wrote that it isn’t antisemitic to say that Palestinians deserve to live, and that Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza. Afterwards, I was harassed online by a group of Jewish parents. But I also received emails from Jewish community members who felt similarly to me, but were afraid to say it aloud.
It is a shame that courage is required to acknowledge basic human rights and to advocate for justice. But in our tense political environment, this is the reality.
Last year, I was devastated to learn that the Trump administration froze $790 million dollars of funding from Northwestern due to supposed antisemitism. Some Jewish organizations responded weakly, claiming that punishment for universities was long overdue.
But when I heard the news, all I could think was that life-saving research wouldn’t be done because Jewish students like me had supposedly wished it so. To me, not only did it frame Jewish students as a population to be blamed, but it fundamentally misdescribed what it is to be a Jew. My Judaism tells me to read and to debate rigorously. To educate myself for the purpose of benefitting the world.
It was J Street that allowed me to voice these concerns, with fellow Jewish students across the country, in a national publication. It allowed us to speak for ourselves, raising our voices above the social media influencers and politicians who hadn’t ever stepped foot on our campuses. This made sense — because at the end of the day, we were the ones on campus. We were the ones who faced the consequences.
When concerned Jewish people ask me what they can do to support students on campus, the first thing I say is, listen to us.
I am glad that J Street has allowed me to speak today, because I am here to tell you about the power of listening. There is little I believe in as much as the power of listening. Because it’s listening that gets us to understanding, and understanding that pushes us towards empathy. This is the kind of world that I want to build.
This past October brought real relief. After 738 days of waiting, I got to watch videos of the hostages hugging their families. Home, at last.
But just because the worst is over doesn’t mean that we will need courage any less. In fact, perhaps the hard work has just begun.
It is listening and empathy that will power this work. Some people say there can only be one state — an Israeli state or a Palestinian one. They are loud. But they don’t hear each other.
If Jews want the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, then why would Palestinians not? If Jews have wanted to return to the state of Israel after millennia of exile, why would Palestinians not?
It is because of my Zionism, not in spite of it, that I believe in a Palestinian state. Because I believe that Palestinians share many of the same feelings that my ancestors had. I lean on this history to guide me towards a just future.
When I tell people that I believe in a two-state solution, people have laughed, and called me naive. I am twenty-two, after all. But I see this as the only way forward. If there is ever a time to be hopeful, it is now, as a new dawn arises in the Middle East. This is why I am working with J Street, whose relentless pragmatic optimism keeps me going.
I grew up hearing stories about the magical land of Israel, the place where my father was born. I eventually had the opportunity to experience its beauty for myself on a gap year, and I felt at home there.
When I have children of my own, I want to be able to tell them those same stories. I’ll add my own, too. I’ll tell them that there was a frightening period of time when I didn’t know what the future of Israel would hold. But, then I’d say, we kept fighting for it, the way that our people have fought for it for thousands of years. I am eager, and proud, to continue that tradition.
Thank you.