I was already there when it was reported that protesters near Columbia University loudly suggested that Jews should return to Poland. My wife, son, daughter and I were visiting Holocaust ruins in Eastern Europe. My father's family is from Poland and Ukraine, and many of his relatives died in the Holocaust.
I don't know if any of my ancestors were Zionists, but I suspect some of them were. The definition of “Zionist” I always use is someone who believes that the Jewish people deserve a secure state. That's what I believe. I also believe that Palestinians deserve a safe state. The Israeli occupation is a disaster and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs to be replaced.
As for the suggestion that Jews, or more precisely Ashkenazi Jewish Israelis (of European descent), should book a one-way ticket to Warsaw, that's not a view representative of U.S. campus protesters as a whole. I know there isn't. However, it clearly reflects a “settler colonialist” position towards Israel, and this theory has gained traction even though more than half of Israel's Jews are Mizrahi, or from the Middle East. are collecting. Palestinians and Israelis are her two indigenous groups occupying the contested land.
And what about Poland? Before World War II, approximately 3 million Jews lived in Poland. Currently, fewer than 5,000 people identify as Jews. It is instructive to recall that most of the Warsaw Ghetto's Jews, perhaps 300,000 people, were taken to Treblinka, where they were murdered along with another 500,000 or so Jews.
Treblinka is now a vast field covered with huge monuments consisting of hundreds of stones placed in rows facing the sky. I wandered among them, thinking about the disaster that had caused this place and what was currently happening at universities across America. Anti-Israel chants, fear of having Jewish students on campus, and protests and counter-protests that are creating an atmosphere of threat.
On the same day my family visited Treblinka, another Columbia University student, who is said to be the leader of the protests there, was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “Zionists don't deserve to live.” He apologized, but I don't want to compare him to a Nazi. He and his brethren are young, and youth gives the heart the right to rule the brain. But his words were marked with a swastika.
Of course, what has happened to the Palestinian people since 1948 is its own catastrophe, and the war in Gaza is its latest iteration. The civilian death toll is staggering, and the suffering of families is deep and seemingly endless. It's not hard to understand the anger and heartbreak that animates the pro-Palestinian encampment, but many more demonstrators are also aware that the Israeli onslaught has not happened in isolation, and that Hamas itself is dying. I hope that people will acknowledge that they feel a sense of kinship with the Palestinian people.
The jeers “Go back to Poland” are grotesque and deliberately misinformed. Reading about them while in Poland, where a nation of ghosts of murder victims exists alongside its current population, is profoundly disorienting. What used to be a synagogue is now a delicatessen. The ceremonial bath is a police station. Cemetery A grove of trees in a desolate field or lush forest where gravestones are missing because they were stolen for use in paving roads. So many Jews died in Poland that the entire country could be called a Jewish cemetery. In Poland, Jews are like Native Americans in America. Sometimes they are heartily celebrated, but most often they are erased.
We visited a town that was almost 100% Jewish before the war. No Jews now live there, and there is virtually no evidence that they ever called it home. I'm rather sympathetic to the protesters. I'm even tempted to forgive their ahistorical perspective, which is ironic given that many of them were educated at elite institutions. But they should know: Like the Palestinians, the collective trauma of the Jews is undeniable. You don't need to go to a place like Treblinka to be reminded of this. Have we learned nothing?
It's no surprise that not all protesters are anti-Semites. Some are happy to take a break from chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and tell us that they count Jews among them. And yet, from their privileged encampments in Los Angeles and Manhattan, they envision a progressive paradise where everyone's wounds are healed and racism remains a faint memory, but there is no place for Zionists. A dog whistle meaning a Jew.
Are you going back to Poland? That's not possible. And the extremist fantasies of American protesters will not help the Palestinians.
Seth Greenland is a Los Angeles-based author of six novels and one memoir. His latest book, Plan Americain, was published in France last year.
