While reading the news today, I came across an article about a literary magazine that pulled an essay from a UK-born Israeli woman that was chiefly about her experience in and perspective on the latest Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The essay’s contents are, as far as I can tell, thoroughly reasoned from any similarly reasoned perspective. In the radical lens however, it’s perhaps viewed as little more than middling both-sideism, or worse, the radical’s enemy seeking to muddy the waters.

There’s a specific criticism of a specific passage that stood out to me. It’s mentioned in the linked article above, but in essence, someone read the following passage in the essay, about the author’s decision to stop volunteering in the wake of the October 7th attack and decided it was an unforgivable affront to the Palestinian people, on par with calls for genocide:

My volunteer work with Road to Recovery came to a full stop. How could I continue after Hamas had massacred and kidnapped so many civilians, including Road to Recovery members, such as Vivian Silver, a longtime Canadian peace activist? And I admit, I was afraid for my own life.

I should note, the essay also mentions how the author resumed her volunteering two weeks after October 7th. In fact, the essay ends with a reaffirmation that there is hope for coexistence. And yet the utter vitriol, the frothing hatred for this woman’s words makes it seem as if there’s some hidden message there. Is she secretly taking these Palestinian children to be slaughtered, butchered and turned into sausage? Is she a modern day Typhoid Mary, spreading pestilence to the sick and desperate of Palestine?

If that seems excessive bordering on the absurd, it mirrors my feelings of these radicals, my fellow Americans so very distant from the conflict itself who hold as much hate for one side or another as the actual combatants might. It’s the latest example of partisan madness taking root so deep, turning discourse into debate, and debate into death threats. It poisons sincerity, and brings those with the best of intentions down into the muck. A small, but growing trend in university discussions of contentious issues is to take a side, stick with it, and shout down any who oppose it. To identify with a side, not merely agree with it. Universities were meant to be where the uncomfortable is discussed, not argued about—where the minds who might bring about the seeds of positive change are allowed to bloom into maturity, not be buried under so much divisiveness.

I’m just especially disgusted by sentiments like the one expressed by Tranen in the above tweet. A knee-jerk, unthinking rejection of an entire piece because of a perceived weakness, ignorant of the resolution—willfully or not. Unfortunately, he isn’t alone—and it seems that year over year, those who want to hate and not truly think only grow in number.

Of course, me writing about it does, to be blunt, jack shit. The solution is, of course, for more people, untainted by pre-existing hatreds to read Chen’s essay. For them to see words like hers, and decide for themselves what they think before engaging with the larger discussion. Those who already have given themselves to the ride-or-die mentality of identifying with one side of a given issue to such an extent that they’ll see all criticism equally, whether it’s the slightest of concerns or thoughts of genocide itself? It’s up to them to come back to reality. Until then, we can’t afford to engage with them, because they’ll refuse to see, to hear anything but what they want. Everything else? Unimportant, or an obstacle to silence.