Advice to Protesters, and History’s Echoes

To the Editor:

Re “Universities Choose Different Ways to End Unrest” (news article, May 2):

The rigid dialogue on American college campuses about the Israel-Hamas war has been fruitless.

One side argues that Palestine should be freed from Israel’s tyranny, when clearly the real tyranny is from Palestinian terrorist leaders whose pointless insistence on the destruction of Israel is why Palestinians don’t live in peace.

The other side absolves Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government of any wrongdoing. This is absurd, as Mr. Netanyahu failed to protect his people, and in doing so was compelled to wage a war that has killed countless innocent Gazans.

My encouragement to the college protesters on both sides is to stop doing easy things like setting up encampments and chanting slogans at each other. Instead, join together to do the hard work of trying to find a sustainable solution to peace in the Middle East.

Leave blind partisanship to politicians, and use your intelligence, energy and creativity to be the generation that solves the problem.

Richard Stever-Zeitlin
Hyattsville, Md.

To the Editor:

Relationships break down when people stop talking. Brown University seems to have found a solution to campus unrest by continuing talks with protesters. This is good news! I recommend that university leaders meet with students, close the doors to the room and come out when you’ve reached an agreement. Keep talking!

Ronald Yarger
Morris Plains, N.J.

To the Editor:

Re “How Protesters Can Actually Help Palestinians,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, May 2):

Recently I began to total up in my mind what the students have spent to be comfortable, appropriately dressed, fed and able to produce new protest signs every day. ​They have spent millions of dollars on themselves while demanding that colleges and universities rethink their investment strategies. Those are millions of dollars that could have fed, housed, clothed and healed millions of people in Gaza.