Make love, not war

Recent demonstrations on a few U.S. college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war reminds me of the turmoil on campuses during the Vietnam war. I was a college student in the 1960s during the Vietnam war, and several friends served there in the armed forces. People I knew were wounded in combat, but I didn’t know anyone who died. I had a high enough draft number that I just missed being called up. The protests today are centered on a few campuses, mostly in the Northeast where there are sizable Jewish and Palestinian populations, and at the University of California in Berkeley, which has long been a center of activism going back to the 1960s. During the Vietnam era, college protests were widespread across the United States, including the University of Iowa, where students were arrested trying to prevent the Marines from recruiting on campus. ROTC programs and CIA recruiters were also targeted at many colleges. The protests were generally peaceful until May 4, 1970, when the Ohio National Guard fired on students at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine. I never got into the protests but I did participate in the national moratorium on Oct. 15, 1969, when I was a sophomore. Students at Notre Dame gathered for Mass on the main quad, offered by Father Theodore Hesburgh, the university’s president. We also fasted for two days as a sacrifice in solidarity with the people who were suffering from the effects of the war. Catholics believe that fasting cleanses your spirit; it just made me hungry and irritable. It took a while for God to answer our prayers. The war didn’t end for four more years. Religious-centered turmoil in the Middle East has been going on for centuries, and doesn’t look to end anytime soon. Unfortunately, the United States, longtime ally of Israel, is caught in the middle between two sides that hate each other so much that they can’t think straight.  That attitude has metastasized to their supporters here in the USA who, despite being educated in some of the top universities in the world, aren’t smart enough to realize that their intransigence won’t solve their problems. There are enough cuckoos among Jews, Muslims and Christians to make life miserable for all of us. The right to protest peacefully is enshrined in our Constitution. In fact, we have a moral obligation to speak up when we think our government is wrong. But violence and hatred are immoral regardless which side causes the trouble. I can’t solve this problem in a few paragraphs here, but something we chanted in the 60s still makes sense: Make love, not war.