In his totemic plea for us to imag­ine a bet­ter world, John Lennon insist­ed “It isn’t hard to do…”. Cam­pus protests that com­min­gle anti-Semi­tism and calls for cease­fire in Gaza  belie that. So as a prism to see through the moral mias­ma, I rec­om­mend Covid.

 The pan­dem­ic lock­downs were  the clos­est the major­i­ty of the world who’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced war have come to a lengthy  dis­rup­tion of life.
They pro­voked  frus­tra­tion, despair and end­less hand­wring­ing and lamen­ta­tion over the effects on chil­dren unable to play and inter­act with their friends in favour of com­put­er class­es at home.
The oper­a­tive word there is “home”.
The UN Pales­tin­ian refugee agency (UNWRA) esti­mates  1.7 mil­lion peo­ple, more than 75% of Gaza­’s pop­u­la­tion, have been dis­placed, many of them sev­er­al times.
The major­i­ty of our kids went through Covid in the com­fort and famil­iar­i­ty of  fam­i­ly  and sur­round­ings they knew inti­mate­ly. They had food, elec­tric­i­ty, run­ning water, bath­rooms that worked, toys and TV for amuse­ment, beds with cov­ers  to snug­gle up in.
Now: “Imag­ine no possessions/I won­der if you can…”
A recent report I watched on Al-Jazeera (which, along with the BBC, is among the few net­works with local Eng­lish-speak­ing reporters in Gaza) shows a boy of 10 or 12 atop a pile of rub­ble, tug­ging on a piece of mate­r­i­al. It  emerges as a blan­ket. He  folds it, lays it atop oth­er bits he’s scav­enged, and returns to work in the bro­ken con­crete that may well be the remains of what he once called home.

                      IT’S IN THE AIR

Dur­ing Covid, par­ents com­plained bit­ter­ly about chil­dren (and in some cas­es them­selves) hav­ing to  breath through sur­gi­cal masks in pub­lic places.
The boy on the rub­ble might wel­come one. The air he  gasps in his exer­tions is a debil­i­tat­ing oleo of dust, uncol­lect­ed garbage, the unfor­get­table stench of decom­pos­ing corpses under the rub­ble and the reek of human waste for which there is no longer a func­tion­ing sewage sys­tem, car­ry­ing the risk of com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases that will increase in the com­ing sum­mer heat.
Covid was a threat to our chil­dren, but — if adults around them were sen­si­ble and “adult” —  they were to as great an extent as pos­si­ble, protected.
Gazans live with hunger, grief and fear from which there is no pro­tec­tion as long as there is no cease­fire, no free and unlim­it­ed flow of human­i­tar­i­an aid.
And don’t let your fan­tasies stop there. Think of a camp­ing hol­i­day, in a water­proof,  zip-up, mos­qui­to-net­ted cozy tent with a floor.
Now try to imag­ine “camp­ing” for months on end under bits of wood and plas­tic, jer­ry-rigged as best you can, cheek by jowl with tens of thou­sands of oth­ers, no san­i­ta­tion, no run­ning water or depend­able and ade­quate food sup­plies to hand, and worst of all, nowhere to go when it all becomes too much. Not to men­tion the inces­sant sound of drones and war­planes  over­head, look­ing for a tar­get that for all you know is liv­ing right next door.

                      THE BAD GUYS ARE EQUAL

And speak­ing of tents, those well-mean­ing and com­mend­ably com­mit­ted-to-peace-and-jus­tice pro­tes­tors in the tent camps on U.S. cam­pus­es might want to bear in mind that the point of protest is to dis­rupt the sta­tus quo, cause dis­com­fort among the oth­er­wise unaware and uncar­ing and  pro­voke anoth­er point of view.
The optics of sport­ing a kef­fiyeh, scrawl­ing posters and graf­fi­ti with­out such con­sid­er­a­tions are just that; unimag­i­na­tive optics.
Protest is only use­ful, or even mild­ly effec­tive  beyond the news cycle, if it pro­vokes imag­in­ing based on facts and a clear under­stand­ing of his­to­ry that goes back more than a few months or even years.
The Hamas lead­er­ship deserves as much con­dem­na­tion as Netanyahu and his coterie of  right wing reli­gious zealots.
So “Imag­ine all the people/Livin’ for today…”and bear in mind that’s exact­ly what those who were slaugh­tered and abduct­ed when Hamas forces swept into a rock fes­ti­val  on Octo­ber 7 were doing. That they were Jews doesn’t mean they dif­fered much if at all from their con­tem­po­raries on cam­pus­es around the free world in life-style choic­es, music tastes or the desire for occa­sion­al hedo­nis­tic freedom.
Take a minute to con­sid­er them as your friends, sib­lings, loved ones, rel­a­tives. Then note that tens of  thou­sands of Israelis, for whom that is exact­ly who and what they are, ral­ly on a reg­u­lar basis in the streets and squares of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to vent their  anguish, anger and frus­tra­tion that the war goes on with no end in sight for the peo­ple of Gaza or the hostages held there.
It doesn’t take any imag­i­na­tion to see that the world is high­ly unlike­ly ever “to live as one”. But it ought to be obvi­ous by now, too, that we have much com­mon ground, and with a lit­tle more imag­i­na­tion, we can find ways to share it.
All we have to do is force our­selves and those who have thus far shown nei­ther the will, nor abil­i­ty to do so, to imagine.

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