On Oct. 10, Northeastern released a statement about the Hamas attack on Israel in the form of an email sent from the Office of the President which was then posted on the president’s website and then to Instagram as a black background post with four slides. The statement was in response to the Oct. 7th Hamas attack on Israel, that led to the death of many Israeli citizens from gunshots and burns.
The statement condemns “the terror and bloodshed inflicted by Hamas’s attacks on Israel,” which, in itself, is a just message against violence. However, while Northeastern claims that it mourns “for all the innocent lives that have been lost,” the statement offers no acknowledgment of the decades of apartheid that the Palestinian people have faced or the damage of Israeli aggression on Palestinians. Standing with a country that has been attacked is necessary, however, disseminating a statement without full introspection fails to educate students about the Israel-Palestine conflict effectively.
Israel launched military assaults on Palestine in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. The damage that Israel has done to Palestinian people has also resulted in the severe displacement of citizens, with the demolition of 953 Palestinian structures in 2022 alone, according to the United Nations. In the 2014 attack, Israel killed over 2,000 Palestinians, including 500 children. It is clear that Israel is equipped to exert complete control over Gaza and the West Bank. The United States additionally actively flows additional military supplies to Israel, and has increased aid to Israel following the Hamas attack. Hamas is not a representation of all of the innocent Palestinians who are now caught in the crossfire of conflict and are now further harmed by Israel, as Israel continues to rain bombs upon Gaza in an illegal form of collective punishment.
In my opinion, the response by Northeastern is particularly tone-deaf, as the previous Instagram post from the university was one celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day. To some who view the larger Israel-Palestine conflict as an issue of colonization on the part of Israel, this celebratory post comes off as performative.
The comment section of Northeastern’s statement was uniquely divisive as well, with some students showing support for Israel by commenting flags and hearts, while others were deeply concerned, feeling that the statement was lackluster. One Instagram user said, “No amount of Cooper birthday photo ops is going to cover up the pathetic bootlicking toward a racist apartheid state, btw.” Another Instagram user recalls the inconsistency in Northeastern’s alleged non-response to previous attacks on Gaza, saying, “If you’re going to condemn this, you should also condemn the attacks on Sheikh Jarrah in 2021. This is so inconsistent.”
If the university intended to not take a side on the issue of Israel and Palestine, that objective, in my opinion, has been missed. One user commented that “Northeastern is on the right side of an issue,” following the common theme of the Israel flag emoji, which the comments are flooded with. Though that might have been different from the intention of the statement, this is certainly how it was received by the student body.
The problem with the Northeastern statement is that it was made without acknowledging the struggles that Palestinians have faced during the conflict with Israel. The statement would have felt more morally consistent if the university had voiced its support for Gaza during the recent retaliatory attacks by Israel in a follow-up statement.
Ultimately, Northeastern is not just a university; it’s a brand selling education to its consumers. In my perspective, this lack of nuance is problematic in a culture that increasingly values decolonial structures.
Niya Plynton is a second-year journalism major. He can be reached at [email protected].
