A Cynical War On Our Defense Industry 

Walking on New York’s First Ave. and 43rd. Street, I was pleasantly surprised to see a biblical verse I hold close to my heart glaring at me from a large gray wall across the street from the United Nations. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares…nation shall not lift a sword against another nation, nor shall they learn war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4). At its heart, Jewish faith and law year for a world that is free of weapons and war, and sees the beauty of peace. It is exactly because I hold the ideals of peace and disarmament so close to my heart that I am appalled by the cynical, cunning, and dangerous campaign against America’s defense sector. 

Over the past year, we have seen anti-Israel groups in the US put a great deal of time into targeting America’s defense industry. In April, police arrested ten people after protesters besieged the facility of Pratt & Whitney, an aerospace manufacturer in Middletown, after they caused miles of traffic and chained themselves to the gates of the facility.  

Numerous Yale protests and organizing attempts have surrounded Yale’s investments in the defense industry, much of which is located in their own state of Connecticut. Most recently, groups at Yale have been leading a campaign called “Book not Bombs” has been calling on Yale to divest from weapons manufacturers and invest more in their program of “support our scholars,” naming Birzeit University in the West Bank and its declared attempt to rebuild education in Gaza.

The goal of a world with fewer weapons, with more books than bombs, and where we invest in medical discovery and curing diseases more than we do in fighter jets is a noble goal we must all aspire to. Yet, at the heart and soul of any disarmament lays the question of mutuality. When two or more sides agree to dispose of their weapons, great things can happen. Like the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which got 193 countries to destroy their chemical weapons or the Reagan-Gorbachov 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces signed by the United States and the Soviet Union, mutuality has enormous power in making our world a safer place. 

When we see a one-sided attempt to disarm one side of its weapons while cheering on violence from the other, we are looking at a soft power war to weaken the ability of one side to defend itself from the aggression of the other. 

Seeing the same people marching to disarm Israel, holding signs that say: “Hands off Iran,” after Iran fires hundreds of ballistic missiles and suicide drones at Israeli civilians, seeing anti-Israel marches saying “Hands off Lebanon” after many thousands of rockets have killedIsraeli civilians and displaced close to 100,000 Israeli civilians from their homes, seeing pro-Palestinian protesters applaud North Korea for training Palestinian terrorists, hearing chants saying “Houthies make us proud” after Yemen’s Houthie terrorists have pirated civilian shipts, fired at American ships, and destabilized world shipping, makes it hard to see this as an antiwar movement. 

Upon seeing the demand of pro-Palestinian groups that Yale build stronger relations with Birzeit of all Palestinian educational institutions, Hamas has been a dominant force in Birzeit, winning a landslide victory among Birzeit’s student government. As recently as July, students at Birzeit have been at the heart of an international “significant terror plot orchestrated by Hamas”. 

The fact that the US. Treasury and Canada have recently designated Samidoun, an organization that was highly instrumental in orchestrating campus protests, to be “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization” further supports the belief that the anti-Israel wave of protests most popular on our college campuses is less of a pacific anti-war movement and more of a cynical use of American compassion with the goal of weakening America and its allies. 

“Books, not Bombs” is an admirable slogan, but it is one that must begin in Gaza’s UNRWA schools, which have been used too often to launch rockets at Israeli civilians and to store Hamas bombs. “Books, not bombs” should be the motto of all aid going into Gaza, which to this very day is most often diverted into the hands of Hamas. “Books not bombs” is a campaign we must all sign on to, but it must begin with a message to Palestinian educators. Unlike the unfortunate reality of the past, Gaza’s educators must ensure there is a young generation that seeks peace, a civil society free of terror, that seeks to realize its goals in diplomatic ways, and coexistence with its Israeli neighbors. 

“Books not bombs” is precisely what every citizen of Iran deserves, as the freedom-loving Iranian people see their oppressive regime spend away their resources on ballistic missiles to fire at Israel, Shia militias in Iraq that attack American troops, and Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon that have plunged the Middle East into chaos. We should all be supporting “Book not bombs” for the people of Yemen who are starved and tortured by Houthie terrorists using Yemen’s scarce resources to fire at international civilian shipping companies. 

Until those goals are called for and achieved, we must stand with our friends, neighbors, and communities who wake up every morning to work in local defense companies, making sure that the United States and our peace-loving allies have the means to defend themselves. We must call out the cynical, dishonest, and one-sided attacks on America’s defense sector as they defend the world from unprovoked attacks from the Iranian regime and its proxies. We must all work so we can achieve a multi-sided peace where all sides see the words of Isaiah come true: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”