October 7, 2023, was originally going to be a normal day for Gad Partok who is ninety-three years old. Partok is Jewish and survived the Holocaust when he was ten according to “A Holocaust Survivor in Israel Recalls that Trauma through the Lens of Oct. 7 Attack” by Alon Bernstein and Julia Frankel. To spend his day, Partok watched the TV news from his living room. What he thought would be another Saturday, ended up becoming the opposite. BBC News explains why. October 7, 2023, was the day Hamas, the Palestinian military group, invaded and killed over a thousand Israelis. For years, Palestinians and Israelis have had conflict in Israel. Israel is considered a Jewish state and believes Israel belongs to them, due to it playing a significant role in the Torah. It also became a hostility during attacks against Jews, including the Holocaust. However, Palestinians disagree. Palestinians have been living in Israel long before the Israelis came around and are considered the indigenous group of the region. It’s an ongoing issue between the two, that eventually led to the Hamas attack on Israel. There have been some ideas for a solution, including dividing Israel into two countries, but nothing has been resolved yet. In response to Hamas’s attack, the Israeli government has fought back using air strikes, resulting in war: the Hamas-Israel War. Both Palestinian and Israeli citizens are not accountable for their leaders’ actions and many are dying. This war ignited a spark everywhere, specifically in the United States. Across the nation, multiple hate crimes and much discrimination are being committed, with the victims being either Jewish or Palestinian-American, more specifically, in both colleges and high schools.
Hate crimes, defined by the U.S. Department of Justice as, “A crime motivated by bias against race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability,” have always been a problem in the United States. It’s not just hate crimes, however. Being biased without committing a crime, otherwise known as discrimination, has also been around, and is much more common. Both of them can be a result of many things. The book, Hate Crimes Revisited: America’s War on Those Who Are Different by Jack Levin and Jack McDevitt points out these factors. One major factor in discrimination is social media. Regardless of its pros, like teaching others about other religions and cultures, it still has some cons. With social media out there, more opinions can cross young people’s minds, teaching them stereotypes or biases. Another more common result is blame. Due to the Hamas-Israel War, multiple students blame the war on Palestinians or Jews. Their hatred refuses to allow them to recognize the difference between an innocent Palestinian-American or Jew, to Palestinians vs. Hamas. As a result, a lot of attacks, both physical and mental, are happening to those two groups, on both college campuses and high schools.
Students on both campuses and high schools are still not fully developed. Their brains may not be fully aware of the consequences of their actions. Due to this, discrimination is common amongst these people. According to the New York Times, between 2018 and 2022, hate crimes in schools have nearly doubled, and about 1,300 hate crimes were reported in all kinds of schools. Some ways students express hate include bullying, trespassing, and vandalizing. Regardless of the increase in 2022, they’ve grown once more due to the Hamas-Israel War. AP News covers these attacks occurring on college campuses, saying, “A University of Massachusetts student was arrested after allegedly punching a Jewish student and spitting on an Israeli flag at a demonstration.” It’s not just colleges facing these problems, however, but also high schools. CNN also covered a story regarding a high school. In a Connecticut high school, swastikas have been drawn for the second time on the school’s campus. Swastikas were a symbol the Nazis used in World War II, and are now used against Jewish people. These are just a few examples of hate crimes occurring throughout the nation. Not enough people realize, however, why this is a major problem.
Both Jewish and Palestinian American people are being attacked all over the United States to the point where they don’t feel safe. Seeing a person being attacked due to their religion, being Jewish for example, and hurt physically as a result, would rightfully scare another Jewish citizen. It also affects them personally. Jews and Palestinian Americans are being attacked due to their beliefs, not their actions. For years, discrimination has been a problem and a lot of people are worried that history will repeat itself. In the Holocaust, Jewish people were tortured, sent to concentration camps, and suffered horrible conditions, due to their religion. Now, American students are spreading their hate for certain groups through illegal and offensive ways. There are efforts, though, to try and prevent this hate.
Multiple organizations and teachers are pushing efforts to stop the rising discrimination against Jews and Palestinian Americans in the United States. For example, Cannon Falls High School had a theater group come to their school for all high school students to watch. The play, Echoes of the Holocaust by the Legacy Theatre, showed the struggles Jews faced during the Holocaust, and why the students should remember that. Isabella Aguirre, a sophomore, mentioned what she thought about it. “I think the Holocaust play was pretty good. We all learned more about other families and what they went through during that time.” As shown by the play, a great way to decrease discrimination in the United States is to remind students what happened with the Holocaust and why discrimination isn’t okay. Another way students are reminding their students is through the teachers. Heather Loeschke, the teacher for Civics and AP Government, took a trip last year focusing on the Holocaust. According to the Lantern, due to her connections to the trip, Jonah Kaplan, a Jewish journalist, taught her AP Government class about the Holocaust and the increase of discrimination against Jews. In an interview, Loeschke also expressed some of her views as to how the Hamas-Israel war and the discrimination following it should be discussed in schools. “It definitely should be something that’s discussed in class, but I think it should be discussed in a manner of what students know about it, what their opinions are about it, and what would they do if they saw a protest or saw hate speech going on in a campus. We’re pretty nonexposed to that stuff.” There are many ways to help spread awareness, and Cannon Falls has been making an effort to do that, mainly to Loeschke’s credit.
Like Gad Partok’s perspective, The Hamas-Irsael war shocked everyone. It greatly affected the Jewish and Palestinian communities. It has also led to a great increase in discrimination and hate crimes against both Jews and Palestinian Americans from American students. Certain biases have resulted in a lot of negative situations in high schools, and colleges as a result of either blame, social media, or something. These attacks are also caused by Americans, expressing some sort of hatred towards their religion. It has greatly affected both religions and made school, a place for education, unsafe for them. Even after the war ends, it’s unlikely that that alone will stop the discrimination. However, schools and organizations are making an effort to stop this problem by reminding students of the past, to ensure history doesn’t repeat itself. To prevent the hatred from growing, teaching and learning students is always a good way to start.
