TMP Reacts to the Israel-Palestine Primer

Last week, Milton, acknowledging the first year mark of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, hosted two mandatory panel discussions to provide students with a general overview of the build up of events that have led up to those today. Here are four TMP editors’ thoughts on the panel.

Note: The following opinions are not meant to represent those of the board as a whole.

Jason Yu ‘25

Simple. To the point. An all-around, effective breakdown. As someone who is not a history/current events buff, the panel—although I’d argue that the structure more so resembled that of a presentation or lecture—was just what I needed. The information conveyed was accessible, and I always appreciate a good slide deck that’s easy to follow along. Although the panel featured information that covered both sides, I feel as though most of the discussion focused on Israel, Netanyahu specifically. I wish the attempts to call for a ceasefire had been covered. Overall, I’m appreciative of Milton’s efforts to educate the community about pressing global events, and I hope such sessions continue in the future. 

Adrienne Fung ‘25

I almost wish that a mandatory panel like this one had happened last year. I appreciated the faculty panel’s commitment to presenting different perspectives on the conflict; the situation is a nuanced one, and I think that if their goal was to put forward a neutral, informative session, they succeeded. As always, the ACC was a bit of an unfortunate location (could King Theater have served as an alternative?), but the lecture-style panel did an excellent job in engaging students despite their limitations. On the students’ part, I found our questions to be appropriately thoughtful and respectful. I’m curious to see how next week’s speakers will build upon (or test, perhaps…nobody knows) this foundation of knowledge. Regardless, in a time when many institutions choose to shy away from sensitive, loaded topics, I’m glad that Milton still chooses to talk about the conflict. 

Rhys Adams ‘26

I’d like to issue kudos to the teachers who stepped up to edify our foundational knowledge on the conflict in Palestine, Israel, and Lebanon. When outside professionals address coming assemblies, they won’t bear the burden of explaining the “common knowledge” details of Middle Eastern history during their limited timeslots. I’ll use my similarly limited ink to make clear that (as Dr. Nurenberg crucially remarked): the broad story put forth by the panel is one among many. The avoidance of the word “genocide” despite Gazans’ suffering World War II levels of deliberate wartime famine brought about by Israel’s illegal restriction of aid (which Dr. Gokce did mention), the framing of the Palestinian strategy pre-Oslo-accords as solely “terrorist violence” despite numerous diplomatic overtures from Palestinians to Jews/Israelis between 1913 and 1993, and the description of the 1948 mobilization of the Arab League as inciting the First Arab–Israeli War despite mutual violence by Zionist and Palestinian paramilitary groups since at least 1936 do not represent an academic consensus: they represent the decisions of three excellent expert panelists on which facts bear including. That said, the panel’s reminder of US’s dubious and self-defeating involvement in Israeli-Palestinian relations provided a potent intellectual nudge towards decentering the American-centric view of the Mideast. In a conversation inundated with historical critiques like mine, the teachers were shrewd to outline a handful of productive and interesting broader lessons for students of all stripes to take from the event. I hope to see any blindspots resulting from the so far understandably small list of narratives offered to students closed as more speakers come to contextualize the horrors suffered by innocent civilians before, on, and since 10/7. As always, call your member of congress, and tell them to stop arming Israel.

HT Xue ‘26

I found the panel to be impressively informative, and I really appreciated the panelists for stepping up and educating Milton about world issues in a time when it is more important than ever to be informed. I’m also glad that the school finally lived up to its claim that the Israel-Palestine issue is complex. 

The panel helped build upon information I had been exposed to in Mr Emmott’s Middle East History class. I did not know before the panel, for instance, that Netanyahu’s reign was seriously unstable prior to Hamas’ terrorist attack on October 6. Especially amidst rising anti-Semitism in the US, it is crucial to understand that Israel itself as well as the global Jewish diaspora is not at all united in the way it sees the conflict in Gaza.

The panelists did miss out on several key details, perhaps due to limited time. They did not mention, for instance, that certain pre-1948 Zionist spaces and movements did not see Arab expulsion as necessary. Moreover, the panel didn’t focus much on the current Israeli blockade on Gaza that is—per multiple UN reports and the International Red Cross—illegal, and a large part of why Hamas has been so effective in recruiting from the Palestinian population.

Although the issue is complex, its multifaceted nature shouldn’t preclude us from centering the simple parts of it as well: namely that Hamas is a terrorist organization, and that the Israeli state under Netanyahu, which gets 69% of its weapons from the US per the BBC, can be defined much of the same way. I hope the panelists next week will grapple with these simple facts as well as the overall contextual complexity. 

Especially as a momentous election approaches, intellectual complexity should not preclude us from real action: as Mr Emmott told me when fellow editor Andria and I interviewed him, “this panel is not something you just move on from”; act – even if it's not on this issue specifically – advocate, and vote.