Two Years Later: How Has the Israel-Hamas Conflict Affected the Milton Community?

By Harris Felix ‘27

For the past two years, the conflict in the Middle East has sat at the center of global attention. On October 7, 2023, Hamas, an extremist Palestinian political and military group that currently governs the Gaza Strip, struck Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking nearly 250 hostages, per ABC News. The next day, Israel declared war and began a large-scale military incursion into the Gaza Strip. Since then, the two sides have continued fighting, interrupted only by some shortlived ceasefires. The Israeli military has killed over 65,000 Palestinians, and the death toll of Israeli soldiers has reached around 500 as of this past month, per Reuters. Over the past two years, many countries, mainly the United States, have consistently sent weapons to Israel while Islamic powers, such as Iran, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have aided Hamas. Like almost every community across the globe, Milton Academy has felt the effects of the conflict, especially among the numerous Jewish and Arab members of our community.

Shira Keitner ‘27 described her family’s deep connection to the conflict. Her father is Israeli and immigrated to the US in his late twenties, and most of her extended family still lives in Israel. Her brother was attending high school there in October 2023. “My grandmother paints bomb shelters,” she said, explaining that “everyone in Israel has a bomb shelter in or near their house.” Her dad grew up in the Sinai Peninsula, a piece of land right below Gaza that Israel ceded to Egypt in the Camp David Accords of 1978, and later, the West Bank, so most of his childhood friends were Arab. She explained that he wishes simply to end the war as quickly as possible with the least amount of deaths. Keitner added that she identifies as a Zionist, in the sense that she believes the Jewish people should have their own state and that, after being exiled throughout history from places including Egypt, Russia, and Germany, Jewish people are left with the sole option of Israel. Keitner also believes in a two-state solution. For Muslim Students Association (MSA) Co-head Adam Amin ‘27, the conflict has had a personal effect on his family. Shortly after the October 7 attacks, his sister, then the President of Harvard’s Arab Student Association, signed a statement, along with other student activists, condemning Israel for causing Hamas’ war crimes. The backlash was immediate, and her university provided little protection. People posted his sister’s and her friends’ personal information online without their consent, and a truck displaying his sister’s face and slogans calling out supposed antisemitism sat parked outside his family’s house. Reflecting, he added that “although in America, we see free speech as having no consequences, ... what you say actually can have real and dangerous consequences.”

Gideon Weiss ‘28, a member of Milton’s Jewish Student Union (JSU), reflected on the complexity of the perspectives within the Jewish community. “The topic of Israel is super polarizing in the United States, even amongst Jews,” he said. “Some Jews are torn between their support for Israel as a country and their concern for the policies of its government. Some are torn between their fear for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and their fears for the safety of Israelis.” He added that, “it’s hard to discuss these topics, even within the JSU.” Keitner similarly noted that constant protests in Israel demonstrate the divisiveness concerning the issue there. Finally, Weiss said sometimes “people assume your views because you are Jewish, when in fact it might not completely reflect what you believe.”

English teacher and JSU faculty member Dr. David Nurenberg described the conflict as “something that [he] thinks[s] about almost every day; [he has] relatives and friends in both Israel and in the Palestinian Territories. For such a small part of the world, Israel/Palestine takes up enormous mental, emotional, political, and symbolic space.”

History department chair and Middle East historian Mr. Josh Emmott highlighted that although he has not been impacted personally by the conflict, he has tried to support his many colleagues and friends who are Jewish and have family in Israel. He also explained how the conflict has prompted the department to discuss how they should teach about Israel and even question if they should at all. By chance, the Class IV Challenges and Changemakers World History course covers the Israel/Palestine region during early October, and Emmott recognized the awkwardness that came with studying the topic, especially in 2023, just days after the October 7 attacks.

After speaking about the tragedy of the conflict, Emmott also recognized that it has sparked complex conversations within the Milton community. He gets frustrated that “frequently, there are so many things happening in the world, and we just seem to reinforce the bubble around us.” Nurenberg appreciated how “Milton took the time and the space to create multiple opportunities, both required and optional, for students to engage with and learn about the conflict,” which helped them see the complex, multi-perspective history beyond the “quick bites on social media.”

Upper School DEIJ Office Director Dr. Melissa Lawlor said, “I always appreciate how we try to provide multiple perspectives for our students without explicitly telling our community what to believe.” The DEIJ Board organized a Storytelling Wall with JSU, SAMENA, and MSA to provide narratives on those affected. Just days after the October 7 attacks, Nurenberg, history faculty member Dr. Perin Gokce, and Emmott ran two sessions of a Straus Dessert on the history of the region, so that, as Lawlor conveyed, “students could have proper context for forming their individual perspectives.” The three faculty members ran a similar presentation, this time mandatory, in 2024, about a year later.

Throughout 2023 and 2024, the DEIJ Office invited a series of all-school speakers to educate students about Israeli-Palestinian history and issues, including Kate Phillips-Barrasso of Mercy Corps, a humanitarian organization providing aid in Gaza; and a joint discussion between Ambassador Dennis Ross and Ghaith al-Omari, individuals who have been involved in past peace negotiations in the Middle East. These all-school lectures often drew controversy among the student body. For example, Milton Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer Vanessa Cohen-Gibbons and Head of School Dr. Alixe Callen released a joint allschool email the day following Phillips-Barasso’s presentation expressing “concern[...] that people might have left believing that this is a simple story of one group doing wrong to another.” Phillips-Barasso’s presentation explicitly focused on Mercy Corp’s humanitarian operations in the region while avoiding the conflict’s history; meanwhile, no analogous email was sent after Holocaust Remembrance speaker Rabbi David Wolpe’s claim that Iran had “funded” pro-Palestine student protests at Columbia, or Ross’ and Omari’s representation of the pro-Israel Washington Institute. As a result, the email was met with a quiet chorus of student backlash.

In addition to all-school speakers, the DEIJ office has helped maintain processing spaces in both affinity and cross-dialogue groups, while JSU, SAMENA, and MSA all hosted fundraisers for affected communities. On June 13, 2024, Milton’s administration announced “institutional neutrality” as an official school policy, stating in an all-school email that the school had “decided not to issue institutional responses to external events in the future” while still allowing the internal events described above.

Most community members appreciated the way Milton talked about the conflict with the student body. Reflecting, Amin wondered why the school put a lot of emphasis on the October 7 attacks themselves but did not keep the student body quite as up to date with the following events in Gaza, especially in the months soon after. Ali Hamoda ‘29, a member of MSA, explained that the Milton Middle School only talked about the conflict in individual classes. He said he appreciated the non-confrontational response, saying that it seemed proper for a prestigious institution, while also noting that “Milton as an entity, of course, doesn’t want to affect the people that keep it running and wouldn’t intend to offend anyone.”

Emmott noted that although all-school events certainly give everyone, especially younger students like those in Class IV, a common language to discuss the conflict, real discussion happens in smaller spaces such as SAMENA, Milton Progressives, or in classes; he emphasized that, “this discussion is the power of Milton and the Harkness table.” Regarding the second round of faculty panel discussions with Nurenberg, Gokce, and Emmott, Weiss explained that although he was already somewhat knowledgeable about the history of the region, many of his friends and acquaintances had developed opinions about the war without the benefit of historical context. Weiss said that the panel provided context that allowed for “respectful discourse.” Dr Lawlor recognized that “for some [students], [the conflict] has heightened awareness and encouraged them to follow global events more closely, while for others, the intensity and complexity of the situation might have been overwhelming, potentially causing them to hesitate to engage.”

A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began a few weeks ago, on October 10, 2025, technically bringing to an end Israel’s offensive following October 7, 2023. However, deadly Israeli strikes on Gaza have continued into late October. The two parties, mediated by the United States, negotiated the truce along with a twenty-point plan for peacebuilding, but significant disagreements persist. Key points of contention include Hamas’s disarmament, the future governance of Gaza, and a path toward Palestinian statehood.

Nurenberg acknowledged that “people who care about peace in Israel/Palestine sort of experience a constant roller coaster of hope, then dismay,” but he always “tries to summon some faith and optimism every time [he hears] of a ceasefire.” He and Lawlor, among others, both noted the importance of seeing everyone in Israel and Gaza not just as statistics or political chess pieces, but as real people with their own hopes and motivations.

Emmott advised that students should put in effort to develop a full picture of the suffering on both sides of the conflict. He also reminded students that news organizations publish stories based on what they think their readers want to read. Even when the story of the conflict in the Middle East slips into the background of the media, it is still very much happening. Furthermore, the lack of an “international spotlight,” he pointed out, “tends to allow actors to prolong the conflict and commit actions that they might not if there was going to be some type of international accountability.” Ultimately, Hamoda stated simply that, “in every step, both physically in the Middle East and with repercussions in the US, we should have more compassion for the humanity of other people.”