“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
On a cold Tuesday morning, these were the words our nation woke up to. Maybe you saw it brushing your teeth, or trekking up the Slope. Maybe you didn’t see it at all. It came as a surprise to me that when I brought up President Trump’s recent “Truth” Social post to my club, many people had no idea what I was talking about.
It was just like any other Tuesday. Students crowded in Temple of Zeus cafe, talking over coffee about what they did over spring break. Our president had threatened genocide in the early hours of the morning, but people had prelims to study for, LinkedIn posts to make for their new internships and meetings for their startups and project teams.
All the while, bombs fell on Lebanon and Iran. I awaited the 8 p.m. deadline to open the Strait of Hormuz with a weird, quiet dread, knowing there was nothing I could do besides wait. Is this the sort of society we live in now? One where our ‘president’ claims he will wipe out an entire country, and nobody cares? I was filled with an overwhelming relief when the news came out that a two-week ceasefire had been brokered between the U.S. and Iran.
On April 8, Israel launched more than 100 air strikes across Lebanon, on residential areas and a funeral. In the span of 10 minutes, my homeland experienced what can only be described as absolute hellfire. And the world does not call this terrorism, because surely Israel must be defending itself when it kills over 250 people in a day and continues its plan to annex South Lebanon, cutting off all bridges and means of transportation.
We must choose humanity in a nation that has normalized the genocide of Palestinians and now a genocide in Lebanon and Iran. We cannot just condemn violence, we must take action against it! I am disgusted by the apathy of this campus. How can everyone go on, business as usual, as innocent people are dying under the fire of drones, or being blocked from humanitarian aid or being consistently executed by Israel, which just legalized the death penalty only for Palestinian prisoners, and told Christian families in Lebanon not to offer shelter to Muslims.
What good will keeping the people of Iran, Lebanon and Palestine in your hearts do when they are constantly victim to escalation by the U.S. and Israel? These people live under constant fire, displaced from their homes and are at risk of death at each moment we spend doing homework at our desks or watching reels on Instagram.
It is not enough to be sad. It is not enough to offer your condolences. Your empathy will not help anyone — only action will. Do not let your sympathy become the enabler of murder! Do not turn away.
I lay down my life for love. I lay down my life for acceptance, for forgiveness, for mutual aid. I do not understand how it is possible for people to continue as if everything is normal. I do not understand how people do not believe they have an obligation to stop murder. Why do we not care when children and families and ordinary people are being slaughtered across the globe? What cause could possibly justify this devastation?
I will write until my pen breaks, and then I will get another one. I hope that my words may let a sliver of guilt pierce your hearts, for we are all complacent in international crime and every moment spent with this issue unspoken, every second spent harping over coffee chats, is a moment weighed in blood.
We must recognize that we are nobody, that we won a game of geographical luck and could have easily been dead or living at risk if we currently lived in the countries currently under the barrage of drone strikes and vicious carpet-bombings and ethnic cleansing. This is not about us, it is about the real people whose lives hang in the balance.
As Americans, we are privileged, and it is deplorable that safety has become a privilege in the first place. Do not let your anger incapacitate you. Let it radicalize you.
I condemn the professors who stay silent. I condemn the University administration, which has not issued a statement offering support to students with family in the line of fire, nor has it obliged all of the student efforts to divest Cornell from the genocide in the Middle East and stopped promoting war companies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement on campus.
I am disappointed, too, that only a handful of opinion columnists are writing about these issues. I sense an apathy even among many of my colleagues, and although I don’t think all columns should be political, avoiding these topics is political.
And to the people who try to misconstrue my words in comments under my articles on The Sun Instagram posts, I encourage you to stop hiding behind burner accounts and write a guest column responding to my piece under your own name. If you are so passionately against me advocating for human rights, practice what you preach and stand proudly behind your words.
In my freshman year, I printed out posters of Handala, a symbol of Palestinian resistance, and taped hundreds of them across campus. All were taken down, except one, which has remained for two years now. We cannot continue to ignore a genocide we are complicit in.
On the morning of April 14, with help from a good friend, I will put up posters again reminding this campus of what is going on in the world until something is done about it. Our resistance will have no limits, and in the face of genocide, I trust that we will all take all of the measure to protest this disgusting act. Reach out to me if you would like to join this effort.
Leah Badawi '27 is an Opinion Columnist and a Government and English student in the College of Arts & Sciences. She also serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Rainy Day Literary Magazine. Her fortnightly column Leah Down The Law reflects on politics, history, and broader culture in an attempt to tell stories that are often left between the lines. She can be reached at lbadawi@cornellsun.com.
