It has become almost impossible to be Jewish on a college campus. The overwhelming grief of injustice and suffering is so monstrous that it suffocates the daily routine of college, of studying for a quiz or sitting in class. Jewish people are mourning the deadliest slaughter of Jewish people since the Holocaust and living every day knowing there are innocent people held hostage by terrorists. On top of this, we are constantly confronted with small reminders that there are people who will jump on a trend of being “anti-Israel” without knowing the first thing about the current conflict. 

The Vanderbilt community gathered for a vigil on Sunday night to mourn the death of six hostages found dead in the tunnels under Rafah. I stood in the Chabad House and struggled to make small talk. The image of Rachel Polin-Goldberg screaming into the Gaza Strip haunts me. She begs her son Hersh, a 23-year-old hostage, to survive, hoping he can hear her from whatever tunnel he is being held in. She watched the video that Hamas released of her child, his left hand blown off by a grenade during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack and slaughter at the Nova Music Festival. Just before he was to be rescued, terrorists murdered him with a shot to the head.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino survived 11 months in captivity in terrorist tunnels, likely facing both psychological and physical torture. As the Israel Defense Forces were descending, Hamas shot the hostages in the head 48-72 hours before they were rescued. They were innocent, beautiful Jewish people. They had futures of love, of joy, of success and marriage and of holidays with families. They deserved to grow old and die peacefully like the rest of us.

As the vigil continued, I was so overwhelmed with the imagery of a mother screaming into the abyss for her child that I stepped outside and called my mom. She said she wished she could hold me. We sobbed on the phone and said no words. The first thing I saw when I exited the vigil? The dumpster not 100 feet from the door of the Chabad House defaced with spray paint. Free Palestine, it said. Between heaves of sorrow for the unspeakable violence unleashed on innocent people in Gaza’s dark maze of tunnels, I was confronted by a political slogan that masked protesters have screamed with increased vigor since the Oct. 7 massacre of Jewish people in Israel. When I see or hear “Free Palestine,” all I can think of is the addendum “from Hamas.” No innocent people should have to live under the reign of a terrorist organization. Though Hamas was elected in 2006, the children who suffer the worst consequences of this war did not choose these bloody barbarians to represent them.

There is no reprieve for Jewish people. The families and friends of the hostages will live with a burden too unnatural, too horrific for words to carry. Jewish students watch, our souls shattered into millions of pieces, as students jump on trends of political justice with little to no knowledge of the complexities of geopolitical conflict. As our people are held hostage like animals, we watch others scream “genocide,” a term coined after the slaughter of millions of Jewish people during the Holocaust, with seemingly no attention paid to any of the atrocities around the world that are incontestable genocides. The world simply cannot bear to watch Jewish people fight a war that we did not start, cannot bear to watch Jewish people say “enough is enough” and defend ourselves. All eyes were on Rafah when Israeli forces entered the area a few months ago. Now hostages, including the Bedouin Arab hostage Qaid Farhan Alkadi who was rescued alive this month, are being found in Rafah by Israeli forces. There are no trendy Instagram story posts. No one has eyes on Rafah now that the hostages are being found there.

Your Jewish friends at Vanderbilt are not okay. We are part of a small community that preaches love and light, joy and justice, celebration amid sorrow. We lead our daily lives knowing that we have brothers and sisters here and in Israel praying for the return of their loved ones held hostage or mourning a multitude of losses. The taking and holding of human beings as hostages is a despicable act and uniquely excruciating to those who can only pray for their safe return. We are tired of begging for human beings to be released from captivity by terrorists. We are weary of tucking in our Jewish stars. We feel numb to hatred and misunderstanding. We are exhausted from sorrow without respite.