By Peter Fernandez

Middlebury College and UVM  students, in overwhelming numbers, believe Israel is responsible for genocide in Gaza. Regarding last April’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Middlebury, the Middlebury Campus newspaper reporters, June Su and Kana Decoste wrote about the protest, “The momentum grew as many students felt that the ongoing genocide in Gaza, with 25,000 dead, 8,000 missing, and 7,000 injured has been swept under the rug on the Middlebury campus, waiting for disruption to stir the status quo.”

Last spring, UVM students also held “pro-Palestinian protests.” Their demands are also based on the alleged genocide. They called for the disclosure and divestment of university endowment funds from weapon manufacturers and Israeli companies. UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s appointment as Commencement Speaker at Vermont’s most prominent university was canceled because she vetoed a UN ceasefire resolution.

Unlike Middlebury and UVM, Saint Michael’s College, located in Colchester, Vermont, doesn’t have a specific pro-Palestine student organization. Still, it does promote the Diversity Coalition, a student-run consortium, which was involved in last summer’s Burlington Protest held on June 17th in Battery Park. The protest was held beneath the banner(s) “No War on Iran. End All US Aid to Israel!”

There is currently no publicly available confirmation that Vermont State University, which includes Lyndon State College, Vermont Technical College, and Johnson State College, has any active student organizations dedicated to pro-Palestinian advocacy.

According to a recent Newsweek/College Pulse Survey, 80% of college students disapproved of Israel’s handling of the war against Hamas. “60% of students said Israel’s military campaign in Gaza was genocidal.”

A Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll taken in December 2023 stated that Americans aged 18-24, 60% believed Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza.

In an August 2025 Quinnipiac University Survey,” Across all age groups, 50% of US voters believed Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

The term “genocide” has been illegitimately and prejudicially ousted from its place in history and international law, torn from its fixed position in the dictionary page between genealogy and genome, and unabashedly transformed into a powerful and profane tool of anti-Israel propaganda.  Now a political weapon, threadbare and cliche, it is shamelessly misused by high school and college students and faculty, anarchists, like Antifa, as well as the likes of Washington representatives Ilhan Omar (D-MI), Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), actors Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo, musicians Roger Waters, Eric Clapton. These and many other celebrities brandish this once-appropriately utilized term in ignorance-based protest.

“Genocide has a strict legal meaning,” writes Stephen M. Flatow in his September 8th article in Israelunwired.com. “It requires a proven intent to wipe out an entire people. That was the Nazis’ Final Solution.’ That was Rwanda in 1994. That was Bosnia in Srebrenica. It is not Israel, defending itself after the Hamas-led massacre in southern Jewish communities on Oct. 7, 2023, when 1,200 men, women, and children were slaughtered, and 215 others kidnapped and dragged into Gaza. Some 50 remain captive there, some dead and some stil alive.”

On May 20, 2024, former President Biden, hardly a supporter of Israel, stated,  “What’s happening in Gaza is not genocide.”

Hamas states it will repeat October 7 “again and again.” Israel is only guilty of neutralizing a terrorist structure that conceals and stashes itself inside schools, hospitals, mosques, as well as UN office buildings and Al Jazeera (The Island)  news offices. Hamas wants this war to look like genocide. At the same time, a majority of their chieftains live far from the impoverished Gaza Strip in multi-million-dollar pleasure palaces in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. The only exception was Yahya Sinwar, whose body was found beside a terrorist tunnel among three other“militants” on October 16, 2024.

“Genocide is directed against an entire people, not just criminals and terrorists among them,” writes Alan Dershowitz in his booklet, The Ten Big Anti-Israel Lies. “To accuse Israel of genocide is to fail to distinguish between the legitimate military goal of ending a terrorist organization, such as Hamas, and the illegitimate goal of ending the existence of an entire ethnic or religious group.”

Every wartime death is a catastrophe, and Hamas knew this when it attacked Israel, escaped with captives, and then hid itself inside Gaza’s civilian populace. “The death of a human shield is the legal and moral responsibility of those who deliberately placed civilians in harm’s way,” added Dershowitz.

John Spencer, Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point stated in his article, “Israel Has Created a New Standard for Urban Warfare, Why Will No One Admit It?” Newsweek, March 26, 2024, that the “steps that Israel has taken to prevent  casualties (in Gaza) is historic in comparison to all these other wars.” According to Spencer, Israel has taken more steps in avoiding civilian harm than any other military in our history.

https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286

The Israeli Army drops leaflets and makes phone calls to warn civilians.  “Roof knocks” are also made. “This involves dropping noise-making warning devices on the roofs of the buildings the IDF plans to bomb,” writes Alan Dershowitz.  Why would Israel do that, as it is not required by the law of war? “In part, for humanitarian reasons,” continues the distinguished attorney. “But also for self-serving reasons: Israel’s reputation, image, and support are weakened every time the IDF inadvertently kills a civilian.… Hamas does everything in its power to maximize civilian casualties.”

The following interview with Hamas MP Fathi Hammad, “We Used Women and Children As Human Shields,” was conducted by The Middle East Media on February 29, 2008.

“For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this end and so do the Mujahideen (i,e., a Muslim who fights on behalf of his faith) and the children, the elderly, and the Mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying no to the Zionist enemy: ‘We desire death like you desire life.’”

“www.memri.org/tv/hamas-mp-fathi-hammad-we-used-women–and-children-human-shields.