I have before me a postcard I received from Jewish Voice for Peace, showing a group of their members holding up a banner with the statement, “Criticizing Israel Is Not Anti-Semitic.” The organization, which has chapters throughout the country and is very much involved in the campus protests taking place today over the Gaza war, represents one of many Jewish organizations protesting Israel’s destruction of Palestinian lives — how many tens of thousands? — in a war that has killed a disproportionate number of women and children.

Passover prayers were offered by many of the student protesters on campus encampments earlier this week, claiming God’s promise of freedom for all the offspring of Abraham, including the Palestinian people, displaced from their land in 1947-48, and living thereafter as exiles and refugees.

Bruce M. Shipman

Groton

Editor’s note: The writer is the former Episcopal chaplain at Yale University.