This past Sunday evening I sat perched in Libe Café poring over Titus Andronicus and The War Between the Tates, and in the failing light I watched as half a dozen students lined the quad’s walkways with over a thousand black flags.

Witnessing these young people brave Ithaca’s brutal winter twilight warmed my heart, for in my naïveté I thought they were paying tribute to Black History Month.

Perhaps each black flag represented a fallen African American soldier in the Civil War or each African American imprisoned and murdered in the struggle for civil rights.

By the time I began my trek home it was too dark to make out the billboards accompanying the flags, but I imagined they celebrated the accomplishments of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks (and hopefully my high school’s favorite Black History Month hero: the late great Bob Marley).

But, boy, was I wrong. These enthusiastic flag planters weren’t celebrating the history of African Americans at all; they were protesting Israel’s conduct during the recent conflict in Gaza.

The gesture struck me as odd. Amidst the 25 or so ongoing conflicts in the world, two of the most deadly of which are being perpetrated by America, what makes Israel stand out?

It’s not the death count. Since 2000 — when the Palestinian-Israeli conflict known as the Second Intifada began — the Mexican Drug War, the War in northwest Pakistan, the Second Chechen War, the Baluchistan War and the genocide in Darfur have all claimed more lives in equal or less time.

To put the Palestine-Israel conflict in perspective, consider the estimated 9,000 Iraqi civilians killed in the Iraq War in 2008. That’s more casualties than the entire Second Intifada, civilians and combatants included. And 2008 was the Iraq War’s least bloody year: a conservatively estimated 90,000 to 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since 2003 (or over one million casualties if you include combatants).

And then, of course, there is Afghanistan.

Israel doesn’t stand out from the pack because it attacked Gaza without provocation, either. Palestinians launched rockets into Israeli cities during a ceasefire, an offense far more substantial than the reasons America went to war with Iraq (read: nothing).

Comparatively, Israel’s conduct in this conflict is not exceptionally violent and is not unprovoked. So are we to conclude that this outcry resonates from a moral objection to the existence of the state of Israel? Why is Israel such a lightning rod for controversy? Is it because planting 100,000 flags for all the dead Iraqi civilians would be just plain tedious?

Indeed, there seems to be something awfully boring about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some political activists would rather condemn the actions of Israel — a country in a far away continent — than confront the ongoing misdoings of their own government.

That is not to say that Israel should not be rightly condemned for its violent actions — just as those who act violently towards Israel should be condemned. But this hypocritical criticism of Israel lacks a degree of self-awareness.

Iraq and Afghanistan are no less occupied than the Gaza strip, after all.

50 years ago, in the face of another conflict equally as bloody, unfounded and futile as the Iraq War, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I [can] never again raise my voice against … violence ... without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.”

Cornell students once understood this. In the 1960s we staged sit-ins, organized demonstrations and rallied against the Vietnam War. On April 19th, 1970 — 11 years after the war began — 12,000 filled Barton Hall to capacity in protest against a war we knew was unjust.

Isn’t it sad that our generation didn’t show up when that torch was passed?

Do we really believe that we have the moral authority to condemn another country for doing on a small scale what America does on a much larger scale?

Have we really traded in meaningful political activism for a visually impressive but intellectually bankrupt display of black flags?

As Rosa Parks once said, “Each person must live their life as a model for others.” We cannot possibly expect Israel to choose peace over violence until we do first.

This task is not insurmountable. If the struggle for civil rights has taught us anything it is that over the course of a few years what once seemed impossible can become a reality. We can end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, but first we must stop trying to dictate policy to the rest of the world. I understand some Americans identify more with Israel or Palestine than they do with the U.S., but when the Middle East does achieve peace, it won’t be because of anything the West did — especially not because of some flags plotted on a lawn in Upstate New York.

My only real advice for aspiring political activists who hope to change the world comes from the late great Bob Marley: “Open your eyes,” he said. “Look within.”

Happy Black History Month.