What The Left Can Learn From Camus After Hamas' Attack on Israel

Pro-Palestinian protestors can detest the Israeli government while resisting the temptation to justify violence in the pursuit of justice.

I was 20 or 21 years old when I started reading the existentialists, studying abroad in Paris and filling my backpack with Sartre, de Beauvoir, Genet, Camus. These writers represented something far away to me. Albert Camus, celebrated author of The Stranger, articulated it best in a speech he gave at Columbia during his only trip to the US, in 1946. Onl…