"Is Israel an Apartheid State?" Debate on Campus (and why I did not go)

23 Nisan 5771,

So last night on my campus a debate was held that drew 100+ people. Take what you will from this number - our college supposedly has anything between 12.5k to 15k students roaming its hallowed halls, which one could then conclude this is a rather small fraction. On the other hand we are also a commuter college, so to draw a crowd of three digits (and one where food is non prominently featured) is no small accomplishment.

Was it the subject matter then? The implications of the answer chill. The name of the debate was "Is Israel an Apartheid State?". That alone was off-setting to me for it already implies bias in my mind, an implicit/explicit slant that immediately grants one side an offensive posture and another the defensive. Political debates (and how was this one not?) would be thought less than objective if they were similarly renamed (e.g.: "Is Kennedy more Charming Than Nixon?", "Is Reagan a Great Communicator?", "Is McCain Just Bush 2.0?")

So that the debate wasn't called "Middle East Conflicts" or even "Is Israel an Apartheid State and is Hezbollah a Terrorist Organization?" kinda clued me in. Here's some other background you should know about my campus. It has a strong anti-Israel sentiment vibrating in the air, caused in part by a heavy and aggressive socialist presence and a distinct lack of any countering organized Jewish voice. Now not all socialists are anti-Israel although many American socialists that I have heard and read are, and it has been my experience that while not all anti-Israel sentiment is anti-Semitic, a lot of it slips into that nasty realm.

Also, it disturbs me greatly that this anti-Israel stance is rarely nuanced. Critics never seem to say, okay, let's talk about the oppression of the settlements (where, IMO, one might bring up the apartheid comparison) or the way a fundamentalist government seems to generate and justify continued human rights violations. Instead they demand - loudly, argumentatively - that the entire state of Israel either be disbanded or overrun via a one-state solution.

Of course, this only makes sense from a revolutionary point of view, because if you do argue from a nuanced p.o.v. then you have to allow that your opponent has some worthwhile aspects, and these critics will never admit to that. It is not in their scripts (and yes, they repeat just as many regurgitated bullet points ad-nauseam  as the other side). But then, scripts are not about discussions but rather debates and demands. They often say that they refuse to dialogue because of what they see as the inherent imbalance of the power dynamics between the two parties. So: discussion bad, but missile and bombings good! (One activist once told me that in his opinion there was "an acceptable level of violence" against Israel.)

(I do want to point out that my roommate, who is a funny person and experienced socialist activist also takes this stand, but she and some others have made room for talk and to hear my thoughts. It is my opinion though that they are not what drives today's anti-Israel engine.)

Then there is the invisibility of any Jewish voice, pro-Israel or otherwise. Oh, we have a Hillel group but its members don't always know when and where events are. It has tried to mount a pro-Israel event here or there but notices were sparse and generally unorganized. In fact, in our student centers the socialists made sure to mount a pro-Palestinian sign right over the Hillel desk space. That kind of intimidation sets what passes for discourse, which of course is no discourse at all. It is hard if not impossible to strike up discussions in a setting of fear and intimidation (and yes, when being pro-Israel automatically makes one a "Zionist racist piece of shit" is a threatening strong-arm tactic worthy of Mussolini. Irony is obviously not appreciated at my school.)

* * *
I am a student here who also is a converting Jew with pro-Israel yet anti-occupation sentiments. Do I feel guilty about not being there last night? Yes. Should I have gone? Would it have made a difference? Don't know. Will I be taking down my Israel flag from my desk where I am a student coordinator any time soon? No. Will I be stating my displeasure to the organizers today? Definitely.

But is this enough?

I do not know. And I think that bothers me most of all.

You Say You Want A Revolution...*

(*...will that be with a side order of sit-ins or just a beheading?)

For me Boston often feels like a perpetual boiling point for civil rights. Every weekend seems to bring a new rally to The Common or Copley Square or The State House. Tea-Partiers, Immigrant Rights, Queer Rights, Labor Unions, all bump elbows in a town that is small enough to be tucked away in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The streets and campuses here echo with the cries of the righteous, whoever that may be on any given day, to the point where the line between mainstream tolerance and indifference becomes blurred.
That being said, the current anti-Israeli sentiment around here is leaving me uneasy. Many of the tenets of protest I have lived by as a longtime activist seem to have been abandoned like yesterday’s space-saver in snow-buried Southie.

First is that over-used, least understood and much co-opted word ‘peace’. I learned my protesting from the school of Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Paul and Martin Luther King, Jr., where fighting back comes from a place of non-violence as opposed to "an acceptable level of violence", where you raised an open hand, not a clenched fist, you rose above your opponent instead of sinking down to them, you stood up rather than striking out; you disrupted the empire by sitting in, not by setting off bombs.

So it disturbs me greatly when during the recent Egyptian revolution there were calls to take Hosni Mubarak out "17^th Century Revolution style" or that the uprising had reached a level of "CHFHO" (Chop His F**king Head Off") already. For me Peace can never mean, or be obtained by, "acceptable level of violence" nor "preparing for armed conflict." When those onboard raise hands that hold the simplest of weapons, it is no longer a "peace" flotilla but a "protest" flotilla.

Also disturbing is the distinct lack of any real dialogue regarding the discourse. Some anti-Israeli protestors have made no pretense in refusing to come to the middle ground, instead staking claim to the most extreme of fringes (spots I imagine to be crumbling drop-offs that offer little wiggle room.) Instead of coming to a place of discussion they make demands; rather than discuss they debate; rather than actually hear they listen for the opening to make the next clever retort.

I also find it disturbing how easily History is ignored and everything is framed in the context of a few decades, years, weeks, the latest rally, RIGHT NOW!

I guess it should not surprise me (even though it does) to hear such arguments from this encampment as "the only way Palestine could live is if Israel dies", "you should stop being Jewish" or that "Zionists have taken over your police, government, media culture, etc.". It is profoundly distressing to me to hear how easily anti-Semitism is tucked into anti-Israeli protests, how old anti-Jewish myths are resurrected unchallenged in the new age, how extremism is packaged and sold as the new diplomacy, how critical thinking is discarded to embrace the electricity of the newest cause, how one missile can be seen as oppression while another fired in response can be called ‘love letters’ from revolutionaries.

Please make no mistake - I think the Occupation needs to end as of yesterday, the walls between nations need to come down, the term "moral army" is an oxymoron and that the current ultra-conservative Israel government often invokes religion to justify its stream of blatant racism and needs to be called out for any human rights violations. Just as any nation guilty of such grievious acts should be. Except they are not, are they? The French government violates the rights of Muslin women by stripping them of their veils, American Islamophobia continues to run amok., British Muslims are reviled in the country’s popular culture, yet it is Israel that is singled out for this level of demonstration. Hard to ignore the implications of that..

I am reminded of one of my favorite books, Starhawk’s "The Fifth Sacred Thing" in which a post environmental disaster San Francisco resurrects itself as a true socialist haven where Peace overrides Power. So strong is this spirituality that when the military-industrial complex comes rolling into town the citizens fight back through nonviolent protest, literally laying down their lives for that ideal. I can’t help but wonder how many of today’s protestors would follow that example.