Embrace honest debate

BY GIL TROY

Jerusalem Post, Feb 17, 2004, Opinion, pg. 13

Last semester, celebrating Israel with a light, even sugary touch, students at Washington University in St. Louis distributed a "piece for peace."

Cleverly appealing to collegians' hearts through their stomachs, the activists gave out pieces of cake with palm cards describing Israel's quest for peace. While many students took both gifts in the spirit they were intended, some Jews and non-Jews chided the activists for distributing a "one-sided" pamphlet.

In these days of combustible campus politics, this incident should be viewed in perspective. The student activists were not bullied. There was no anti-Semitic name-calling. And yet this criticism was disturbing.

Days later some of the students remained miffed. Trained as good American Jews to be conformist, careerist, and noncontroversial, to get along with others to get ahead, the students internalized the criticism and feared they had behaved badly.

This incident represents an insidious undercurrent in the current assault against Israel and Zionism on campus and elsewhere.

It reflects a phenomenon that Natan Sharansky identified in his jeremiad last fall against academic anti-Zionism. The most disturbing issue Sharansky raised, the problem far more representative than violence at Concordia University and San Francisco State, was the poisonous atmosphere polluting many discussions about Israel, the one-sided, unique expectations Israel activists endure.

Has anyone ever chided feminists for not carving out room in their literature to defend patriarchy? Do gays explain the downside of homosexual marriage during Gay Liberation Awareness Day? Are Palestinian and Muslim activists asked to divert some of their resources toward explaining the Zionist idea?

The casual bigotry of the politically correct imposes unfair burdens on pro-Jewish politics and on Israel itself. It demands Israel and its supporters act unnaturally nobly. It forces Jewish students to apologize for doing what their non-Jewish peers do naturally; it inhibits many pro-Israel professors from standing up, especially if they are untenured.

Many academics have abandoned what should be their intellectual calling cards – nuance, subtlety, an appreciation of complexity. Instead, a simplistic, black-and-white rigidity treats anything pro-Israel as automatically suspect – while demonstrating tremendous flexibility in rationalizing the most heinous Palestinian crimes.

Thus suicide bombers become "resisters"; and Israeli self-defense inevitably becomes "oppression."

Amid such pressure, too many of Israel's allies hide, apologize, or – equally problematic – lurch rightward, creating a false blue-and-white Hava Nagila universe imprudently setting up Israel as the one perfect country in the world.
In the ensuing dialogue of the deaf, political posturing eclipses political thought.

THE CURRENT debate about the security barrier reflects the problem. In a toxic variation of the Fiddler on the Roof horse-mule routine, Palestinians yell "Apartheid Wall," Israel's supporters yell "security fence."

Pro-Israel activists are justifiably furious that effete intellectuals who live in gated communities or Americans who accept the electrified fence with Mexico object to blocking, say, the death valley between Jerusalem and Bethlehem-Bet Jalla, which 10 suicide bombers casually crossed to commit mass murder.

Indeed, the fence – the brainchild of the Left now being implemented by the Right and thus denounced now by the Left – is complicated. It raises important questions worth debating about Israel's approach to land, to Palestinians, to the future. It poses conundrums that Abraham Lincoln and other wartime leaders faced regarding what a democracy can do to defend itself.

Tragically, Israel gets little credit on campus, the UN or elsewhere, for the added expense and risk it incurs worrying about Palestinian quality of life, just as Israel gets no credit for procedures demonstrating respect for women – which a mother of two recently exploited to murder four Israelis at a Gaza crossing.

Some Israelis, naturally, wonder why they should bother and consider jettisoning morality amid the world's unfairness. Most Israelis, know, however, that engaging in self-defense with self-control is not only for their opponents' sake but for their own.

Pro-Israel activists have to learn from Israel. The hostility of the outside world, the casual bigotry of the politically correct, should not stifle debate or shortcircuit our consciences. Israel's supporters need to celebrate Israel flamboyantly, creatively, occasionally calorically, while also finding time for more balanced, nuanced, even painful contemplations.

The prejudices of others should not imprison us in our own prejudices. We need a vigorous discussion assessing the complexity of living in Arafat's and Bin Laden's world of terror. We need to make it clear on campus and elsewhere that we don't fear honest debates and real learning, that trusting democracy and free inquiry demonstrates strength, not weakness.

At the same time, we must also transcend the debate. All conversational roads about Israel, Judaism and Zionism must not lead back to the Palestinians. We have to stop making Yasser Arafat the most effective on-campus recruiter for Jewish identity.

When we make "doing Jewish" being political only, we give the Palestinians a victory they do not deserve. We need our pieces of cake for peace. We need our dollops of wisdom.

And we need a richer, more multi-dimensional vision of Jewish student life that puts all these troubles in perspective.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University and the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today.