Last week I blogged about an opportunity to connect to the Jewish community outside of my school. This week I’m switching gears completely to write about a great opportunity I had right here on campus–hearing Yossi Klein Halevi speak.
Halevi is a contributing editor of the New Republic and occasionally writes for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Though he was born in New York, he now lives in Israel with his family. He is somewhat of an expert on Israel and its issues–though I didn’t realize this until I heard him speak.
The talk that Halevi gave (which was sponsored by our “Wildcats for Israel” campus group) was titled “Facing the Iranian Threat,” but it turned out to be about much more than that. Halevi talked about Israel itself and a bit of its recent history–the First and Second Intifada, the rockets, the withdrawal from and the war in Gaza, the Goldstone Report, and so on.
I found that Halevi had a unique, refreshingly moderate perspective. He definitely didn’t just blast the typical liberal or conservative viewpoints. He passionately supports the two-state solution, yet he supports Israel’s decision to retaliate against the rocket attacks from Gaza last winter.
The most interesting thing he said, though, involved his characterization of the typical Israeli political viewpoint. He said, “Most of us are in the confused middle.” Not the radical left, not the radical right, but the middle. He said that Israeli centrism, unlike perhaps American centrism, means being caught between two equally passionate but opposite opinions. For example, almost all Israelis strongly support the two-state solution. But at the same time, almost all of them fear it and worry that it will destroy the country they worked hard to build. This combination of a liberal approach and a conservative one makes up many Israelis’ points of view, according to Halevi.
I definitely agree because I feel the same way. As an Israeli, I know that embracing a two-state solution is the best thing for both us and the Palestinians. However, seeing what happens every time Israel gives up land to Palestinian solidarity–the rocket attacks, the suicide bombings–how can I still support it?
Truth is, I really don’t know. My underdeveloped (and probably not very helpful) opinion is that we just keep doing everything we can to promote peace.
Halevi touched on other topics, as well, such as anti-Semitism and, of course, Iran. He believes that a nuclear Iran is Israel’s worst nightmare because a regime that supports Holocaust denial and large-scale oppression of its own people should not be trusted with nuclear weapons. I agree. I don’t know if Iran would ever actually use nuclear weapons or not–I’m no foreign policy expert–but nukes can be a powerful diplomacy tool, and Israel already has enough on its plate to worry about.
Mostly I was relieved to find that the pro-Israel viewpoint still has a voice on this campus. I mean, this isn’t exactly UC Irvine, but any college campus isn’t really the friendliest place for an Israeli these days. Being in a roomful of people who support my homeland and want to become more educated about the problems facing it was refreshing. I’m looking forward to more of these events.
