Two op-eds caught my eye over the weekend. They got me wondering where the middle ground is between belligerently attacking anti-Israel sentiments and ignoring them while spewing lovely factoids about Israel.
In one op-ed, the founders of the David Project take issue with their organization’s new direction, arguing — as summed up in the headline — that “Being ‘Pro-Israel’ Isn’t Enough.” In the other, a group of students at Harvard skirt the issue of the One-State Conference held at their school over the weekend, opting instead to discuss Israel’s essential mission. The first one argues for the classic belligerent approach to addressing anti-Israel elements on campus, while the other addresses them by not actually addressing them.
In The Forward, David Project founders Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser admit that their former organization’s new “white paper” gets a lot right. But they also say the strategy outlined in the report has it all wrong:
Clearly, the problem as described by The David Project white paper requires a rethinking by Jewish leadership.
It is important to see, however, that education Jewish students about Israel, The David Project’s main prescription, though absolutely essential, is insufficient.
I’m not sure if Jacobs and Goldwasser got the point of the report. While it does advocate educating Jewish students about Israel, the novelty of the David Project’s new strategy is that it calls on pro-Israel students to influence the influential. They are to seek out influential members of their campus communities and attempt to influence their thinking about Israel.
After ignoring the report’s main suggestion, they go on to outline a few strategies of their own. Make no mistake, though; their strategies are nothing new. They are the same strategies that once led the David Project down a path so needlessly aggressive that Hillel wouldn’t work with them for a time.
They suggest that the David Project “Increase public awareness of the problem.” But interview with current David Project head David Bernstein reveal their intention to do the exact opposite. Bernstein has said that anti-Israel groups often aren’t organized enough to get press on their own and that noisy attempts to counter them only raise their profile.
They also suggest that “We need to address the growing influence of the radical Muslim Students Association,” ignoring the fruitful, mutually beneficial relationships that many local MSA and Hillel chapters enjoy. As if that suggestion didn’t paint Muslims with a broad enough brush, their next move is this wholly offensive suggestion:
Many Muslim student come from cultures steeped in anti-Semitism; they should be required to attend sensitivity training about Judaism and about American values of tolerance.
Or perhaps Jacobs and Goldwasser should “attend sensitivity training about” Islam “and about American values of tolerance.” While we’re at it, let’s require members of every ethnic and religious group with a history of animosity toward another group to attend sensitivity training before we allow them to enroll in American universities!
Are these guys for real?
Meanwhile, an op-ed in The Harvard Crimson by Anna V. Gommerstadt, Rachel E. Zax and occasional New Voices contributor Yair Rosenberg argues perfectly reasonably that Israel does some good things for the Jews. But let’s examine the timing of the piece, which was published on Friday.
The op-ed argues that, while it’s easy to see the world as a Jew-friendly place from within the insular comfort of Harvard, there is plenty to worry about. To make their point, they cite a litany of recent anti-Semitic incidents around the world. They finish with this:
As an early ardent American Zionist once put it, Israel would be “a home for the homeless, a goal for the wanderer, an asylum for the persecuted.” That Zionist was Emma Lazarus, who also wrote the words inscribed upon our Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” What America has been to the world, Israel is to the Jews. Let us never forget that, even in the comfortable confines of our Harvard campus.
Indeed. But why publish this op-ed last week? For that, let’s turn to a news report from today’s Crimson:
Despite protests from within and outside of the University calling for the administration to cancel the One-State conference at the Harvard Kennedy School this weekend, panelists at the sold-out conference fired back at critics and advocated for the consideration of alternative solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ah.
All of which is to say that I am increasingly despondent about the possibility of finding a middle ground.
There is the belligerent approach Goldwasser and Jacobs in one corner. They would have Jewish students fighting tooth and nail, tussling with their opponents by acting just as deplorably as the anti-Israel crowd does at its worst.
In the other corner, there is this strategy of combating anti-Israel sentiments by ignoring them, opting instead to flood the world mentions of every good thing Israel has ever done.
Where is the middle ground?
