Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons: Mark Wathieu
My fellow Emory students, I must admit that I am nervous today. From my email inbox to my Yik Yak feed, I hear the distant drums of war. Smoke rises over the horizon, and I am nervous.
Some students on our campus have chosen to erect a wall in protest of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. This is their right. Other students on our campus have chosen to vocally declare their support of Israel with a social media campaign. This, too, is their right. And though the week is only starting, I see the debates about to unfold, as they did last fall.
Or rather, I do not see debates at all. I am not nervous for the conversations on campus this week, but for the silence I will hear as Emory Students for Justice in Palestine (ESJP) refuses to talk to Emory Students for Israel (ESI) for fear of normalizing the conflict, and as ESI refuses to talk to ESJP for fear of legitimizing their critique.
It is the same silence I will hear between friends who walk past ESJP’s wall, between classmates who dare to bring it up in lectures. The silence is what bothers me.
And it should bother you. Emory students are a vocal bunch. We speak up when we see injustice in our communities and willingly unite to support each other.
The rallying among students on campus around Ferguson and the Alpha Epsilon Pi incident proved just that. We are not afraid of hard questions, of social action or of thoughtful debate. So why then on this issue are we silent?
Perhaps we are afraid of angering our Jewish friends, of alienating ourselves from a perceived majority opinion. Or maybe we are scared of seeming close-minded and conservative, of failing to identify with an oppressed people. But these binaries are false, constructed by the very silence we perpetuate. Somewhere between “Ask me why I love Israel” and “apartheid” lies a conversation, a conversation that we as a community need to have, one that is long, long overdue.
Let me begin: I love Israel, but she is not a perfect place. I do not love checkpoints, settlements, the imprisonment of children. I stand with Israel, but I do not stand for a wall that cuts through orchards owned by generations of Palestinians, that separates families and neighborhoods. I don’t love Bibi or his coalition. I don’t love chocolate milk in a bag.
These ideas do not make me anti-Semitic; they don’t even make me anti-Zionist. I need not agree with the terminology of apartheid to find the Separation Wall problematic, to know that a sustainable peaceful future for the State of Israel lies in the end of the occupation.
I do recognize and support Israel’s right to exist, right to defend herself from Gazan rockets and suicide bombers, right to make and enforce laws within her borders. I do no support boycotts, divestment or sanctions as tools to combat occupation. I do not support the silencing of Israeli academics for their government’s actions.
These are my personal views, and you do not have to agree with them. In fact, maybe it is better if you disagree. Because discourse, discussion and debate themselves are integral not just to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but in bridging the widening gap between sides in our community.
As long as we entrench ourselves in the black and white of an infinitely grey situation and confine ourselves to equally flawed and partisan narratives, we fracture our community and the power of that community to affect change.
For silence, not debate, is the enemy of peace. Discussion breeds ideas, and ideas breed change. What then could be the objective of the silence so ubiquitous on campus?
Over 7,000 undergraduates eat at the DUC, spend Saturday nights in the library, wait for Dooley to let out class and complain about our lack of snow days.
Those 7,000 students could be engaged in conversations around injustice, sovereignty, freedom, in solutions even. But instead we have silenced the voices of those with whom we disagree, and silence is hardly our natural state.
Our community is made up of thoughtful, involved, critical-thinking individuals, and we can do much, much better than silence. So let’s open the conversation up to those we agree with and to those we don’t. And somewhere in the arguing and the critiquing, we might just find the community we lost, and the power to rebuild it.
Leah Michalove is a College junior from Atlanta, Georgia.
Good luck, Leah. Disputing lies is a full-time job.
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http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/david-suissa/at-ucla-the-power-of-negative-emotions/
Good for you, Leah. The first step is dialogue in order to promote understanding and recognition that we share this small blue sphere together. Do not be sarcastically cowered by people like Arafat.
http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/
Arafat is a well known Disqus poster who trolls against minority
groups like Muslims and their religion. His diatribes are clearly driven
in the hope hat some nutjob will act on his hateful narrative.
For a preview of what will follow:
1) Arafat will insult those who refute his narrative by invoking that they are “tards”, “liberals”, “apologists” and the like
2) Arafat will state his narrative as “fact” and all others as “opinion”
3) Arafat will randomly toss in derogatory remarks, quotes and snippits
about Islam that show his level of understanding and interpretation is
the same as extremists, which is to say, simply ignorant and invalid
4) Arafat will quote random historical figures who malign Muslims and
Islam, as a “proof”, while failing to recognize many figures have said
hateful things about people throughout history, including Jews, blacks,
gays, Hispanics, Catholics, etc, etc
5) Arafat will dodge every discussion point by posting tangential responses
6) Arafat fails to adhere to honest dialogue and is an ideologue promoting a hateful narrative
7) Arafat will employ false equivalency and retreat after having sufficiently warped a Disqus threat to allow him to post his hate
8) Arafat will accuse opponents of the tactics he demonstrates repeatedly
Good for you, Leah. The first step is dialogue in order to promote understanding and recognition that we share this small blue sphere together. Do not be sarcastically cowered by people like Arafat.
http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/
Arafat is a well known Disqus poster who trolls against minority
groups like Muslims and their religion. His diatribes are clearly driven
in the hope hat some nutjob will act on his hateful narrative.
For a preview of what will follow:
1) Arafat will insult those who refute his narrative by invoking that they are “tards”, “liberals”, “apologists” and the like
2) Arafat will state his narrative as “fact” and all others as “opinion”
3) Arafat will randomly toss in derogatory remarks, quotes and snippits
about Islam that show his level of understanding and interpretation is
the same as extremists, which is to say, simply ignorant and invalid
4) Arafat will quote random historical figures who malign Muslims and
Islam, as a “proof”, while failing to recognize many figures have said
hateful things about people throughout history, including Jews, blacks,
gays, Hispanics, Catholics, etc, etc
5) Arafat will dodge every discussion point by posting tangential responses
6) Arafat fails to adhere to honest dialogue and is an ideologue promoting a hateful narrative
7) Arafat will employ false equivalency and retreat after having sufficiently warped a Disqus threat to allow him to post his hate
8) Arafat will accuse opponents of the tactics he demonstrates repeatedly
Out of curiosity Leah if Israel occupies Palestine why when was this Palestine every an state in the history of the world.
After all in 1967 when Judea and Samaria were captured by Israel they were controlled by Jordan. There was no state of Palestine their then. The only reason no Jews lived in that territory is that Jordan ethnically cleansed them in 1948. Do you support ethnic cleansing of Jews.
You accuse Israel of imprisoning children. Of course in the real world the only children Israel imprisons are those who commit crimes. A pretty normal action in the entire world. Do you advocate that if a 16 year old tries to commit murder they shouldn’t be arrested anywhere in the world. If you were raped by a 17 years old (a minor, legally a child) would you demand the police not arrest him? I doubt it.
Do you know why there is a wall in Israel? Would you prefer to allow terrorists to kill people. Perhaps they way to allow Israel to take down that hated wall would be for the world to stop supporting the terrorists Israel built it to keep out. There was no need to the wall until Oslo legitimized the terrorist PLO and its sister group Hamas. Do you advocate Israel destroying these terror groups so we can have coexistence.
Ask yourself why the people so worried about Israeli apartheid fail to notice an Israeli Arab Supreme Court Justice is in charge of Israel’s upcoming elections. Meanwhile in Muslim Saudi Arabia no public prayer is allowed by any non Muslim. Mecca and Medina remain off limits to any non Muslim yet they accuse Israel not Saudi Arabia of apartheid?
Ever ask why they don’t worry about Apartheid Saudi Arabia.
Will any Emory students put up a wall worried about the slaughter of non Muslims by Boko Haram matter? Are the lives of the Africans killed unimportant because they are black or because they are killed by Muslims?
About 300,000 dead in Syria now. Any wall at Emory about that? Or do Arab lives only matter when we can blame the Jews?
Here is an interesting question, if the Arabs won the war in 1967 would a single Jew have been left alive there? We can see the answer is no in the 1948 war where the parts of mandatory Palestine captured by Arab armies were left Judenrien Jew Free.
Now a second question if the Arabs won in 1967 would they have established a Palestine. Again we can look to 1948 and notice how they didn’t have any interest in setting up a Palestinian state in those parts of mandatory Palestine they illegally occupied in that war.
So we can see this isn’t about Palestine or “the occupation” rather its about killing Jews. What Emory is asking if that Jewish students be forced to endure racism Jew Hatred every time they enter the DUC.
Would Emory allow any other minority to be demonized on campus? Why then does Emory accept Jew Hatred?