This is excellent. A Jewish reporter at the Michigan Daily has penned a piece for the Forward on last week’s failed University of Michigan divestment resolution, relating what a wrenching episode it has been in the life of the Ann Arbor campus. Yardain Amron concludes that the proponents of divestment may have won in losing: that 1000s of students were engaged in substantive discussion of the conflict; and the coalition for divestment, despite all the fearful characterizations, is multi-ethnic and non-violent.
What I was witnessing was the first true campus-wide discussion of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its alleged violations of Palestinian human rights. And it was a discussion that had grown to involve hundreds, and maybe thousands, of students.
And by the way, the divestment resolution was absolutely consistent with some liberal Zionist boycott calls: it asked for a university investigation of the practices of four companies that serve the occupation. Fear, hysteria and Islamophobia crowded out that simple message. (I’ve watched a lot of the livestream below; and I conclude that the fact that pro-divestment students wore keffiyehs and hijabs was perceived as threatening).
Excerpts of Amron’s piece. First, some non-hysteria:
E. Royster Harper, UM’s vice president for student life, emerged from a meeting with SAFE [Students Allied for Freedom and Equality] students at their sit-in site, and told The Michigan Daily, the campus newspaper, that he was “a little surprised that people have been talking about this as a violent movement; it’s just not the case. It has been just what you would expect from smart U of M students that are passionate about an important issue.”
Wonderful. Just what law professor Katherine Franke explained last week: how incendiary debates were over feminism and pornography in the ’80s.
Amron visits SAFE, and interviews a Jewish student:
Inside, about 20 students — a majority Palestinian, but with other races and ethnicities clearly represented — chatted casually about Rihanna and Beyonce, and passed around a hand drum.
Freshman Sarah Bloom, a Jewish student and SAFE supporter, happened to be an Arabic language classmate of mine. She talked about growing up in the Reform movement and attending Hebrew school at her synagogue every Sunday.
“I never questioned who the Palestinians were or what they advocated for,” she said. “I always saw them as the enemy, the terrorist. That’s how I was brought up to think, and I think that’s terrible.”
As her views on the issue evolved, said Bloom, she initially found it difficult to talk about with Jewish friends.
“It’s kind of a coming out process for people who don’t know your views,” she said. “This is such a strong issue on campus and creates very hostile feelings, I think unfortunately that’s the reality. But at the same time, I think that’s what can instigate change — the more people speak out — and a Jewish voice is very helpful with that.”
Later that evening, as we waited in line to enter the ballroom where the SAFE proposal would be reconsidered, sophomore Jonathan Friedman, a pro-Israel activist, said the group’s resolution effectively threw away any chance at dialogue….
Some helpful reporting on the actual process, watched around the nation:
By the time the CSG [Central Student Government] actually voted it was 1:30 a.m. When they voted on the actual SAFE resolution, the panel chose to do so by secret ballot, despite their status as elected representatives, accountable to the student body. Many cited the hostility they had experienced over the previous week and the thousands of strangers from around the country then tuned in over the internet as their justification…
Amron tells us about the resolution, and quotes JVP’s Barbara Harvey:
The resolution itself called for the university to investigate its investment portfolio and divest from companies whose sales to Israel allegedly tied the firms to human rights violations against the Palestinians. SAFE identified United Technologies, General Electric, Heidelberg Cement, and Caterpillar as among these companies. The result was one SAFE expected. But Barbara Harvey, a co-founder of the Jewish Voice for Peace’s chapter in Detroit, said the night was a huge victory.
“This was the first significant exposure [this campus] has had to the Palestinian narrative,” enthused Harvey, whose group supports the divestment drive.
The livestream of the nearly 6 hour debate:
from the article, i wonder if this is a reflexion of the student body:
and this again:
then she’s not qualified to be president of the organization. this response by rote, repeated endlessly by pro israel student activists is stale.
There is no political discussion, demonstration, push-and-pull on a contentious topic that does not make someone feel uncomfortable. Therefore, unless political expression is to be outlawed, the argument that some people feel uncomfortable must be rejected as a justification for shutting down the discussion.
The idea that some people are being attacked as Jews, or that some Jews feel uncomfortable is sad but also not a basis for shutting down discussion. (I assume that there is not, in fact, any physical attack on Jews or anyone else.) Zionists are being told that they backed the wrong horse, so of course they have a lot of emotion tied up in Zionism and feel uncomfortable to be told they are wrong. They are being told they are immoral when they’ve spent a lifetime being told and believing that they were super-moral. Very uncomfortable. They are not hard of hearing; they are hard of listening. They must learn to listen.
As a point of reference, Palestinians have been told for a long time (in words but especially in Israeli actions) that they have no human rights, no property rights, and no national rights in Palestine. I don’t recall anyone saying that praise of Israel on university campuses must be “shut down” to spare Palestinians the discomfort of being reminded of this. Will anyone say that there has been no solidarity with Israel on these college campuses? So if discomfort for Palestinians is OK, why not discomfort for Zionists?
One passage in the article I thought was very insightful, not just about Michigan, but in general–
”
This underlined an important distinction between even the moderate pro-Israel students and the pro-Palestinian activists. The emphasis of the former was, for the most part, on “dialogue,” a goal many upheld as inherently valuable.
The SAFE students voiced interest in dialogue, too. But they had another goal that seemed to them equally, if not more important: helping in a concrete way, with the means they saw at hand, to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its perceived violations of Palestinian human rights. Their contribution from distant Ann Arbor, Mich. might not be much. But it was pressure, not just discussion that they sought to generate.”
I think that nails it. A great many liberal Zionists are about dialogue, endless dialogue and while I think that’s good as far as it goes, that’s about all they want. At their best they don’t favor oppression of the Palestinians, but this sort also doesn’t want Israel to be pressured in any way. Just talk, talk, and more talk, and then maybe have some discussion about the talk. And nothing changes, because the harder line Zionists just keep right on with the occupation. Why shouldn’t they? It’s not that the better sort of liberal Zionist wants the Palestinians to be unhappy–they just don’t want anything done that would make any Israeli Jew (or American Jew, for that matter) uncomfortable. And “uncomfortable” even extends to feelings–so, for instance, boycotts are bad because they remind some Jews of Nazi Germany. Our now banned friend RW was like this. So the situation has to remain as it is until most Israelis are persuaded by “dialogue” to change it. If that takes another 70 years, so be it.
RE: “Freshman Sarah Bloom, a Jewish student and SAFE supporter, happened to be an Arabic language classmate of mine. She talked about growing up in the Reform movement and attending Hebrew school at her synagogue every Sunday. ‘I never questioned who the Palestinians were or what they advocated for’, she said. ‘I always saw them as the enemy, the terrorist. That’s how I was brought up to think, and I think that’s terrible’.” ~ Yardain Amron
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It’s a shame that the Forward is not a mainstream media outlet. Elsewhere on Mondoweiss there is discussion based on the fear of a kind of blowback against Jews as a group as more people become aware of Israel’s apartheid. Reporting by the Forward about Jewish opponents of Israel’s policy gives a defense against such a blowback. How ironic that individuals like Sarah Bloom and organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and not AIPAC or J Street, including their media minions, will be recognized as the defender of America’s Jews.