JANIP

It Is Time to Complicate the Narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian

March 26th, 2007 Posted by Chris

“How do I discuss the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a way that ackowledges the suffering and oppression faced by both people? How do I not demonize either group?” Similar questions are asked each day by diversity educators on college and university campuses across the United States. Unfortunately, few have been able to answer this important question.As a diversity educator working on a college campus, I have often been frustrated at the narrative around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in American higher education. Undergraduate students at institutions of higher education in the United States are often challenged to understand the ways in which certain groups are privileged and some are discriminated against. In this work, there is often not a nuanced understanding of oppression. Targeted groups are the “victims” who are oppressed and have no power; agents are those with power and are the oppressor. Given that this discourse exists on campus, few educators are equipped to help students understand a conflict in which there are competing claims for self-determination and freedom from oppression.

Jews present an interesting, and complex, situation. Jews, as we know, have been historically oppressed. The Zionist project was clearly a movement of oppressed people to be liberated. Unfortunately, few in diversity education understand it is as such. In addition, Jews in the United States are relatively well off financially and are not being persecuted in the ways in which we have been historically; thus, few diversity educators talk about the ways in which Jews are still targets of antisemitism and tend to minimize anti-Jewish oppression. Many in the academy simply see Jews and Israel as the “oppressor” and not deserving of our understanding of the historic and contemporary forms of anti-Semitism that impact Jews. The models we use in diversity education do not allow a nuanced understanding of power and oppression. As recent surveys show, many Jewish college students are ambivalent about Israel. I believe it is due to the ways in which the conflict is discussed on campus.

Because Jews now have state power, many diversity educators do not know how to discuss the situation using an oppression lens that does not simply say one side is the privileged and one side is the victim. Often my colleagues see Israel as “the oppressor” and the Palestinians as the “oppressed.” We need an analysis that discusses how a traumatized people (European Jews trying to escape antisemitism) came into contact with a colonized people (Palestinian Arabs). Oppression is real; however, the world has become increasingly complex. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict forces us to move past simplistic ways of thinking. In this situation, both groups have a history of oppression, have a right to self-determination and deserve justice. There is no room in our work for Anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia or anti-Jewish oppression. There are no “good guys” and “bad guys.” For instance, many Palestinian Arabs were forced to leave their homes in 1948 and many Jews living in Arab lands were also forced to leave their communities of origin after the founding of the State of Israel.

Also making any discussion of the conflict difficult is the fact that there are many actors others than the two groups that impact the conflict, including the British who colonized Palestine and promised national self-determination to both groups. Moreover, the history of the entire region in relationship to the conflict has become politicized. Scholars attempt to justify their views on the conflict by writing polemics that support one side, such as likening the treatment of Arab/Middle Eastern Jews prior to the 20^th century to the experience of European Jews (on one side) and the minimization of any continuous Jewish presence in Palestine before the Zionists arrived in the late 19^th century (on the other side). This conflict forces my field to become both more complex in its own theorizing and more conscientious in its quest for justice for all people. If not, we easily fall into antisemitic thinking and replicate the forms of oppression we are supposedly trying to eradicate.

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