Israel-Palestine Conflict Polarizing Tension

By Julian Duberstein ‘23
Just this December, New York University’s Review of Law and Social Change pledged to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against academic acknowledgement of Israel in “solidarity with [Palestinian]... liberation.” Is this really a practical and well thought out development considering the school’s campus in Tel Aviv?

Liberal intersectionality, as displayed through these college students’ conflation of Israeli institutions with Palestinian oppression, has exacerbated proponents of BDS beyond the movement’s initial values to extremism. Its evolution has reached a status quo of indiscriminate condemnation of Israel among progressive campuses, demonstrating a severe and obvious lack of distinction between valid criticism and dogma.
A self-defeating disservice, this mobilization only serves to perpetuate Palestinian suffering through antagonization rather than promoting peace. 
BDS’ guilt in dangerous partisanship doesn’t absolve the Zionist fault in willful exclusion of conflicting viewpoints. Both parties demonize and censure the other to procure a stigmatizing environment where communication between the two groups is made taboo, even prohibited. In 2010, Jewish campus organization Hillel International instituted its “Standards of Partnership” policies, banning any collaboration with groups or speakers that “deny Israel’s right to exist,” including BDS. 
According to the Harvard Political Review, after Muhlenberg Hillel had banned its participants from inviting activists who support BDS, student president Caroline Dorn resigned to protest the ruling, writing: “I can’t be a representative of Hillel International, an organization that I feel is limiting free speech on our campus and prohibiting academic integrity.” Swarthmore Hillel went as far as to break off from the organization entirely. 
The sole purpose of college campuses is to facilitate and further academic dialogue, and this mutual resistance against the exchange of differing ideas simply regurgitates their exclusive agendas within their own circles; reactionary and popular “activism,” at best, answered by ostracism and utter disregard will only foster sectional hatred rather than initiate meaningful discourse or change. 
 As a politically active high school student, I feel that liberalism is extremely central to my identity. 80% of American Jews identify as politically liberal, yet we as a people still find ourselves in a losing battle in progressive spheres, even beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 
This polarization has developed past the point of advocating for one’s own belief, to the extent of near-proselytization, where progressive Jews are targeted to feel as though they, too, are morally responsible for the proclaimed murder of innocent Palestinians. 
Jay Alder, an English professor at Queens College, reported that he, along with his fellow left-leaning peers, have witnessed the rise of “antisemitism in the guise of anti-Zionism.” 
In the wake of the City University of New York Law School’s student government recently endorsing BDS via resolution, he said, “this new focus [from BDS] on Jews, Jewish organizations, student organizations, cultural organizations like Hillel,” makes those in agreement with the Jewish people’s right to self-determination “complicit in these fraudulent claims of genocide.” 
Having first-hand experience in Israel flipped my perspective on the issue entirely. Like many, prior to seeing it with my own eyes, my lack of exposure and understanding of both the conflict and everyday Israeli life mistakenly informed my stance— certainly leaning farther anti-Israel than pro, despite attending a Jewish private school. 
More than anything else, I felt on a visceral level the vulnerability known too well by Israeli citizens as we watched missiles fall on our TV screen less than an hour away from our hostel just two years ago. Americans forget the privilege of the guaranteed safety of their homes, routinely interjecting their own misplaced opinions into an entirely unrelatable, nuanced foreign conflict that is a daily fear for all parties actually involved. 
Undeniably, a domestic consensus must be reached for the betterment of all; open communication and consciously humanizing each other’s opponents are paramount. 
My experience at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying organization, also exposed me to a shocking spectrum of viewpoints from both the speakers and my fellow attendees. AIPAC provided an unrestricted platform for Israel advocates from both sides of the aisle to utilize common ground for mutual benefit, despite its concurrence with one of the most divisive elections in modern history. At no other conference would I, then a high school freshman, ever have expected to hear from NJ Senator Cory Booker, former Vice-President Mike Pence and the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
We as the next generation would vastly benefit from this open system of discourse being encouraged, as opposed to the hyperpolarized climate we are all too familiar with today. Just as AIPAC provided a platform which both mobilized youth and fostered communication between groups of dissenting opinion, we must move forward and take it upon ourselves to participate in genuine, informed discussions if we truly want change. Rather than continue exhausted political echo chambers, we must pursue progress beyond superficial barriers.
As political writer Kurt Andersen said, “If partisanship makes us abandon intellectual honesty, if we oppose what our opponents do simply because they are the ones saying or doing it, we become mere political short-sellers, hoping for bad news because it’s good for our investment.”