I wanted to start out by saying what a wonderful job you have been doing so far, especially the Oct. 4 column by Dara Bayer '08 and Chris Shortsleeve '06, "Smoke and mirrors in the Gaza withdrawal." I think your ideas were catchy; your presentation has a sort of nostalgic 70s socialist-utopian pie-in-the-sky vibe - definitely copacetic stuff for anti-racists.
But more on the trope of your platform. I recently combed a list of the worst human rights offenders by the Guardian, which seems to overlap considerably with Amnesty International's laundry list. So here are the countries, from worst to the least worst: Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Algeria, Sierra Leone, Egypt, North Korea, Sudan, Indonesia, Yugoslavia, etc. Then Israel comes in at 31, followed by the Palestinian Authority at 40. Israel is preceded by most of its own neighbors.
You need to downplay this fact and substitute it with a boilerplate clap-trap. Something like, "Zionism = racism." Brown students can't see that conflating Zionism with racism is nonsensical and inflammatory. Besides, your vitriol and pedestrian language is loud enough to drown your impossible content and the sound of reason.
So focus more on your message. Israel has an independent judiciary, a viciously independent media, its own indefatigable human rights consensus, unmatched strict rules of engagement for its army - all while encountering regular suicide bombing attempts. That stuff is bad for your campaign. Somehow you need to obfuscate Israel's virtues while being specifically vague about its crimes. I have two ideas. One, you could wear Che Guevara T-shirts. That could be a good fig leaf. Two, you could confound and shift the focus away from dialogue and just start yelling again.
This time, come up with something so outrageous and untrue that people will be knocked off their feet while you regroup and make more T-shirts. Keep saying, just like Bayer and Shortsleeve incisively pointed out in their column, that Israel is committing genocide. It's a great idea. I mean, to cheapen the spirit and substance of the genocide convention by misusing it to the point of shame sounds promising.
I am taking HI 135: "Modern Genocide and other Crimes Against Humanity" with Professor of History Omer Bartov and I broached the topic of the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. He said that the charge is "absurd," and that there is no evidence to support it. Who needs evidence?
On second thought, maybe you should backpedal from the genocide charge. But you could use the seductive analogy of Israel as an apartheid state. But stop there - if you go into details your case won't be as airtight.
What about the Arabs behind the green line (in Israel proper) that make up one-fifth of Israel's citizenship? Well, for one, they have full voting rights, are active members of the Knesset and have served on the Judiciary (a notion anathema to erstwhile white apartheid exponents) and have equal opportunity for education: 20 percent of Haifa University's student body is Arab.
Of course, no one can argue that there is no discrimination in Israel. Resources are not allocated equally, Arabs cannot serve in the military and some Jews from Ethiopia and other Jewish-national minorities have said that they do not receive the same educational opportunities. Every democracy has minorities that can rightfully make these claims. But the scope and scale of inequality in Israel makes it hardly deserving of our tunnel-vision attention to the exclusion of the 30 countries preceding it on the previously mentioned list. Not that Israel's problems can be excused by looking at the Darfur genocide, for example. It's just a thought.
The situation in the territories is worse than in Israel itself. The prevailing sentiment in Israel is one that advocates an independent Palestinian state. But, Israel also needs security concessions. There is no Israeli schadenfreude regarding checkpoints, restrictions and raids. Nelson Mandela himself said Israel should not withdraw "if Arab states do not recognize Israel within secure borders." So the Apartheid analogy is not only misapplied, but unfair. But who will notice?
I'm most excited about your solution to the problem - the multi-ethnic state. The fact that neither the majority of Israelis or Palestinians would want that is not a concern for the Main Green soapbox. Let's focus on the historical success of the multi-ethnic state. Yugoslavia is noteworthy, for example. We have to figure out how to make people forget that a substantial degree of ethnic violence is because of colonial gerrymandering against the grain of ethnicity.
In fact, your bedrock opposition to colonialism ironically contrasts with your desire to overlay multiple ethnicities, multiple religions, multiple attitudes and multiple hatreds with a single border. But irony is a racist-colonialist idea anyway.
David Beyer '07 feels that vibe.
