Coalition a step in right direction for Arabs, Jews

  Michael Weiner Weiner is a fourth-year
history and political science student. His column analyzing issues
of interest to the UCLA community runs on Mondays. E-mail mweiner@media.

When Jewish and Arab student groups launched the UCLA Coalition
for Coexistence in the Middle East with a “peace tent”
on Bruin Walk last week, the most striking aspect of the event was
the visual.

The notion of Israeli and Palestinian flags flying side by side
would be unthinkable almost anywhere in the world. This is
especially true of American college campuses, which sadly have
become forums for some of the coarsest public expressions of
Arab-Jewish antipathy in the United States today. But there they
were: symbols that have exacted such passionate responses from two
peoples in bitter conflict, quietly displayed next to each
other.

Organizers of the coalition ““ which germinated during a
sociology course taught last quarter titled “Voices of Peace:
Perspectives on Confrontation and Reconciliation in the
Arab-Israeli Conflict” ““ understand that the conflict
isn’t going to be solved at UCLA. But they hope they can
provide a forum for respectful and serious dialogue between the
opposing sides.

If they succeed in sustaining the coalition, whose main
components are the United Arab Society, Jewish Student Union and
Hillel Jewish Students Center, it will be a first for UCLA, and
perhaps for any university in the country. And it will provide a
dignified contrast to the noise pollution that passes for dialogue
on the issue on most college campuses.

Until recently, UCLA was no exception.

It has become an annual tradition for members of the Muslim
Students Association to parlay their legitimate anger over
Israel’s continued oppression of Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip into a counterproductive display of
self-important rabble-rousing that sometimes verges on xenophobia
and ethnocentrism.

The most salient example of such took place at an MSA-sponsored
“anti-Zionism” program two years ago when an invited
speaker accused Jews of harboring undue influence on the NAACP
during the 1960s, a claim that hearkens to traditional Jewish
stereotypes and has little to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Similarly hateful rhetoric was used during an anti-Israel protest
at UC Berkeley last week.

This year, MSA’s silent protest at Thursday’s
Israeli Independence Day celebration remained dignified, though the
group has not joined the coalition.

For many students, the conflict has had a polarizing effect,
such that normally reasonable people retreat to positions of
conventional ethnic solidarity whenever they are asked about the
issue. The coalition seeks to create a safe space in which
individuals, including those with no preexisting bias, can discuss
the complex problems at hand and come to their own conclusions,
free of the defensiveness that is cultivated by extremism.

While previous events were clearly on the minds of the
coalition’s founders, they downplay the influence of campus
politics in their decision to start the group. In fact, they were
prompted most by the recent devolution of the peace process, which
has resulted in some of the worst violence in years.

The coalition wants to counteract the idea that the conflict is
primordial, rooted so deeply in history that both peoples are
somehow destined to fight with each other for eternity. This is a
widely held misconception, pandered to quite effectively by campus
groups that seek to promote extremism and tunnel-vision rather than
dialogue and reconciliation.

To label the Arab-Israeli conflict “complex” is to
make a grand understatement. I would not attempt to put forward a
coherent position on it in this column. But I want to make clear
that the it isn’t the result of some divine ploy that dooms
Jews and Arabs to combat each other forever.

This is a modern political conflict, borne of extremely
complicated social, historical, cultural and religious factors. As
we have seen with tragic poignancy over the past seven months, it
will not be solved once and for all by a “cold peace,”
but with a historic reconciliation between the two peoples.
Clearly, we are years away from such a turn of events.

Nonetheless, there is no reason for young Arab and Jewish
Americans to act out the conflict at our universities. Better that
we talk about it, feel each other out and try to see things from
the perspective of the other side. That is exactly what the
coalition aims for, and it deserves to be supported by all students
who believe that true peace cannot be dictated from the top down,
but must gain a foothold in the instruments of civil society.

In the interest of full disclosure, I want readers to know that
I am not a detached observer on this issue. I am Jewish and I
consider myself a Zionist. I also believe that many of the policies
and actions of the State of Israel over the last half century have
not been in line with the best principles of Judaism or
Zionism.

It took a long time for me to admit that to myself. It is my
sincere hope that the coalition will help other students do away
with their own prejudices and understand the Arab-Israeli conflict
for what it is ““ a tragedy that both peoples deserve to be
rid of.