Published: 25 February 2021
Last updated: 4 March 2024
“WHERE EXACTLY DO YOU WORK?” my future father-in-law asked his son, my boyfriend, with typical British understated concern. It was the morning of July 27, 1994, and he had just heard there had been an explosion overnight at Balfour House, where my boyfriend and a number of London-based Jewish organisations were headquartered.
It shouldn’t have been shocking, but suddenly it all felt close to home. Just a few hours earlier, 20 people had been injured in a car bomb attack at the Israeli embassy in London and only a week before, a suicide bombing at the Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires killed 85 people and injured hundreds.
More shocking was that my future husband knew one of the Palestinians involved in helping the London bombers. They’d met as student activists at the University of Manchester.
When my husband and I first met we traded stories from our days as student leaders on two notoriously anti-Israel campuses, University of California, Berkeley and Manchester.
My son will soon start university at what is considered another anti-Israel campus, this time in Australia. He comes from a relatively sheltered Jewish school background and I am not sure he knows what is going to hit him.
I learned a lot in my undergraduate classes but I probably learned as much on campus as a Jewish activist; whether it was advocating for kosher Passover meals for students at Hillel as Jewish Student Union president or creating political coalitions to successfully stop a student council resolution to ban Coca Cola on campus as part of a boycott of all companies doing business in Israel.
Berkeley has a history of student activism going back to the 60s and was one of the leading voices of the anti-Vietnam campaign. There was, literally, a protest every day. One day there would be huge replicas of a marijuana joint calling for the legalisation of cannabis, the next there would be a confronting number of students in body bags representing the casualties of the Gulf War.
Another day there would be calls to change the name of a building from Eshelman to “Eshelperson” Hall. And every day there was the naked guy, protesting about something else, who wore only a backpack.
I spent many lunchtimes manning booths, defending Israel against pro-Palestinian activists and answering questions about Israel’s policies. Some students were genuinely curious but many others were hostile and sometimes aggressive.
I also spent a fascinating summer interning in Washington DC for the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC. I loved it so much I went back the next year to intern for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
So why this trip down memory lane? My son will soon start university at what is considered another anti-Israel campus, this time in Australia. He comes from a relatively sheltered Jewish school background and I am not sure he knows what is going to hit him.
Universities are the pinnacle of higher education but too often they breed a base and unconstructive communication, particularly when it comes to the Israel/Palestine conflict.
There is increasingly less space for knowledge and room only for people’s limited version of the “truth”. If you don’t want to hear a speaker because you disagree with their views, that’s fine. It doesn’t mean you need to shout them down so no one can hear what they say.
Instead of expanding young people’s horizons, this behaviour forces them to choose sides that tread water rather than making change or leading to meaningful dialogue.
A black and white version of the world doesn’t reflect the complex greys of the Middle East. One side is not always right. It is important to find ways to disagree with other people without negating their right to exist.
This black and white version of the world doesn’t reflect the complex greys of the Middle East. One side is not always right. It is important to find ways to disagree with other people without negating their right to exist.
One of the London bombers was a former chair of the Palestinian Society at Leicester University, where he was censored for threatening to kill Jewish students.
At a certain point you need to move beyond tit-for-tat behaviour, to stop it leading to the same bad results. I hope my son doesn’t waste his time having meaningless, highly charged and upsetting arguments with other students that change no one’s opinions.
Instead, I hope today’s university students, who are lucky to be on campus this year, can explore their identities in a constructive way.
I hope my son can be proud of who he is and expand his thinking as well as his friendship circles. I hope he finds Palestinian and Muslim students who he disagrees with, but that they are able to listen to and respect - rather than threaten each other.
Illustration: John Kron
