The wave of university campus protests over the Israeli attack on Gaza has provoked harsh rhetorical (and sometimes forceful) responses from university officials and law enforcement and even harsher calls for more force from many political leaders. The diffuse confrontation is clearly a product of and contributor to deep polarization. The way in which basic issues are understood (such as when the war started, the aims of various actors, and who is threatening to what or whom) reflects preexisting deep divisions. The slogans of some of the protests reflect the sense that the extent of death and destruction in Gaza lends urgency to the matter; their calls have clearly resonated with broader audiences concerned with social justice and global inequalities. Those who charge the protests with antisemitism or support for terrorism have determined that they can use the polarization to unite their base but divide their opponents.
But that polarization at a national (and sometimes global) level masks two deep developments within specific groups: American Jews, who are deeply fractured, and Palestinians, who are increasingly reliant on international solidarity rather than their own decaying and discredited domestic structures. I can reflect on the first a bit from the inside and the second as a longtime outside observer.
From a distance, the university protests might appear to be a confrontation between Palestinians (and their supporters) with Jews on American college campuses. But the dynamics can look a bit different up close. It is not just that many of those involved in supporting the Palestinian cause are Jewish; it is also that the upsurge of activism reflects a more complex set of divisions within the American Jewish community. And indeed, many individual American Jews feel increasing ambivalence about Israeli policy (sometimes edging into ambivalence about Israel itself) that leaves them feeling confused and torn by the polarized debate.
Today, on one side stands the bulk of the formal leadership of most national Jewish organizations, who came of age as Israel moved to the center of American Jewish identity in the years after the 1967 war. On the other side are many younger Jews who self-identify as progressives and show interest in local and global efforts to promote social justice. The division reflects not only generational but also denominational lines: many Orthodox, for instance, have built strong links not simply to Israel but specifically to the Israeli religious right. The effect of the campus demonstrations and the countereffort to define the demonstrations as antisemitic deepen an already growing division and diminish middle ground among American Jews. The likely result will be an increasing prominence of anti-antisemitism in American Jewish politics, with the implicit message, “If you are Jewish, be afraid. Be very afraid. Especially if you are young and on a college campus, antisemitism, not assimilation, is the threat.” For the substantial number of Jews who eschew the sometimes-radical language of the protests but who are simply not afraid and are indeed troubled by Israeli policy, this message risks alienation from the structures of communal life.
If the campus activism can be seen dividing American Jews, it has a different and somewhat unifying effect among Palestinians watching from thousands of miles away. What is happening on American campuses (and a limited number of European ones) has caught the attention of those in the West Bank and Gaza, who see it as a hopeful sign that the world is not ignoring them. And for some Palestinians it offers an often inchoate but also real alternative to the factional politics that has disillusioned many. In a visit to the West Bank this past summer—before the Gaza war—I received the impression that most residents (and almost all younger ones) felt despair and alienation from what seemed to them to be an aged, feckless, and irrelevant leadership. (When I would suggest that the problem might be that “Palestinians have officials but no leaders,” I generally received knowing nods and never heard disagreement.) Of course, Hamas offers an alternative of sorts, but even many who observe that the movement has placed Palestine back on the international agenda acknowledge it offers slogans and boldness but no viable strategy.—but
Over nearly a generation, my research has revealed a gradual but clear trend: Palestinians and their international supporters have left behind the idea of building the structures of a state of Palestine (at least for the present) and instead are turning toward popular mobilization for a less defined goal of liberation from occupation. That should be no surprise, given the failure of the Oslo process of the 1990s and a sense (now two decades old) that Palestinians live in a “one state reality” of Israeli control. This shift may be gaining global traction in this environment. The idea that there is a loose network of international activism, and that the world is listening to their plight, can be politically energizing for a rising generation of Palestinians who have generally known only despair for much of their lives. Their challenge has always been to translate informal networks and bursts of imagination and energy into a sustainable movement that can strategize and prioritize.
On a personal level, I confess a distaste for the kind of politics that emerges from this polarization in the Jewish community, the United States, and the world. As an academic, I find it a bit frustrating to see issues on which I am used to exploring over a chapter or a book reduced quite literally to slogans to be chanted. I prefer quieter discussions that can still occur (if generally behind closed doors). But I am cautiously optimistic that, despite my dismay at the terms of the debate, the effects of this polarizing moment can actually be salutary for the two communities noted above—American Jews and Palestinians.
While most of the rhetoric of the campus demonstrations is shrill and little is attached to any viable program, it is not inherently dangerous (with some notable exceptions). I am far more fearful for the future when I see politicians come to my home campus to protect me from the protests’ alleged antisemitism on the same day that their colleagues cite the Bible as holding Jews responsible for killing Jesus, when I hear members of Congress lecture university administrators that “intifada” means “genocide” while their colleagues appear to call for use of nuclear weapons against Palestinians, execution of every member of Hamas, and leaving Gaza looking like Berlin and Tokyo (where hundreds of thousands were killed in the last year of World War II).
The campus demonstrations polarize society today, but they may force American Jewish leaders to find an approach that does not drive so much of the younger generation (and the occasional oldster) away. And the Palestinian struggle that is played out in international lawfare, partisan sloganeering, and noisy, even obnoxious, but still peaceful campus demonstrations can be a positive step if only it can be forged into an alternative to the current slaughter in Gaza.
