I’ve never been to Israel. I’ve never been to Gaza or the West Bank. I am neither Israeli, nor Jewish. I am neither Arab, nor Palestinian.
These names, and the conflicts associated with them, are mere words to me: powerful words inscribed with meaning via speech, writing, and, on some occasions, via satellite. Whatever significance they hold is of an order quite alien to the kind acquired through experience. Whatever authorizes me to speak on the subject does not stem from any authentic intimacy with the subject.
But I know of Israel and its politics; I know of the Palestinians’ struggle for self-determination, and their need of a state. These are histories, conflicts, and injustices that I find wedged within my most inward parts. Inside there, this speech, this writing, these images provoke both feeling and thought that is wholly native, however foreign it may be.
And I suspect that there are a lot of students who share this feeling of intimacy with the subject, however inauthentic and troubled its texture. The prevalence of debate on this campus, like many other campuses across the world, testifies to this fact. Not all of us have been to Israel or the occupied territories, but most of us have a working sketch of what it is, of what it means. Israel-Palestine, in this sense, exists in our discourse right here. And while spatially disconnected, it is no less real.
This week, a lecture series entitled Israeli Apartheid Week is asking all students to ask themselves “Is this the Israel I know?” By using the word apartheid in the context of Israel, it has been labelled by some as radical, racist, even dangerous. By others, Israeli Apartheid Week has been applauded for courageously putting a name to the systemic injustices, and lived experiences of many Palestinians under Israeli civil and military rule.
So which Israel do I know?
After attending several of this week’s lectures, and having participated in the larger debate in various limited capacities for several years of my conscious life, it is clear that there are many Israels. I too have my own. Each one is constructed from differing histories and narratives. Each Israel is built from different facts. Like any product of interpretive work, some Israels are more enlightened than others. Most often, these are delivered by persons who have risked all by asking tough and searching questions-not only of so called opponents, but of the questioner herself. The stakes are too great for us to do anything less.
