During my recent semester abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, I met many foreign exchange students who felt a responsibility to place themselves in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In all fairness, many — if not most — of these students had vested interests in how the conflict would play out; many are Jewish students who view Israel as being significant to their identity, or are part of the Palestinian or Israeli diaspora and are continually affected by the conflict over their homelands. Others are students of the three large monotheistic faiths — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — who share a concern for the continuity and governance of their holy sites found in the region. Finally, some students claim Israeli citizenship due to birthright or the Jewish Law of Return, which often results in strong identification with locally-born Israelis.
In light of the implications of the conflict, it’s easy to understand how so many people, especially students who are highly active on campus or in their cities, get caught-up in it. Among the few students who I met that did not have preconceived opinions or knowledge of the conflict, almost all left with either a political affiliation or mental and emotional exhaustion from being overexposed to the variety of opinion on the subject. What was most troubling, however, was both the blind confidence displayed by the majority of foreign students — who came believing that they had a definitive solution for peace between
Israelis and Palestinians — and the way in which these students expressed that confidence.
Very few students showed any openness to different perspectives; they hit the ground running once they arrived by joining political groups that often excluded those with opposing positions, casting them as illegitimate solutions. These “illegitimate” solutions included those of locally-born Israelis and Palestinians.
While global awareness through social media can help in many cases to foster the positive development of issues throughout the world, the same processes do not work when it comes to questions of identity and statehood.
Using the addictive and powerful driving force of social media, these students took their involvement to a dangerously imprudent level. While global awareness through social media can help in many cases to foster the positive development of issues throughout the world, the same processes do not work when it comes to questions of identity and statehood. A large number of politically active students in my program used their experiences with Israelis and Palestinians as living examples of their own political stances — often shared through blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This effectively turned the socio-political situation in the area into a sort of popular social justice project, presenting the conflict as something other than what it really is: a complex nexus of policy decisions and real-world events.
What these opinionated students did not understand was that their actions, presented through various online services, have consequences that unnecessarily complicate the way the conflict is perceived in their networks back home. An inaccurate or narrow-sighted piece of news, spread through these services, can spark global reactions with serious and negative repercussions for Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Arabs, Muslims, and Christians around the world. A biased presentation of experiences, proffered for one’s own academic and political advancement, works in the same way that biased news corporations’ reporting does: perpetuating and spreading the problem that they first sought to solve.
While my hope for Israelis and Palestinians is that they are able to progress positively in the future, it is not the place of foreign students on an exchange semester to participate through likes, shares, and single photo uploads, and to present these as legitimate actions of solidarity to friends and family back home — or indeed, Israelis and Palestinians next door.
It is important for all students on exchange in such areas to remember not only that regional conflicts are complicated events that are important to understand, but also that voluntary involvement can blur the lines of responsibility and representation, with implications that must be thoroughly considered before clicking “share.”
Maor Oz is a third-year student in linguistics and Jewish studies
