As a freshman, I found many of the demonstrations and events hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in the recent week before break quite appalling. I was stunned by the implicit message many of these events sent about Israel as a whole. In my opinion, these events, at least from a neutral perspective, left a lingering anti-Israel aura, rather than a clear message of needing to provide humanitarian aid to those Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
First, using words such as "apartheid" and "white supremacy" to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict depicts a false scenario. The idea that Israel is systematically segregating, enslaving, and murdering a group of people on grounds of race is an extremely narrow, naive, and ignorant view of the situation. For starters, the word "apartheid" cannot possibly be accurate, as there are Palestinians living both inside and outside the borders of the West Bank and Gaza, and those Palestinians living in Israel live as full Israeli citizens. To compare this conflict to the devastating and evil acts of those in power in South Africa from 1948 to 1994 is inaccurate, and also offensive to the actual Apartheid that took place.
Second, SJP seems to use a strategy of aggression in promoting its agenda. Running around campus with fake machine guns does not promote any message of humanitarian justice; it appears confusing and irrational in promoting any sort of message. Moreover, distributing fake eviction notices around campus does not lead to dialogue about how to fix the conflict; it simply highlights an anti-Israel sentiment. By performing these actions, SJP is actively alienating itself from other groups on campus that seek to have civilized conversation and formulate responsible action in regard to the conflict. Even if there are groups on campus that specifically focus on the state of Israel, that does not mean that discussion cannot happen; a lack of discussion is essentially the basis for the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict to begin with.
To simply state that the Israeli government is an occupier and promoter of apartheid is a gross oversimplification of an extremely complex issue. The truth is, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at a stalemate. Israel, while understanding that it is persecuting a group of people living in the West Bank and Gaza, cannot just evacuate while terrorist groups (namely Hamas) control parts of the territories and threaten the people living on the Israeli side of the border. Both groups continuously cannot compromise; each time compromise fails, the stalemate looks as though it becomes more permanent. Just the other week, armed confrontation between both groups reached a boiling point with the discovery of Iranian rockets shipped to Hamas and aircraft bombings by Israeli warplanes. Unfortunately, the Palestinians living within the restricted borders are victims of circumstance and have no way of escaping their situation without a dual compromise between both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.
I want to emphasize that I am in no way against the mission statement of SJP, which is "to promote the cause of justice and speak out against oppression." However, the method with which the Tufts SJP goes about accomplishing this does not, I believe, accurately reflect their mission statement. SJP seems to be isolating itself from the rest of the Tufts community with their radical demonstrations around campus, while the solution needs to come from joint cooperation, understanding, and communication.
Rather than divide campus, SJP should lead a joint effort to raise awareness of the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict to those both within and outside the Tufts community to make a real difference. I believe that actions such as this meet the standard of the aforementioned mission statement of SJP, and ultimately provide the most awareness, support and aid to the conflict itself.
Jonathan Sirota is a freshman who has yet to declare a major. He can be reached at Jonathan.Sirota@tufts.edu.
