It is possible to disagree about the Middle East without coming to blows, damning your opponent or pounding your shoe on the table.
That’s what Shalom Bochner hopes to prove this week, as U.C. Santa Cruz hosts a week of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue sessions featuring speakers from across the political spectrum.
“I and the other planners envision this event as not being about who shouts the loudest, but as ‘Let’s hear the most reasoned, articulate position and let the audience decide where they fit into this,'” said the UCSC Hillel director.
“Obviously there were some difficulties putting this together, but Christians, Jews and Muslims sat together for four months to plan this out.”
The event opens Monday with a dialogue session between Stanford Professor Khalil Barhoum and Israeli Professor David Meir-Levi.
Tuesday features a discussion between Palestinians the Rev. Labib Kobti and Hatem Bazian, a U.C. Berkeley graduate student and activist, while Wednesday’s discussion features four Jews: Semha Alwaya, Amichai Magen, David Pine and Raphael Danziger.
Finally, on Thursday, Yitzhak Santis, the Mideast affairs coordinator of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council, Barhoum and an interfaith panel will discuss possible solutions to the ongoing violence.
Bochner said the idea for the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue week was hatched following a shocking and offensive speech by Imam Abdul Malik Ali during May’s Palestinian Awareness Week. Ali had been invited to the UCSC campus by the Muslim Student Association.
Bochner and others said the West Oakland cleric blamed the Mossad for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Sept. 11 attacks and the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800. Ali also reportedly said Jews should be sent out of Israel and back to Russia, Germany and Poland, and he allegedly referred to suicide bombers as glorious martyrs.
Ali made similar remarks at a vitriolic anti-Zionist rally at San Francisco State — his alma mater — on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. In that speech he also claimed Americans “worship Zionists” and blamed the demise of affirmative action on “the rise of the Jewish cracker.”
“After a number of successful events with Hillel and the MSA, I saw the bridge we were building erode after the very fiery anti-Israel and anti-Jewish speech,” said Bochner.
“I don’t want Santa Cruz to go the way of San Francisco State or U.C. Berkeley. Something proactive needed to happen, something to get people talking about the issues and not screaming about the issues.”
That being said, Jewish and Muslim campus groups each came up with their own list of speakers, and neither had veto power over the other group’s speakers.
Bochner readily admits that not all of the Jewish speakers are moderates, while on the Palestinian side, Bazian is a particularly loathed figure among U.C. Berkeley pro-Israel activists.
Nonetheless, the Hillel director anticipates a respectful atmosphere, as speakers have signed agreements promising civility and a willingness to dialogue.
“If they are balanced properly on the podium with speakers who present another point of view, I don’t see a problem,” said Ilan Benjamin, an Israeli-born chemistry professor who was incensed after sitting through Ali’s speech.
“We’ve had many events on this campus that were very one-sided, and people got angry. This is not a one-sided story. As much as the Palestinians have suffered, the Jews and Israelis have their point also.”