Awareness Event Sparks Fiery Debate Tensions Hamper First Public Event on Middle East Conflict

Author: Tim McCahill

The space separating the tables was short, but the gulf could not have been any wider. As representatives of Middlebury College's Jewish student organization Hillel and the Islamic Society convened at an informational event yesterday evening in Proctor Woodstove Lounge, it quickly became clear that the purpose of the event — to raise awareness about the latest conflicts in the Middle East — was being lost in a quagmire of dissenting opinion.

Both student groups, along with Burlington's Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel and members of the campus organization the New Left, were allotted table space to disseminate information on the topic. Beginning at 5:30 p.m., the lounge slowly filled with members of each organization, interested students and a spate of lone diners watching the evening news filled, appropriately enough, with the latest reports on the conflict from Jerusalem.

Clustered in small groups around each table were students engaged in intense, and sometimes fierce, dialogue. So fierce, in fact, that representatives of Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel, chose to leave some 40 minutes into the event.

While hampered somewhat by misunderstanding on the purpose of the event, which, according to members of the New Left, was designed not as an open discussion but rather as an opportunity for students to collect information from different sources on the fighting in Israel, it marked the first public forum on that topic at Middlebury since the incursions at Ramallah nearly three weeks ago.

"We were going to try to get student leaders [from both Hillel and the Islamic Society] to set up tables together as a temporary coalition, symbolically, so at least students here know that this is something that's going on that we're very concerned about," explained New Left member Gabe Epperson '02.5 on Monday evening. "[And] to engage students about certain questions. That's my idea — to get people talking and thinking."

"We wanted to form a coalition of students on campus for peace in the Middle East," echoed New Left member Shahan Mufti '03.5, "because it's important for this to happen on university campuses."

Both Mufti and Epperson expressed a desire to begin a constructive dialogue on the fighting in Israel and, more generally, politics in the Middle East. As some of the conversations demonstrated yesterday, however, such an objective is not always easy to accomplish.

"As a Jewish organization, we don't support Israel wholeheartedly," commented Amichai Kilchevsky '04.5, a Hillel member who spoke heatedly with Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel representative Teri Scatchard earlier in the evening. "We encourage dissenting opinions," echoed Hillel Co-president David Schwartz '04.

Schwartz, arriving in the lounge after the event began with little informational material to hand out to those in attendance, expressed frustration that the event had not turned out as he had envisioned.

"If Middlebury can't conduct a debate [on the conflict], then how can they?" lamented Kilchevsky, referring to the Israeli and Palestinian governments.

"It's no fault of ours that students who are pro-Israeli did not set up a stall," commented Wasim Rahman '02, former head of the Islamic Society. "There is nothing I can say to convince them," he continued, referring to the comments expressed earlier by Kilchevsky in his debate with Scatchard.

Yesterday's gathering set a troubling precedent for future, and potentially more constructive, discussion on the violence in Israel. In interviews before the event, organizers and student leaders voiced hope that such a dialogue was a possibility but, on a topic as contentious as Israel-Palestine relations, has a tendency to exacerbate conflicting viewpoints.

"Hillel is a Jewish organization, first and foremost," explained Schwartz in an interview Saturday. "That doesn't mean that to be in Hillel you [members] have to be a supporter of Israel or you have to be against it."

Schwartz highlighted some of the difficulties in organizing discussion on the current situation. "It's difficult to get someone from outside [to speak with Hillel] who is a moderate, educated, mostly unbiased [pro-Palestinian]," he said in the interview.

"We've tried to coordinate something with the Islamic Society, but most of those have fallen through because of conflicting holiday schedules. The other thing is that it's difficult [to take a non-political stance]. [People] have emotions that run very high. To take one extreme and another and put them in one room invites conflict. The arguments are going to be made before they happen," he continued.

Rahman echoed this sentiment yesterday, noting that student interest on the topic did exist. Meeting and fueling this interest in official venues, however, will be a challenge for student groups, faculty and the administration in the remaining weeks of the semester.

"I want greater understanding," commented Robert Schine, Middlebury's dean of faculty who spent last year on leave in Jerusalem and is a scholar of Judaism. "This is something for which the College community should strive."

"I have myself been transformed in my understanding [of the situation] through dialogue with Jews and Palestinians," Schine continued, mentioning also that violence in the Middle East was something that should foster introspection and circumspection.

Schine has helped organize next month's Silberman Symposium, which will feature a keynote address by Dennis B. Ross, a former United States ambassador who played a critical role in brokering 1997's Hebron Accord. The topic of his talk, to be followed by a faculty panel, will be "Is there any hope for peace in the Middle East?"