I had an interesting experience recently that gave me direct
exposure to many of the dynamics you’ve read about on this site regarding the
behavior of anti-Israel activists on college campuses and the reaction they
generate.
Without naming names or places, I was asked to present “the
other side” at a college-level class in response to a student’s previous two-day
class-time harangue directed against the Jewish state.
Apparently, students in this psych class were given the opportunity
to lead class discussion on one of the themes of the course, which gave one
person the opportunity to present on “discrimination” with you-know-who
presented as the Apartheid-level discriminator (with intersectionality-laden
accusations against the US thrown in for good measure). Since the teacher was out at a conference for
the period this student presented, as well as the following class, this gave
our local advocate the chance to spend two days inveighing against Israel.
The experience was disconcerting enough for one student that
she reached out for help and advice and, long-and-short, this led to me coming
to class to present an alternative point of view.
Presenting “the other side” implies that responding to
someone else’s allegations was what was expected, although an alternative would
have been to spend the class period telling the truth about Israel’s enemies as
aggressively as the original presenter shared her lies. But taking into account the audience (in this
case, older undergrads and graduate students at a prestigious university), I
thought it better to actually provide them a lesson in social psychology with
the war against Israel used as an example of toxic behavior that can infect
entire societies (including Israel’s enemies).
Now I did include a number of important truths in the
discussion, including humanizing both sides in the conflict while also pointing
out facts that confound “the narrative,” such as the Palestinian alliance with
Hitler in World War II, the support the British Empire provided Israel’s foes –
including splitting Jordan off from “Palestine” and leading Jordanian troops in
1948 – and the expulsion of Jews from the Arab world. Each one of these facts was unknown to the
students in the room, which allowed me to challenge the credibility of the
original presenter without attacking anyone directly.
Such behavior was not a two-way street, however. For almost from the start the student who had
been given the floor previously began to insert more of her accusations into the
discussion, in the form of “innocent” questions. But when I responded sternly, but politely,
that such questions could wait until the end of my talk (the same rules she
insisted on when she had the floor) and did not let her dominate Q&A at the
expense of her classmates, she resorted to the old fallback of getting upset
and breaking into tears over the fact that any side other than hers was allowed
in her presence.
This tactic is called “Argumentation from
Outrage” and is an old staple of BDS “dialog,” although in this age
of “coddling,” it has been used to increasing effect to shut down debate
through what has been termed “crybullying.”
One thing that became apparently pretty quickly is how
discombobulated Israel’s accusers become when they don’t have complete control
of the microphone. It may just be that
this particular person was not an effective partisan, at least with regard to
challenging someone who knew what they were talking about and was ready to
stand his ground. But it may also
represent the sort of atrophying of argumentation skill among those who insist
that no dialog can take place with anyone not ready to agree with everything
they say in advance.
Did my presentation sway anyone? Hard to tell.
While I was surprised how little these older college students knew about
the Middle East beyond what they were told in this class, I remembered someone
once pointing out how little many pro-Israel advocates know about other hotspots
(how much do you really know about the situation in Burma, for example?), which
suggested we should approach educating others on topics of importance to us
with humility.
I’d like to think that exposure to truth presented
respectfully, coupled with watching the rude behavior of a classmate who fell
apart when she could not dominate the discussion to spread her false narratives
got them thinking that maybe the world was not as black and white as they’d
been told.
Time will tell…