Conflict discussed on campus

Off campus in a neo-funky basement coffeehouse, a young big-city lobbyist dressed down in mock-student casual wear speaks to a dozen students gathered to hear his organization's pro-Israel views of recent events in the Middle East. After his few minutes of analysis, the lobbyist passes out blank sheets of paper to each of the students and leads them en masse through a letter-writing session, during which they will each write a letter to a local member of Congress to ask for support of a particular-named piece of legislation.\nBut this is no mere coffee-shop exercise, the lobbyist said.\n"Sometimes a representative's vote comes down to them going to a file of letters from constituents, opening it up, and counting how many letters are for, and how many are against the issue," he said.\nBack on campus, the elevator doors open on the bottom floor of Ballantine Hall. A student activist manning a conveniently located table of political leaflets makes eye contact with a disembarking passenger on his way from an upper floor to someplace else. He slows his gait slightly and veers toward the table, pulling his Walkman headset slightly off his ears. Encouraged by his body language, the student activist is set into motion. \n"Would you like to read about what is happening to the Palestinian people?" she asks him, as she points to the row of neatly printed articles she has laid out on the table. Still barely moving in the direction he was headed, he accepts several of the leaflets. As he turns to exit, she hastily invites him to attend an event that her organization has scheduled for the following month, an on-campus speaking engagement by a well-known pro-Palestinian activist.\nAs the Israel-Palestine conflict continues to explode into violence in the Middle East, two student groups representing opposite ends of the political spectrum are working harder than ever to inform and engage fellow students at IU. But while they are getting their respective messages out, they haven't yet had any success arranging face-to-face debate or dialogue.\nProfessor of Religious Studies Steven Weitzman said student activist groups are crucial to fostering the habits of informed debate and active civic involvement, on which he said American democracy depends.\n"In passionately arguing for one side or the other, they can help other students to see the issues at stake in what is happening in the Middle East," he said, adding that in addition to a moral obligation to advance the causes of justice and peace, the events in Israel and the territories are likely to have a serious impact on security and economy here in the U.S.\nSenior Rima Kapitan and sophomore Calli Schiller are the leaders, respectively, of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Indiana Israel Public Affairs Committee (IIPAC). Each group is a student-run political organization dedicated to increasing public awareness about its perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and each sponsors campus events during the school year to further its goals.\nWhile the groups are parallel in many ways, they differ in more ways than their politics. While SJP is a loosely knit, informal group of students who have coalesced around a shared interest in the Palestinian perspective, IIPAC is a campus branch of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the most prominent pro-Israel lobbying group in America. AIPAC's 50,000 members include representatives on more than 200 college campuses nationwide. Schiller is the campus liaison and co-chairperson of IIPAC, which she describes as a lobbying group that primarily brings speakers to campus. \n"My goal is to educate people," said Schiller, an IDS reporter. "People can't care about issues they don't know about."\nKapitan, a senior from Bloomington majoring in civil and human rights, concurs on that point.\n"We must encourage dialogue between groups on campus," she said. "We need to have a dialogue." \nTo that end, SJP, of which Kapitan is president, has initiated several proposals to IIPAC to interface through debate or co-sponsorship of an event, but nothing has worked out to date. She said although there has been some interest returned by IIPAC, its prevailing concern has been that a debate would be too controversial.\nSchiller is not sure.\n"We're still hopeful that it will happen," she said. "I can't speak for all of AIPAC, but I really want to have healthy dialogue. I think it's essential."\nMinutes later, Schiller seems to back away from her hopefulness.\n"I don't think that right now is the right time," she said, in reference to the recent escalation of violence overseas. \nKapitan said passions can occasionally run high among opponents at her alternative media table Tuesdays in Ballantine Hall.\nSchiller suggested that sort of escalation may be unavoidable.\n"Now more than ever it's going to get ugly," she said. "How can it not?"\nAlthough the question is rhetorical, it seems to awaken other doubts in the enthusiastic and assertive activist, and she soon is elaborating on a new, less negotiable thread.\n"The Palestinians will never ever come off bad, no matter what," Schiller said. "They just have such amazing speaking skills and such power of persuasion, that no matter what they say the Israelis will come off bad. I don't think that's a position that's worth the gamble right now."\nBut Weitzman is optimistic that constructive debate is possible.\n"If we, at IU, cannot engage in open-minded and respectful dialogue, we cannot expect such behavior from those in the Middle East who have so much more at stake than we do," he said.\nWeitzman recommends some rules of engagement for student groups, beginning with remembering the humanity of the other side and acting accordingly by showing respect while trying to listen and understand.\n"Also trying to remember your own humanity," he said. "Avoid arguments that legitimize violence. Be true to your core principles, but be open to complexity and ambivalence."\nThose core principles, which surface in the rhetoric used by both Schiller and Kapitan, result in vastly different views of what is at issue in the conflict.\n"This is 100 percent about terrorism," Schiller said. "Israel is just trying to defend itself."\nKapitan sees it differently.\n"This is about the dispossession and oppression of a people who are being denied their sovereignty," she said. \nDespite their zeal and obvious support for the causes they believe in so deeply, neither woman makes any effort to hide her disgust at the actions of militants on her own side.\n"Suicide bombings that kill Israeli civilians are unjustifiable," Kapitan said. \nSchiller offers similar criticism of Israeli religious militants who have broken the terms of past agreements and established new settlements within Palestinian territory.\n"It makes me mad," she said. "I think it's stupid." \nThe unwitting parallel self-examinations seem to invite the question of whether the groups share enough common ground to occasionally join forces for a greater good.\nIf a step forward can be taken between the groups, Weitzman advises them to engage the student population by cooperating to stage a joint debate, inviting outside experts to represent each side.\n"Staging such a debate, with full participation of all interested parties, would be a major accomplishment," he said.\nFurther, he urges all students, regardless of their perspective, to lobby the administration to hire a faculty member with expertise in this conflict. In the absence of such a specialist, he said, the University suffers as a result, with no one to provide objective or, minimally, academically informed perspective on what is happening. \nSJP will sponsor a speaking engagement by activist-writer-media critic Ali Abunimah Monday at 7 p.m. The lecture will take place in Woodburn Hall Room 100. SJP encourages students of all perspectives to attend the event. \nIIPAC has no events scheduled for the remainder of the school year, Schiller said.\nStudents who wish to become involved with or obtain additional information from either group should contact SJP at rkapitan@indiana.edu or IIPAC at cschille@indiana.edu.