After ceasefire, tensions over Mideast still boil on California campus
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[May 25, 2021]
By Nathan Layne and Maria Caspani
(Reuters) - Lea Toubian was deep into an
online discussion with university administrators about the safety of
Jewish students when news of a truce between Israel and Palestinian
militant group Hamas was relayed to the group. It left her with some
hope that tensions on campus would ease.
Now the senior at the University of California, Santa Barbara says she
is worried an expected measure this week will reignite divisions at the
beachside school, where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been a
source of discord, driving a wedge between even Democrats like herself
and liberal groups on campus.
On Wednesday, a group of students are planning to submit a resolution to
the student body senate calling on the university to sell stocks it
holds in companies that supply Israel with equipment or services that
further its military campaigns or violate the rights of Palestinians in
Gaza or the West Bank.
While such resolutions from the so-called Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions or BDS movement are largely symbolic, UC Santa Barbara is the
only school in the University of California system which has never
passed one.
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Mainstream Jewish organizations, including Hillel, an influential group
that is active on 550 North American colleges and universities, want to
avoid the college being the last domino to drop.
"To bring something like this now is about the craziest thing that I can
imagine," said Toubian, a Hillel member who just ended her term as
student body president last week and who says she is supportive of both
Israel and Palestinian rights.
"It only serves to divide and inflame the campus climate."
The latest flare up in the conflict between Israel and Hamas has
reopened fault lines for some young, liberal American Jews whose
progressive ideals clash with their religious or community identities.
Some like Alia Sky, a 21-year-old Jewish-American, have come to oppose
Israel outright. A member of the Students for Justice in Palestine, the
UC Santa Barbara senior supports the resolution as a way to condemn
Israel, even as last week's ceasefire continues to hold. [L2N2NA056]
"Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians. It's a genocide," Sky
said.
Like many young American Jews interviewed by Reuters, Sky said her views
had evolved from earlier years when she was influenced by relatives who
described Israel in mostly glowing terms. She said classes on the Middle
East in her sophomore year and involvement with the SJP group were
critical to her shift.
For some, the racial protests that followed the 2020 killing of
Minneapolis Black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer helped
them see Palestinians in a new light.
A survey published this month by the Pew Research Center showed about
half of U.S. Jews under the age of 30 described themselves as
emotionally attached to Israel, compared with two-thirds of those 65 and
above.
The same poll found 37 percent of U.S. Jews ages 18-29 said the United
States was too supportive of Israel, more than double who felt that way
in the 65-plus cohort.
Zachary Federman, a student at Brown University, said many Jewish
students believed they were taught a "sugar coated" version of Israel in
their youth.
"I think younger Jews continuously are more likely to question
narratives of unequivocal support that we've been fed," said Federman,
who is the co-president of Brown's chapter of J Street U, a
self-described pro-Israel, pro-peace group committed to a two-state
solution.
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![](../images/052521PIX/news_b3.jpg)
Rabbi Evan Goodman, 56, poses for a photo with students Tyler Barth,
21, Romi Benasuly, 20, and Lian Benasuly, 20, near the University of
California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) campus in Isla Vista, California,
U.S., May 24, 2021. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
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The trend towards greater scrutiny of Israel
dovetails with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, whose
lawmakers have tried to block a $735 million sale of
precision-guided weapons to Israel in response to the conflict.
JEWISH STUDENTS HECKLED
Jessy Gonzalez, one of the authors of the Santa Barbara resolution,
said he was optimistic it would fare better than the six previous
resolutions - all of which failed, including the latest in 2019
which was defeated in a 14-10 vote.
Gonzalez, a first year student, acknowledged passage might not lead
to immediate actions by the school. But he said he still sees
significance in sending a message that UC students don't want to
support companies that help Israel to "destroy Palestinian lands."
The movement to boycott Israel has been building on U.S. college
campuses for years, gathering momentum following the 2014 Gaza war
and the emergence of a clutch of Democratic lawmakers, including
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota,
who are critical of how Israel treats the Palestinians. Even so, the
BDS movement has little support in the U.S. Congress.
Of the 83 resolutions put to a vote at U.S. universities since 2015,
52 percent have passed and the remainder failed, according to the
AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit organization which aims to combat
antisemitism at U.S. universities.
Opponents of the BDS movement often call such resolutions
antisemitic, saying they hold Israel to a higher standard and paint
a one-sided narrative ignoring attacks from Hamas. Practically, they
are also not legally binding and generally do not lead a university
to divest.
Rabbi Evan Goodman, executive director of Santa Barbara Hillel,
worries the resolution could nevertheless inflame tensions on
campus. He said the online discussion with administrators was
prompted in part by an incident in which a group of Jewish students
were heckled by others yelling "from the river to the sea", a phrase
associated with Arab calls to wipe Israel off the map.
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As Toubian prepares to graduate, she worries students who share her
views will face an increasingly polarized environment in which they
must make binary choices about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and
other issues.
Toubian said it has been difficult to be both a Democrat and
supportive of Israel, which she believes has a right to defend
itself. She says she's been called "a white colonizer" and "violent
towards people of color" for her beliefs.
Toubian says Jewish students are feeling scared and isolated, with
some removing their yarmulke and other symbols of their faith.
For them, she said, the resolution is "a huge source of dread."
(Reporting by Nathan Layne and Maria Caspani; Editing by Mary
Milliken and Alistair Bell)
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