In past blog postings, yours truly has highlighted Dartmouth's program to deal with the Israel-Gaza War and the impact on students in particular.* Prior posts featured reports about the program. I emailed the two major figures in establishing the program, Professors Tarek El-Ariss and Susannah Heschel, but both were out of the country. However, Jennifer Thomas, Administrator of both the Jewish Studies Program and the Middle Eastern Studies Program at Dartmouth, was able to provide me with a link to a video of one of the Dartmouth forums. You can see the second forum which took place Oct. 12, 2023 at the link below:
Or direct to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om2FmYGfN7o.
Alternative: Scroll down for transcript.
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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/12/dartmouths-example-in-dealing-with.html; https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/11/dartmouths-example-in-dealing-with_01421823328.html; https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/11/dartmouths-example-in-dealing-with.html.
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Transcript
0:00
I hope that we will have many future such discussions. It's my colleague,
0:05
Professor Tarek El-Ariss, the chair of the Middle Eastern Studies Program, whom I work
0:11
with very closely and teach with, who was on the phone with me, very upset this past weekend,
0:18
and suggested that we should gather as faculty and hold an academic forum to talk about what
0:25
has been happening. Professor El-Ariss is just on his way back from Cairo, from a Dartmouth program,
0:32
but he's very much with us in spirit, and I thank him. I wanna thank the co-sponsors of these
0:38
gatherings. First in prime president Sian Beilock, the Dean of Arts and Sciences, Elizabeth Smith,
0:51
who's here with us today, the Dean of the College, Scott Brown, the Vice President for Institutional
1:00
Diversity and Equity, Shontay Delalue, the John Sloan Dickey Center for International
1:07
Understanding, Victoria Holt and her staff who've been extraordinary in setting up the facilities
1:15
and the video live stream for us in very short order. The Government Department. The William
1:23
Jewett Tucker Center and Reverend Nancy Vogele who's here, the Hillel at Dartmouth. And Rabbi
1:31
Seth Linfield who is here. The Ethics Institute. The Leslie Center for the Humanities. And so many
1:41
faculty colleagues who are here with us today, including faculty who teach or have taught
1:47
courses on the Middle East. I wanna mention in particular the internationally renowned scholar,
1:54
professor Dale Eickelman, who is emeritus in the Department of Anthropology. Professor Rachel Feldman, who is a new colleague in the Religion Department. Professor Gene Garthwaite,
2:05
who may be here, I'm not sure, is emeritus in the History Department. Our colleague, Asaph Ben-Tov who is a visiting professor this year in Jewish studies, all of whom have taught
2:16
or are teaching courses relevant to our topic, and who would be excellent resources for students
2:23
and faculty to consult, to talk to in their offices or go out for coffee. And I encourage
2:28
everyone to do that. I wanna emphasize that it's crucial in holding these kinds of discussions,
2:36
that all voices are allowed to be heard, and that students, faculty, community members
2:43
who hold views that may differ from our own are allowed to speak them without fear of harassment
2:51
or recrimination. We need to remember to express our views without incitement against any group,
3:01
person or a category with respect for one another. That is the function of a university. And keep in
3:10
mind that many of us are feeling emotionally raw and traumatized. We want to emphasize that Hamas
3:19
does not equal the Palestinian people, and Jews do not equal the Israeli Government. And at the same
3:27
time, there are personal and emotional connections that many of us have. We're gathered here together
3:36
because horror has come into our lives because we have been watching and reading about what has
3:43
transpired this weekend. The massacre of over 1,200 Israelis and citizens of several other
3:50
countries, citizens of the United States, of Nepal, France, of Philippines, and certainly of
3:57
other countries as well. The massacre carried out by Hamas militants, who also killed among others
4:07
260 young people, the age of our students, at a music festival they were attending in the Negev
4:15
Desert. People killed in their villages, in their farming communities, their kibbutzim,
4:22
in their homes, on the streets. We're hearing atrocious accounts of rape, of beheading. We're
4:31
fearful of the fate of the hostages taken to Gaza. We're not entirely sure how many it may be 150, we
4:39
don't know the numbers for certain. The hundreds of the Hamas militants who infiltrated Israel were
4:47
killed. Most of them we assume. And at the same time, hundreds of Palestinian civilians and Gaza
4:54
have already been killed by Israeli government forces. And the numbers of those killed on both
5:00
sides, we fear will continue to rise dramatically. We fear a war is breaking out and it will be
5:08
terrible. Many of us at Dartmouth have family and friends and colleagues in Israel and also
5:15
in Gaza. Some of us have friends who are among the hostages. Some of us have friends who were killed,
5:23
or children of friends who were killed. Some of us have family in Gaza whom we can't reach. All of
5:31
us fear the danger that Lebanon may be drawn into this war and possibly other countries and parties.
5:40
I want to just remind everyone that Dartmouth offers psychological counseling, it's available
5:45
24 hours. If you have any difficulty reaching someone for that purpose, please contact your
5:52
undergraduate dean or get in touch with a faculty member. We all will be able to help you. We also
5:59
offer chaplains from many different faiths here at Dartmouth. Chaplains who will nurture and help
6:06
you protect your souls. Please take advantage. But we are here today, this afternoon, not as
6:15
psychologists or as chaplains. We're here for an academic forum to offer our expertise as faculty.
6:24
We wanna stress that our classrooms are places of academic exchange that have functioned for years
6:32
with respect for our purpose, which is scholarly study. We've achieved a wonderful collaboration
6:40
and cooperation at Dartmouth College, something extraordinary between the Jewish Studies Program
6:46
and the Middle Eastern Studies Program. And we at Dartmouth should be very proud of that
6:51
cooperation and collaboration that we co-teach courses, co-sponsor lectures and workshops. And
6:58
it is for that reason that we're able to come together as faculty for our discussion this
7:03
afternoon. And we should all be grateful for the high quality of scholarship produced by members
7:09
of the Dartmouth faculty and their willingness to engage with the community during this highly
7:16
sensitive and emotional week. I will ask them to introduce ourselves in just a moment. I want to
7:24
explain some of the procedure this afternoon. Our staff will hand out note cards and pencils to all
7:30
who come into the auditorium. And if you wish to submit a question, we'll collect those note cards
7:38
and put them together. Some of the questions will be identical to others, so we're going to collate
7:44
them. These cards will be given to Professor Ben-Tov and he will then turn them over to the
7:49
panel. We'll also have microphones for you to ask questions from the floor, but if you prefer
7:57
to put your question in writing rather than stand up, that's fine. We're in no way trying to censor
8:03
questions. We're trying to answer as many as we can today. We also have a room in Moore Hall,
8:10
this building, room BO3, that is set up for an overflow crowd where you can watch the discussion
8:16
on livestream. We are being livestreamed now and recorded, and that will be made available
8:23
at some point, takes a while. In addition, we have reserved more room 11O as a place where
8:32
anyone can leave here and go to that room during the discussion if you want to have a quiet space
8:40
to reflect, to decompress, to cry. And so I now want to turn to our panelists and ask each of us
8:50
to introduce ourselves. Professor Jonathan Smolin, Professor Ezzedine Fisher, Professor Bernard
8:57
Avishai. Thank you all for being here and we look forward to our discussion. Go ahead, Jonathan.
9:13
- Okay, great. Welcome everybody. Thank you so much for coming. I'm Professor Jonathan
9:18
Smolin. I'm a professor of Middle Eastern Studies here. I've been at Dartmouth since 2005. I have a
9:26
personal, I thought I would share a bit about myself personally as a kind of start here. At
9:32
a time in which we're seeing such inhumanity, I wanted to share my own experience of humanity in
9:40
the Middle East and North Africa. I grew up in Center City, Philadelphia in a Jewish family.
9:46
And so when I went and lived in Damascus in the year 2000, my family was uncomfortable with this,
9:56
but it was part of something that I was studying. I was studying Arabic. I was very interested in the Middle East and North Africa. And when you just study the Middle East and North Africa and
10:05
Arabic in a classroom, there's something, you know, cold or something, you don't get the full,
10:12
you know, experience, I would say. And so I was in Damascus for the outbreak of the Second Intifada.
10:26
I was there also for the Bush-Gore election. But I'm telling you this, because it was an incredibly
10:33
challenging time. And there were horrors on the news in the newspapers and on television screens.
10:42
But my experience on the streets of Damascus in the old city, with Syrians, with people, was
10:50
absolutely exceptional. The humanity of the people that I got to know in cafes, on the streets,
10:58
on neighbors, it was an overwhelming experience and really propelled me in my life and the things
11:04
that I do. I went from there to Fez. And I lived in Fez for a couple of years. And I was in Fez
11:14
in Morocco for 9/11. I watched it happen on TV in my house, and I went out and walked through
11:23
the old city of the old Medina and Fez. And it was incredibly moving the way that strangers
11:33
came up to me and hugged me and told me how sorry they were for what happened. And a deep sense of
11:40
humanity and empathy and connection. And beyond the incredible literature, incredible media,
11:50
societies, all aspects of civilization that has just, you know, become my life. It is truly the
11:58
humanity of the region in terms of, in moments of crisis, in moments of emotional turbulence, in
12:04
moments of deep challenge that has not only bolstered me, but has frankly made
12:14
me the person I am today and has, you know, really directed my life. And so I wanted to
12:21
just share this element of, you know, this personal element with you as a start that,
12:26
you know, I'm not just a someone who writes books and translates novels and teaches classes,
12:32
but that I bring with me sitting here, years of experience and living across the Middle
12:38
East and North Africa. And with my own humanity transformed and bettered through this experience.
12:48
- Thank you everybody for coming. This is, as you can see, our second session and you have
12:56
to hand it to us that were perseverance despite everything. My name is Ezzedine Fisher. I teach
13:04
Middle East politics at the Middle Eastern Studies program. Before coming here, long before coming
13:12
here, I used to work as a diplomat. I grew up in Egypt and as a kid, I grew up with pictures of
13:21
family members that we lost to the war, multiple wars with Israel, my own family, IDPs from the
13:29
Suez War. So I grew up with all the stereotypes that you can imagine about Israelis and about
13:35
Jews, in general. And then I worked as a diplomat and my posting guess where? So, I was posted to
13:43
Israel and living in Israel in Tel Aviv for two years first, gradually got me to appreciate the
13:54
human dimension, to see people not as categories, but as individuals and as people who are frankly
14:01
like any other people. That reminded me of my family and friends and had more or less the same
14:06
aspirations and fears and so on. But probably more importantly is that my work as a diplomat
14:13
showed me something that probably, if somebody had told me, I wouldn't have understood, is that
14:19
as a diplomat, you know, you can't force people to accept things. So you have to reason with people
14:25
and you can't convince them to do something unless you understand where they're coming from. And
14:31
unless you understand what their motivation is, what their concerns are, so that you can think of
14:38
something that would be acceptable to them. And just changing the mindset from being, you know,
14:45
judgmental, what is international law saying, you know, why aren't you do this? And so on, to try to be in the other person's shoes made all the difference, not just in my work, but in my
14:56
life and in my relationship to everybody who's different from me. And that's one thing that I
15:02
brought with me, I think from the diplomatic, from the diplomatic experience. And I'll stop here.
15:11
- My name is Bernard Avishai. I teach political economy in the Government Department. I have to
15:22
admit that when I was told that we would start out with some personal reflections,
15:29
I was a little skeptical. And now I see that probably it was a good idea. Susannah said,
15:37
we are not categories. And maybe that's the virtue of starting this way. We are not categories.
15:50
I started out as a category. I was the son of a Zionist leader in Canada. And after he died in 72,
16:00
went to live in Israel. I was in Israel during the '67 war, and I knew something about the dread that
16:09
came in advance of that war and a corresponding sense of euphoria that came. I was in Jerusalem
16:16
the day it was declared as it were united, moved there in 72 and have been living in Jerusalem on
16:26
and off and writing about this conflict on and off for 50 years. I was a West Bank settler at
16:35
one point. I was in the French Hill in east Jerusalem. And I thought at the time, well,
16:42
you know, it's sort of in the land between where Jews live in Jerusalem and where the
16:48
Hebrew University was being built. So what the hell, you know, I mean, it's not really
16:53
not Israel. And it took me many years to become much more sensitive to the importance of thinking
17:08
about people in more individual ways. I made many friends in East Jerusalem. I've taught in Libya.
17:15
I know many people in Jordan, human beings all, and I'll have more to say about that fairly soon.
17:26
- So my name is Susannah Heschel. I grew up in New York City. My father was a professor of Jewish
17:32
theology and he became involved when I was a child in the Civil Rights Movement and also in the movement against the war in Vietnam. So political issues were important to me. I originally was
17:42
in love with the Bible and thought that would be my field. But then I went to visit some graduate schools and, you know, I'll give you an example. I sat in on a seminar and the professor had a
17:53
verse from a psalm, I think in something like the gates of the city sing the praises of the Lord. And the professor said, what do you mean? Gates don't sing. So obviously there's a mistake
18:02
in the Bible. And so we spent the whole two hours redoing the verse till he finally concluded, no on
18:08
the gates of the city were written the praises of the Lord. And at that point I decided that
18:13
there was a pathology to biblical scholarship. And I wanted to investigate where does this come from? So my interest is really in the history of biblical scholarship and why they ask the
18:23
questions they ask and why they have no sense of poetry and literature. And so I wrote in my
18:28
first book on 19th century biblical scholarship, a second book on the Nazi period about theologians,
18:34
Protestant theologians in Germany who supported Hitler. And then I wrote a book on the history of
18:39
Jewish scholarship on Islam. Thanks to grants from the Ford Foundation, I was able to do some work in
18:46
Cairo. And then I also went with Professor Smolin and professor El-Ariss to Beirut,
18:51
to the American university where we went to a conference. And I'm very interested in that. I'm interested in what happened in this period that I work on, which is a 19th,
19:01
early 20th century. I think about figures I'll just mention. There was Gottlieb Leitner,
19:07
Hungarian Jew, who founded the University of the Punjab in the 1870s and then moved to England where he built the first mosque outside London in Woking. I think of Joseph Horowitz,
19:17
who was a professor of Arabic at the Aligarh Muslim University in India from 1907 to 1914. Yes,
19:26
you know, yeah. Isn't that amazing? Or I think of Max Herz who founded the Museum of Islamic Art in
19:32
Cairo and restored the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo and many other places. So that's become another
19:40
interest of mine, the Jewish fascination with Islam and scholarly study of Islam, especially
19:47
of the Quran. And so this is my engagement and I'm just so glad to be at a university where
19:56
we have such a wonderful community of scholars in these fields and also the collegiality that
20:02
we may teach courses together. So we have questions that have already been submitted,
20:11
and I'm sure more questions will arise. Do you want to begin by telling us some of them?
20:16
- Okay, all right. It's a long question. So I'll just read the first half. I think. How can we
20:22
have civil, productive conversations about a topic that is so emotionally
20:30
and historically charged, especially when there is so much disinformation?
20:37
- Pass this on to Ezzedine. - Do you want to start?
20:44
- I'd be happy to. One thing I remind myself over these days is of course the importance
20:56
of principles and values and being guided by principles and values. What are your principles
21:02
and values? What is it that you clinging to? Not when it's convenient, not when it's comfortable,
21:08
not when it's popular, but when it's hard, when you're emotional and you don't want to
21:14
pay attention to that. And so for me, principles and values are respect for human beings is human
21:23
rights, is rule of law, is freedom of expression. But freedom of expression, of course, should be respectful. And I think using those principles, at least for me, and values as
21:36
guiding, as what guides interactions, what guides my exchanges, my encounters, regardless of what
21:47
is going on around me, is absolutely crucial. No matter how emotional, uncomfortable, frustrated,
21:56
you know, I may be, it is always these principles and values that guide my path.
22:05
- Do you wanna take a step at that? Do you wanna answer the same question? - Well, I'll just say what I said on Tuesday at the beginning, which is very much in line
22:21
with what you were saying, Jonathan. If you, I actually looked at the voting patterns of the
22:32
young people and the members of the kibbutzim who were killed on Saturday. Overwhelmingly,
22:42
we are dealing with people who have been supporting the peace movement and the peace
22:48
camp in Israel consistently for the last 25 years. And the young people who were killed,
22:56
particularly, on the Sabbath, so if they're going to a rave concert on the Sabbath,
23:02
you have to imagine what kind of secular Tel Aviv world we're talking about, were also speaking even
23:14
retrospectively that they went to a concert to celebrate peace and love. They were people who
23:22
I will bet, if you ask them, do you believe in a reciprocal, independent Palestinian state or
23:35
Palestinian entity in confederation with Israel, where Palestinians have all the rights that we
23:41
have? Their answer would have been uniformly yes. And they were turned into a category
23:49
when they were shot. At the same time. I called my friend Khalil Shikaki, who is Palestine's probably
23:59
most famous and original survey researcher. And the last time Gaza was polled in May of 2021 in
24:11
advance of elections that were scheduled, Hamas barely scratched 30% popularity among Gazans. So
24:26
we have to remember that when civilians are killed by Israeli artillery or Israeli jets,
24:37
two out of three of the people who are getting killed are not even Hamas supporters, let alone
24:44
Hamas operatives. The problem is precisely that you get turned into a category by heinous crimes
24:57
like this. And when Jonathan says, we have to remember our values, the way I translate that
25:05
is we have to remember that democratic norms are really a function of a determination to
25:14
see people as having an individual dignity. And no country, no country, no nation is a monolith.
25:28
- Susannah, the rest of the question says, you know, because emotions are high, anything you say is bound to offend somebody.
25:39
And so what is the solution? Should one just stay silent? Stay silent.
25:49
- Hmm. So one thing that we learn as scholars is never to be satisfied with a simple narrative.
25:57
Never to think that we've come to a final conclusion. Whatever scientific experiment
26:02
we may conclude today, there'll be one that overrides it in the future. And the same is true for historians. But the reduction to a simple narrative is something that I find very
26:13
dangerous. We offer classes here, we encourage all of our students here, come take a class,
26:21
come attend one of our lectures, one of our workshops, inform yourselves. We also wanna
26:29
clarify, since it's been raised as a question in understanding, in studying something,
26:36
it doesn't mean we condone or we agree. We have courses here on racism, on enslavement, on Nazism
26:45
and fascism. We don't endorse those. I don't become a Nazi when I write a book about Nazis. So
26:54
that's important to be said. We obviously, without question, I would take everyone in this panel,
27:01
everyone in this room, the slaughter of human beings is something that we condemn without
27:08
question. It's the fundamental thing that makes us a human being. We don't kill other people, period,
27:14
under any circumstances and for any reason. And there's no justification. I would add to it,
27:21
it doesn't accomplish anything. So when we speak to one another, perhaps we have to recognize our
27:27
own limitations, the limitations of our knowledge, the limitations of the information that were being
27:34
provided to be aware that we should not try to learn what's going on from TikTok. We have the
27:42
great privilege of Dartmouth, of having access to newspapers from around the world online through
27:48
our library, and we also have colleagues, professors that we can consult. So let's also
27:55
remember that people are raw. The most important thing right now is to be kind, not to try to win
28:05
arguments or denounce or even issue a statement. Why do you have to issue a statement? What does
28:13
that accomplish? It's a little bit narcissistic. Here I am, here's my opinion, which may or may
28:20
not be a valid opinion. I don't know. Let's be kind to one another. Let's treat people the way
28:27
we want to be treated. Let's keep it at that level right now because everyone is raw and suffering.
28:38
- I wanna say something about this question and then we move to the next question. And I
28:43
understand that emotions are high. I know everybody has strong emotions about it, but I want you to ask yourself, especially students, when you talk about the topic, what
28:55
are you trying to achieve? Are you advocating? Are you trying to understand what is happening
29:04
or are you trying to find someone to blame? And those are different things and you're entitled to
29:10
do all three or some of the three. It's entirely in your right to just be indignant at this or at
29:18
that and to stay at this level because emotions are raw, and this is where you are and that's
29:23
fine. The same thing if you want to advocate, if you wanna become party to the conflict because
29:30
you care about your people, you want to advocate for your people, it's entirely in your right. The
29:37
last one is the one I am more interested in and the one that I think we have an advantage in as
29:43
a college which is to try to understand what is going on, which means understand the complexity,
29:51
which is often unpleasant because we come across things that we don't like. But that's,
29:58
in fact as student, as learners, that's our job here. And if we're not doing that, we will be,
30:04
you know, you can do this from home. You don't have to go to an Ivy League university in order
30:09
to be indignant. Everybody gets indignant. The opportunity you have here is to learn and
30:17
to learn different perspectives. They're not the same. But then you learn a method of how you approach a complex issue that is charged and maybe you can find out something useful
30:28
other than the one you started with. That's what learning is about. Again, if you're at the indignation level right now, that is perfectly fine, but I want you to think about
30:39
that. Maybe there is something in there that would be useful for you. Your questions, next question.
30:45
- Okay, this is a multi-part question, but I'm gonna take the third here. There have been news
30:52
articles such as from The Guardian claiming US CEOs are trying to gather names of Harvard
30:57
students showing support to Palestinians during this time. This seems like a lot, a lot like
31:04
doxxing. Some students at Dartmouth feel unsafe publicly showing support to Palestinians. What
31:09
are your thoughts about this? And I think this connects directly with what Ezzedine was just talking about, right? That going back to at least what we were talking about earlier in
31:21
terms of values, right? Freedom of expression, of democratic principles, of individual dignity,
31:26
of respect. This is bedrock material. And anyone who feels like they cannot express themselves in
31:35
a place, at a university where we are founded on exchange of ideas and learning new viewpoints and
31:42
being uncomfortable, but learning from discomfort in terms of our personal growth, it's unacceptable
31:49
if there's any blockage to that. And if there is, email me Jonathansmolin@dartmouth.edu. Okay,
31:58
it's completely unacceptable. We are a community of free exchange, of exchange of thought. Now this
32:04
is a difference from indignant condemnation, which is as Ezzedine is mentioning, which is certainly
32:12
not trying to suppress that, right? And that's of course freedom of expression, but without a doubt
32:20
exchange that we should all feel comfortable and we should all feel like we have a place
32:26
in order to express ourselves, our emotions, but also our ideas and our thoughts. Others?
32:35
- I just want to say in a way I'm answering the last question again,
32:40
you know, Ezzedine and I teach a course together on Israel and Palestine. And at the beginning
32:47
of the year when we introduced ourselves, we said, we each said in our own way, you know,
32:56
we're probably going to disagree about a lot of things. And the truth is that sure,
33:05
we may have some disagreements or we may be reading different texts and coming to different conclusions. But the thing that we both had together when we went into this was a
33:15
sense of tragedy. And I feel like there's nothing more precious than a sense of tragedy. Anybody
33:29
who feels that they must make a demonstration of affiliation, either with Israelis or Palestinian,
33:40
they should certainly not feel in any way that they're going to be either harming themselves
33:46
publicly here or compromising their future in some way. That's completely unacceptable. At
33:53
the same time, the way one makes one sense of affiliation known is telltale. Are you showing
34:10
a sense of affiliation for people whom you love, or people whom you feel have suffered in dignity
34:21
or suffered injustice? Absolutely. But at the same time, that does not mean justifying the
34:35
action of anyone with whom you feel that sense of affiliation, if that action was inhumane.
34:48
That's how Plato starts the "Republic." You know, questioning whether you simply, whether justice is
34:58
just doing what's good for your friend. Justice is not just doing what's good for your friend.
35:14
- Can you answer questions? - And as a side note, if I may, I do hope that the Dartmouth community understands
35:21
what a rare opportunity it is to have a course on the Israel-Palestine conflict taught by a major Egyptian diplomat and a Israeli public intellectual
35:31
team taught this is incredibly rare and a wonderful opportunity for you.
35:37
- Speaking of Egypt, I have a question. Why is Egypt reluctant to open a corridor for safe
35:48
passage? And there is with it a question about what role do foreign governments have in this
35:56
role? So I'll answer the first one and then leave it to you too. So again, it's a complicated story
36:04
and I'll try to make it simple. Israel imposed a full siege on Gaza, including cutting off fuel,
36:17
water supplies and food supplies until the hostages are released. Egypt sent a convoy with
36:27
fuel and food and what have you, and then Israel opposed and said, if the convoy crossed into Gaza,
36:35
they will bomb it and then bombed the Rafah crossing on the Palestinian side three times
36:42
within 24 hours, enough for the Egyptian government to get the message and the convoy
36:49
turned back. Egypt since then has been trying to convince Israel to allow that corridor into Gaza.
36:58
So we're talking about there are two different things, safe passage of assistance into Gaza,
37:05
even with a limited ceasefire to allow for this to go in. The other issue is allowing Gazans to leave
37:14
Gaza Strip and go to Sinai. On the latter, the Egyptian government is adamant not to allow this,
37:21
and that's in coordination with the Palestinian authority because collectively the Palestinians
37:27
and the Arab side has a memory since 1947 and 48 that people who leave even momentarily to
37:36
flee the conflict are not allowed back. That's the story, how the refugees, the Palestinian refugees,
37:42
how the story started. So for this, Egypt is kind of, until today is adamant not to let the
37:49
Palestinians of Gaza go to Sinai. Having said that, I think last I checked this afternoon,
37:58
the number of Palestinian IDPs, the people who fled their homes, fearing that they will be
38:05
destroyed or their homes were actually destroyed, reached almost half a million. Now they are housed
38:14
in UNRWA, United Nation Relief Work Agency, in UNRWA's schools and camps and so on. I fear,
38:24
and I'm not the only one that the number is gonna grow and then it'll become untenable even
38:29
for UNRWA to sustain this number and then things might develop. So this is where the situation is.
38:37
- My understanding is that this came up in the conversations with Anthony Blinken and the Israeli
38:46
government this afternoon, or you know, this morning for us. And I suspect that there will be
38:55
more to this story. Obviously there's aid coming into El Arish airport and there's got to be some
39:06
kind of corridor which will have to be monitored in some way by international agencies. I have a
39:14
question here. How do the latest developments affect Israel and normalization talks and its
39:22
relations with other Middle Eastern countries? It's a wonderful question. I'm actually trying to
39:28
write something about this now. It's been said again and again that this attack on Saturday
39:36
was somehow the death nail of American efforts at normalization. That the Saudi, how did Ian Bremmer
39:44
say Saudi deal is off the table, which is another way of saying that America's effort to create a
39:54
diplomatic track for regional integration and normalization has somehow been obviated by this
40:02
attack. I think that is a tremendous mistake. It's a mistake to think it, and it would be
40:15
a tremendous mistake for America to operate under that principle. And I got the sense this
40:24
afternoon watching Blinken's press conference that he's, that somehow he understands it. You know,
40:30
during the 73 war, the first war I covered, Israel was given, Henry Kissinger gave Israel a chance to
40:44
surround the Egyptian third army, if you remember. But he very carefully and very deliberately did
40:52
not let the Israelis bombard it because he realized that the 73 war was a crisis that
41:01
was too good to lose, that it had a diplomatic opportunity attaching to it. The same is true
41:12
here. The Saudi initiative was often reported to be a very minor carousel, which is yes,
41:22
we'll have to do something for the Palestinians, but just enough so that Mohammad Bin Salman will
41:28
not be embarrassed too much in pursuing his normalization. In fact, the Saudi initiative
41:35
has been held up. The Saudi normalization has been held up because of the Palestinian question. But
41:43
it's also true that both from the American point of view, there was no effort to really push the
41:49
Palestinian issue or to elevate the prestige of the Palestine authority in these negotiations,
41:56
to provide an alternative track with which to envision Palestine independence, the end of the
42:05
occupation, and some kind of confederal system in which the Israelis could live with. I think
42:12
the American government today has a tremendous opportunity under the rubric of the Saudi plan to
42:19
elevate the Palestinian national rights in ways that they have not been willing to do before,
42:27
in a way it's absolutely essential that they do so, essential because if this war continues
42:36
as it looks like it's going to continue, it's the very time that Palestinians who
42:41
are not affiliated with Hamas have to feel that they have some kind of political horizon that
42:47
cannot come from the Israeli government today. It can only come from the American government.
42:53
- In connection with that, I think perhaps we are aware that the feeling in Israel among those who
43:02
voted for Netanyahu, the support at this point for Netanyahu is tiny. It's dropped dramatically.
43:12
There's rage at him and his government, at their incompetence, at their stubbornness.
43:19
And it's clear that Israel also will emerge with a very different political scenario. I have to also
43:26
just say that I was on a Zoom with Jim Zogby yesterday and he said, Shikaki's numbers were
43:32
actually elevated. He said that the support for Hamas in Gaza was only at 15 or 16%. Hamas does
43:41
not represent Gazans and shouldn't be conflated any more than Netanyahu and his government
43:48
represent Israelis or Jews. So that is sometimes confused and should be clarified. But yes,
43:57
it's hard to think of anything good coming of such a horror. But if anything does happen, it's clear that there will be a different political scenario. And I believe Ezzedine we were talking about
44:07
Egypt. The situation in Egypt right now is rather dire. It's not clear that Cece will survive this.
44:14
- Yes, I want to remind you that you can ask for the microphone and ask questions directly. You don't have to-
44:21
- You have questions? - [Man] Yes, yes, yes. - [Susannah] Go ahead. - My questions are completely invisible. That's not my job. I meant you're my clients and I have
44:29
to do justice for many, many important 'cause I haven't folded note because they tend to repeat themselves. So I'll orally repeat. It's important. Excellent.
44:38
- So do you want the microphone to ask? - Can you hear me repeat the question? Yes, they can't.
44:44
- Yes. So I'll Oh, thank you. I'll repeat. This is a question that several participants there's,
44:50
there's of course the feelings are very raw and indignation both violence, unto people in Israel
44:56
and Gaza. And that's palpable in many of the notes. I'm thinking of professor, I'm thinking Professor Heschel and other, a caution against, against sheer indignation. But there's a genuine
45:08
question behind the indignation, and I'd be doing an injustice to my clients if I don't repeat this.
45:15
A recurring question is the, sometimes it's an open question. Sometimes it's a statement
45:23
that either Israel generally or the Israeli, the Israeli rule over Palestinians is a form
45:30
of apartheid. Now, otherwise, I would say maybe we don't need this evening, but there's an important, that's an important, that's a legitimate and important claim. But there's a question
45:38
behind this that I think, I feel very strongly should be convicted and is a moral question is
45:45
from that point of view, what do you feel are the legitimate borderline, what the legitimate
45:50
contours of legitimate resistance to what people feel is an unjust apartheid system or occupation?
45:57
That's an important question, which was repeated several times. I'd like to communicate.
46:02
- Let me, let me take the second question about the right of resistance because again,
46:10
as an Egyptian, and even when I was in Jerusalem, I was there during the Second Intifada, those were
46:17
the most violent years, 2000 all the way to 2005. And every time we would talk to Hamas or other
46:28
militants about the use of violence, the question of the right of resistance will come up. So let
46:34
me say what I know about that right of resistance. I'm not a professor of international law. I took,
46:39
you know, enough courses to be able to tell what is what. Occupy, without the question of
46:46
apartheid, so even without going there, which I prefer because that's another. International law
46:55
grants occupied people the right to resist occupation, number one. International law
47:07
grants occupying powers the right to suppress resistance. What international law does is not
47:17
end occupations. What international law does is organize the boundaries of occupation in the same
47:26
way that it doesn't abolish war, but tells you what is acceptable and what is not acceptable
47:33
during war. What is not acceptable for resistance or for suppression is targeting civilians under
47:43
any circumstances. And targeting civilians in international law is different from a collateral
47:52
that is civilian. Targeting civilians is placing a bomb in a coffee shop or a bus. International law
48:04
also prohibits the occupying power from bombing heavily populated area because even if you're
48:11
not targeting civilians, you are bound to hurt civilians. That's what international law says.
48:21
So the question of terrorism is not covered by the legitimate right of resistance. International law
48:31
defines civilians not as people who are completely innocent of occupation, but as people who are not
48:39
not in active service of the army. So even if I'm a soldier in the occupying army and I am on leave,
48:48
I'm on my way to the unit or on my way home from the unit, I am a civilian. If you're asking about
48:56
international law, that's international law. You can take the rest of the question. I am sorry,
49:14
just one more thing. Having said that, the question about using resistance,
49:21
even the legitimate resistance, like, you know, fighting an occupying army, the question is not
49:27
whether you have the right to do this or not, that's an important question, but there is another important question in my view more, which is, is it a good idea to do it? What are the expected
49:38
consequences of your action? And that brings the question of heavily populated areas. If I am a
49:44
freedom fighter who lives in a very crowded area, and I have my operation in that crowded area,
49:50
and then I go and I shoot at a soldier and I know that they're gonna come back and bomb the entire
49:57
neighborhood, is this really a good idea? Can I tell my people, let alone the occupying power,
50:03
can I tell them it's legitimate? And what do you expect the occupying power to do when you shoot
50:10
at its soldiers? You're just like, right, we're occupying, we're out of here. Or are they gonna
50:17
come after you? So the political dimension cannot be fully dissociated from the legal question.
50:27
- Look, I've had to give the thought of what really qualifies as terrorism quite a good,
50:36
I had to give it a good deal of thought. My own stepsister was killed by a terrorist. And,
50:42
you know, since the early '70s I've been thinking about, well, what really qualifies as terror?
50:49
What's the difference between the terrorist and the freedom fighter? And I won't speak now to
50:57
the question of whether or not the occupation of the West Bank and Palestinian Territories
51:05
is in any way legitimate. There's some in Israel who say well, this is contested land,
51:12
et cetera. Well, they're contesting it. So they call it contested land, but it's not, I think according to international law, it's pretty clear that the occupation is a violation of
51:21
the Geneva conventions insofar as it puts Israelis on the other side of what we used to be called
51:28
the green line. I accept that, but now I'm asking you thinking of this in a slightly different way.
51:35
What qualifies as terrorism? What's the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? To me,
51:41
if you are fighting for your freedom, but you have reasonable nonviolent ways of achieving your end,
51:57
that should be the default. If you feel you have absolutely no non-violent ways of
52:07
achieving your end, then, like for example, you know, Hitler's occupation of Ukraine,
52:16
if there is no reasonable, non-violent way of achieving your end, then legitimate resistance
52:23
would mean attacking the armed military of the occupier. I would have to say, if I were
52:38
persuaded that the Palestinian population of the West Bank, leave Gaza aside for a moment,
52:46
the Palestinian occupation of the West Bank left absolutely no way of entertaining a non-violent
52:58
resolution of that conflict, I would say that a Palestinian freedom fighter, much as it hurts me to say this, would have a moral justification for killing an Israeli soldier,
53:11
even if that soldier would be our own grandson or son. I see it morally, I see the logic, I don't
53:26
see the logic of turning people into some category which allows you to kill people at random. That
53:38
anyone who falls into this bucket dies. And I also don't accept the idea that Palestinians
53:47
have no reasonable non-violent way of achieving statehood or confederal relation with Israel.
53:56
- [Ezzedine] What did you say about us disagreeing? - Wait, wait, I know.
54:02
- Just bracket. - No, I know. Ezzedine and I have come up to points in our course several times over the
54:10
last 40, 50 years where we feel we're getting close, close, close. And somehow the diplomatic
54:18
process unravels. As someone who lives in Israel and is fighting for the result that
54:28
I say has been out of reach. I believe that our side can win. And I also believe that
54:39
Palestinians, who by the way, when you go to Ramallah, as I've been many, many times,
54:45
Palestinians are constantly asking questions about political processes in Israel and seem to
54:51
have more interest and expertise about the Israeli political party system than many Israelis do. So-
54:59
- We have questions that people wanna ask, okay? So we're going to. - I'm. - I want to, I have to make an announcement first of all that this event is being live streamed and
55:09
recorded, and if you wish to see the recording, you contact the Dickey Center. It may take a day
55:16
or two. I also have to announce that at 7:00 PM there's a candlelight vigil on the Dartmouth Green
55:22
and President Sian Beilock will be speaking there. Okay, so let's take some questions.
55:28
- We have four or five questions here. - [Andrew] Oh, alright. Hello, I'm Andrew. So my question kind of stems from Tuesday,
55:37
but I think it's pretty relevant. - Speak a little louder, closer to the microphone. - Yeah, so I think my question kind of carries over to today as well. Harvard President Gay
55:46
released a statement saying she condemns the terrorist atrocities perpetuated by Hamas. The NBA said, they condemn these acts of terrorism and they stand with the people
55:56
of Israel. President Biden said, the brutality of Hamas brings to mind the worst rampages of
56:03
ISIS. Other institutions aren't shying away from condemning Hamas, but Dartmouth is, Dartmouth said
56:11
the violence and deaths are heartbreaking, but they did not condemn Hamas. On Tuesday,
56:17
some of you echoed this ambiguous language. For example, professors Heschel and El-Ariss said
56:23
they quote condemned violence, but they wouldn't summarily condemn Hamas. I know that every one of
56:29
you would condemn Hamas if I asked you directly, but it's clear what's going on when someone says
56:35
they condemn violence rather than Hamas. Obviously everyone condemns violence. The wording of
56:42
condemning violence clearly obfuscates who you're condemning and attempts to imply and all sides are
56:49
bad narrative downplaying the notion of a single aggressor. When Russia invaded Ukraine, sure there
56:55
were complicated dynamics at play, but nobody was saying they condemned the violence in the region. - Can you please ask the question?
57:02
- Yes. - Could you please let? - So this is very different. So Dartmouth's response was to openly condemn Russia,
57:10
and this is very different from Dartmouth's response to Israel and Palestine. It seems
57:15
like you're trying to strike a moral parody to not make Hamas' actions seem worse than Israel. - If you could ask the question.
57:22
- Excuse me, please let him, what happened to save space? - Here's the question. Sorry. So why don't you just come out and say it. Why don't you say
57:31
you're hesitant to condemn Hamas because you don't want to imply one side is worse than the other?
57:36
- Thank you. Let me, let me, take three, four questions and then we respond.
57:43
- I wanna say we certainly condemn Hamas. It goes without saying. I cannot imagine
57:51
that anyone wouldn't think that of me really. You know, anyone who knows me knows that. And
57:59
I think I've been pretty clear about that. And I think that President Beilock has also been clear
58:04
and the rest of the administration. There's some things that are just so obvious and sometimes it
58:11
should not. If you don't understand that, then I think there is some confusion on your part. So we-
58:24
- We're taking multiple questions at a time. - Hi, sorry. So I'll make this quick sort of, how do you guys see sort of these events playing
58:32
into sort of political support for extremism, especially like in both Israel and Palestine? We've got this rise of sort of the Kahanists like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich in the new Israeli
58:41
government, and how do we see this playing into support for Jewish extremism? How do we play this,
58:47
there may be an election in Palestine in the next few years, hopefully. How do we see this playing into potential support for Hamas? How do we see, you know, Israeli and Palestinian citizens
58:56
feeling about this as they will it drive support for extremism? Sorry, I rambled on. - No, thank you. Excellent question.
59:04
- Going off of that question and then what you were speaking of just now on the question
59:10
of civilians and resistance, somewhere in the thousands of firearms are reportedly
59:17
being distributed to Israeli civilians for what purposes are not explicitly clear,
59:23
but seem implicitly around self-defense or potentially aggression following a summer,
59:31
maybe a year or so of some of the most extreme expansions that the Israeli settlements in the
59:37
West Bank have seen. I think there's room to ask to what extent is arming, does a country arming
59:46
civilians or providing civilians with the ability to function as a militia, if not organized,
59:53
complicate the barrier between, the distinction between civilian and not civilian. And then to
1:00:00
maybe push further on that, if you're talking about a country that is in a position of settler
1:00:06
colonialism, where what is very much at stake in the ethnic cleansing is not a question of just
1:00:12
the military versus the occupied population, but the actual civilian replacement of one population
1:00:19
with another. How does that complicate or change the dynamics of the two civilian populations with
1:00:28
respect to each other? I say this as somebody whose brother lives in the occupied West Bank as an Israeli settler, and it's a very painful thing to think about and talk about.
1:00:36
- Thank you. There are two questions here also, if you can take- - We're taking too many. I mean, I feel like we can.
1:00:43
- Think she's got some Oh, okay. - I, okay. I have a question here. I would love to hear some discussion about Egypt and its role
1:00:56
historically in Gaza, not talking about their role as a potential mediator going forward.
1:01:03
I'm talking about Egypt's role in closing borders, refusing to provide aid, refusing
1:01:09
to assist and welcome Palestinians historically. How that led to the situation in Gaza and what
1:01:20
should be done about Egypt's role and other Arab neighboring states roles going forward.
1:01:27
- Thank you. One last and then we'll. - Hello professors How are you doing? - Yeah.
1:01:32
- My question. All major international human rights organizations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, even Israeli ones like B'Tselem use the term apartheid to describe the
1:01:41
Israeli treatment of Palestinians. But it seems like in a lot of these spaces, apartheid gets kind of dismissed and ignored as though it makes people uncomfortable. I would like to get your
1:01:49
direct thoughts on apartheid and stop skirting around the question. Thank you for your time. - Thank you. Okay. So do you wanna start with the statement issue,
1:01:59
the denunciation or shying away from denouncing?
1:02:06
- None of us are shying away from that. But I'm not sure that we've had so many questions here. I'm not sure which one to deal with.
1:02:15
- It seems to me that this is not a time for us to start picking apart this statement or that statement. It's not even clear to me that university presidents need to issue statements.
1:02:24
What that accomplishes. I think it's a very simple way of being reductionist and really
1:02:30
avoiding the complexity of the situation. That's not what we wanna do as academics. We wanna see
1:02:37
the complexity and not try to reduce it to a sentence or two. So whether or not somebody
1:02:43
formulates a sentence that you like or you don't like, it should have been formulated this way or that way. That's a waste of time right now, in my opinion. There are more important things
1:02:51
for us to be studying, to be thinking about, to be analyzing, to draw out and not reduce.
1:02:57
- Let me see if I can put two questions together and answer you.
1:03:05
- Ramsey. - You're a little distracted at the moment. I'm actually answering you.
1:03:11
Okay. You ask if Israel's an apartheid state. - [Ramsey] What are your thoughts on that? - Okay. I think that if you look at Jerusalem and the settlements, the way they conduct themselves
1:03:24
and the attitudes of the people in Jerusalem and the settlements, what you have is an apartheid
1:03:32
state. But that's not all of Israel. Israel also is a global cosmopolitan, commercially free,
1:03:48
culturally advanced, technologically interesting state in Tel Aviv, Haifa,
1:03:57
the Coast. And that megalopolis going up the coast is as different from Jerusalem as New
1:04:08
York is from rural Mississippi. Okay? And it's very important that you understand that there's
1:04:19
a fight going on in the country for control over the state apparatus by people who have
1:04:25
a very different understanding of what Israel must be. Not greater Israel, but global Israel,
1:04:33
okay? That fight is going on. And that answers your question about this last war and what it's
1:04:42
going to do to the politics of the country. Obviously in the first five days after this
1:04:48
attack, everybody is mobilized for what feels like war. And in the state of war,
1:04:56
the differences between religious Zionists and their dream palace ideas about what the
1:05:02
West Bank is, are all going to be submerged. That those ideas are also all gonna be submerged. The
1:05:07
differences that you have in Tel Aviv to that vision, those differences will be submerged in
1:05:15
a state of mobilization. Once the mobilization ends, I can tell you those differences are going
1:05:21
to resurge. And there's going to have, and there's going to be a tremendous price paid precisely by
1:05:32
the people who helped instigate this. And by the way, many of the soldiers who should have
1:05:39
been on that border were busy suppressing the disturbances among Palestinians to activities
1:05:48
of West Bank settlers. And they should have been there and not patrolling the West Bank.
1:05:53
And people in Tel Aviv know it. There's going to be a price to be paid here. And in my view,
1:06:00
we are never going to have a more clarifying moment than the day after, the day after.
1:06:08
- I want to just remind everyone, we have this room only until 6:30. So let's keep our questions and answers to the point.
1:06:16
- Just on the question of the political consequences, which I think is, it's a great question. Obviously the attack, the Hamas attacks, and then the expected Israeli response,
1:06:30
which is unfolding now, both were mobilized support and kind of harden identities on
1:06:37
both sides. If you think about it, that actually might be one of the strategic
1:06:42
goals of the attacks itself. The severity of the attack, the scale of the attack, the type,
1:06:48
the brutality of it is almost designed to elicit a specific response. And that response is going
1:06:54
to mobilize the Arab world behind, not those who are seeking to find a solution to the conflict,
1:07:01
but those who are actually riding the conflict, specifically Iran, Hezbollah,
1:07:06
Hamas and so on. So we need to, you know, I'm not in the mind of Hamas, but that's the only kind of
1:07:13
sense I can make of that attack. And the question is whether we kind of walk into this path or try
1:07:21
to pull the parties from this path. That's all. And I wanna quickly just because the question
1:07:30
of apartheid and the question of statements and denunciation, there a kind of mirror,
1:07:36
and I wanna ask you a question, frankly, I'm asking not a rhetorical question. As a student,
1:07:42
as a person, what does it matter to you? What I or or Bernie think about apartheid?
1:07:50
- [Student] I would like to hear an educated and academic voice on the issue. - Okay, so would you like to hear kind of analysis, what does the question mean,
1:07:59
apartheid, why certain people are pushing it? What are they trying to achieve? Where are they coming
1:08:04
from? Why others feel that this anti-Semitic to point out Israel as, and what are they trying
1:08:10
to do by opposing the question and the politics around this, on campuses and elsewhere? Is this
1:08:16
more interesting to you or what Ezzedine Fisher think about apartheid? It's a serious question.
1:08:22
- [Student] With all respect, I hold your opinion very highly, so I would not mind hearing what you think I respect what you have to say.
1:08:28
- Okay. I think the question is mute. I think the question is entirely political. It's a political operation whether you actually follow Amnesty and Human Rights Watch or you
1:08:40
oppose it. Either way it's a political issue. Is there discrimination in Israel? Yes. Is
1:08:46
the discrimination systematic? Yes. Is there occupation? Yes. Is there suffering? All of
1:08:51
those questions, nobody's contesting that. Do you wanna label it as apartheid? Then, that's
1:08:58
a political question. Why do you wanna label it as apartheid? What are the consequences of that?
1:09:03
- [Student] Apartheid is more than just a label. It has a series of very serious repercussions and implications which would seriously affect how internationally we respond to what's going on.
1:09:12
So it's much more than just a label. It's a much, it's a very serious issue. And I think this entire, you know, forum is for asking the important political questions. That's why
1:09:20
I asked a question. I hope I didn't strike you as an operative or something like that. - No, no, no, it doesn't. No, no, no. I just disagree that the answer to the
1:09:29
question has all those repercussions legally or politically. Why? Because the players,
1:09:36
whether they're states or non-state, are aware of those repercussions, theoretical repercussions, and therefore prevent the question from coming to that.
1:09:46
So the question itself and the answers given to it is part of the political conflict.
1:09:52
- May I just say there's one aspect of this question of apartheid that becomes very
1:09:57
misleading. The apartheid regime in South Africa had, just a moment. It's important to understand
1:10:07
what Israel has become. The apartheid regime in South Africa didn't just institute discriminatory
1:10:15
policies. It was a white settler colonial population that exploited a black indigenous
1:10:25
community for their labor and resources. That has never actually happened in Israel. Israel did not,
1:10:38
the Zionist Movement did not create a settler population that was exploiting an
1:10:44
indigenous population. The damage it did to the Palestinians was precisely that it wanted to be
1:10:50
economically independent of the Palestinian population and created a society that was
1:10:57
independent politically and economically from the Palestinian population. Its damage to the
1:11:04
Palestinian population was in the way that it moved the Palestinian population aside,
1:11:10
that I will certainly want to deal with. But apartheid gives us an image of what Israel is,
1:11:18
which if you don't understand the place and have never been there, you can't possibly understand
1:11:24
how something like Tel Aviv can exist and how the science and technologies and the
1:11:30
companies that exist there without any Arab workers at all exist. So, getting this idea
1:11:39
that somehow this is an apartheid state just feels to me a completely misleading thing.
1:11:44
- Okay we're gonna move on for more questions. All right?
1:11:52
- [Woman] Egypt. Questions on y'all notice? - Yes. - Sorry. - Go ahead. - Okay.
1:11:57
- Ezzedine. - Hi. You talked a lot about how Hamas does not actually represent the Palestinian people,
1:12:04
which is a point I 100% agree with. This is sort of a two part question, but first of all,
1:12:10
do you believe that endorsing an attack by Hamas, which is an explicitly anti-Semitic organization,
1:12:15
is in and of itself in anti-Semitic position? And on that point, do you believe that student
1:12:21
organizations which are affiliated with the Palestinian rights movement should be able to endorse the Hamas attack in public forums or through mass email, especially when so many
1:12:30
students that they're talking to have lost family members or friends in these attacks?
1:12:37
- Do you wanna collect a few other questions? Any last questions? Yes, please. Here in the front.
1:12:47
- Okay, given the kind of atrocities are happening in Israel and Gaza right now,
1:12:54
what do you think is like most likely fate of Palestinians that is going to happen in future. Do you think it's always like at any time going to subside
1:13:02
or is going to continue as a war forever? What will happen to people who live there?
1:13:11
- Wait, any others? Yes, here.
1:13:16
- [Man] Yeah, I have a question about the hostages. Our hearts all go out for the people that are being held hostage in Gaza. It seems like the Israeli government's stance,
1:13:27
and I might be oversimplifying here, is that give us back the hostages or we're gonna keep
1:13:33
bombing you. And the bombs that are going off are killing and making homeless more and more
1:13:38
Palestinians. So I guess the question that I have is, it seems like the assumption is that
1:13:46
if they bomb enough and great enough misery that Hamas will give up the hostages. I guess
1:13:53
my question is does Hamas leadership really care how many Palestinians die?
1:14:05
- Sure. - Okay. - Thank you. I wanted to ask a question from you about why it seems that the US
1:14:13
state is pretty ubiquitous in its support ideologically and economically for Israel.
1:14:18
And what are some of the historical and maybe the strategic reasons for this, and how do you recommend that we voice our disagreement if we have it with this support
1:14:28
when this opposes essentially every powerful institution that really shapes our lives.
1:14:35
- [Ezzedine] Thank you. - I've also received a question, a note question, what can the United States do to deescalate the
1:14:43
war now and what can we as students and faculty do to help such a deescalation?
1:14:54
- Would you like to respond to one of the questions, Susannah?
1:15:00
- Yes. Just quickly, we have just a few minutes and I wanted to say that in response to this question and to the question of resistance, there are many forms of resistance and I believe very
1:15:11
strongly that since we are here at a university, we have to think in terms of ideas. Judaism itself
1:15:17
has been completely reconfigured in the last 30 years or so. We see that in Israel and also
1:15:25
outside Israel, and that's highly problematic to me. And that reconfiguration, redefinition,
1:15:31
which is contrary in many ways, very fundamental ideas and principles of Judaism that's deeply
1:15:38
troubling and we need to answer, we need to also win readers for our ideas and for our opposition
1:15:45
to that. I say that just as a professor of Jewish studies, it's only one aspect, but for
1:15:51
all students and faculty ideas are very powerful. We need to formulate them. We need to take classes
1:15:57
to study. If you want to make a difference and if you want to act in resistance to what is been
1:16:04
developing over these years to the suffering and the misery, then your ideas are important, write,
1:16:11
study, think, analyze, that matters a lot. That's why we exist as a university. In terms
1:16:18
of the deescalation right now, I have a lot of, I have hope even as I have despair and I have rage,
1:16:28
I don't trust the current government in Israel. I certainly don't trust Hamas. I do think there
1:16:33
are a few people right now whom I respect. Jake Sullivan was here as a Montgomery fellow. I met
1:16:39
him and I actually respect him a great deal as a human being. I feel the same way about the Secretary of State Blinken, who's there now. I do think that we have good people here. I wish that
1:16:50
Reverend Jesse Jackson were in good health because he was able over the years, to rescue hostages in
1:16:57
many circumstances. I think that theologians and religious leaders also have a role to play here
1:17:03
because we are dealing with very hardened hearts on many sides of this conflict. And having grown
1:17:11
up at the time of the civil rights movement, I do believe that religion, that the bible,
1:17:18
that scripture, whether it's Quran, New Testament, scripture can soften hardened hearts. So those of
1:17:26
you who are interested in becoming clergy or studying religion and becoming theologians,
1:17:32
and I encourage you to take classes in the religion department here, religion can also
1:17:37
be a very powerful tool. It's not just about secretaries of state and defense people. We all,
1:17:44
in addition, can write to the White House, can write to the Congress, and we can also express our voices and our newspapers and journals that also need to hear from us and our support.
1:17:55
- Right. I'm gonna pick one easy question for you, and that's the question of student
1:18:02
associations and freedom of expression and support for terrorism. How do you?
1:18:09
- I would follow up on something that Susannah is saying here, which I think is,
1:18:15
no, this is connected which I think is absolutely crucial, is that I remember what it was like being
1:18:21
a college student and I remember feeling this kind of, you know, becoming an adult and learning about yourself and how do you, and feeling a sense of kind of, you know, perhaps
1:18:31
insignificance or unimportance or inability to really make a difference, right? But you make a
1:18:36
difference by impacting the people around you, by the influence you have through your daily actions,
1:18:43
through the things that you write, through the interactions that you have through the engagement. You have a platform as being a Dartmouth student. You are a lifelong Dartmouth student or citizen of
1:18:54
Dartmouth. You have the ability to go now and on to have your voice heard if you choose to do that
1:19:02
in media, in writing in variety of different forms and in all kinds of other different,
1:19:09
you know, contexts. And so seize that opportunity. Recognize the position and the opportunity that
1:19:17
you have and move forward to have your voice heard and think of it not as something that,
1:19:22
you know, there's a quick fix or a quick response. That it's a life-long endeavor to
1:19:27
have your voice heard and influencing people and impacting them and connecting and being
1:19:33
influenced and impacted is a day in, day out on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis. I think
1:19:41
about these things all the time and, you know, I hope I have many more years to go, but I really,
1:19:47
I really feel passionately about having your voice heard in the many different opportunities
1:19:57
and ways on a day in, day out basis. And having faith that that is a way to influence and impact
1:20:05
not just the people around you, not just only to leave a legacy, but to change the world.
1:20:10
- Thank you. - I think I'm gonna have my voice heard in a moment. - Just a moment. - I picked one question for you.
1:20:16
- Because there are two that haven't even been addressed. - I know one is about how the fact that it's a settler colonial,
1:20:24
how does this complicate the question of terrorism? It's an important question. - Well I feel like honestly, Ezzedine, I feel like I've tried to deal with that. I
1:20:32
want to deal with the question of American policy. - It's great, it's great to moderate academic.
1:20:38
- Because. - Or monitor them either. - [Susannah] We have seven minutes left to this room. Seven minutes we have to leave the room.
1:20:46
- I can see the clock right over here, but I feel like there are two questions that were raised here
1:20:54
have been completely ignored. One is about whether Israel believes that by bombing Gaza it'll get
1:21:03
the hostages released and one is about American foreign policy. Okay. Obviously in seven minutes,
1:21:12
I'm not going to have much to say. I do want to however respond, I don't think
1:21:19
it's Israel's strategy to bomb Hamas in order to get the hostages returned. I don't believe,
1:21:27
I think right now there's a rather, I would say almost callous sense that there's a bigger
1:21:35
strategic problem Israel has and it's got to deal with that. And in the same way that it's putting
1:21:42
its own soldiers in harm's way, the hostages may wind up being victims of that larger strategic
1:21:50
problem. About America, I will only say that there was a moment, there was a moment when
1:21:59
American foreign policy somehow pivoted to thinking of Israel as a strategic asset in
1:22:07
the Middle East. I think that continues at some level. But I think America has also understood
1:22:16
that to the extent that the Middle East blows up, that its own interests can be compromised
1:22:25
and Israel is for America for quite a while now both this strategic asset on the one hand and
1:22:35
also this problem child that needs to be somehow educated to some larger regional opportunity,
1:22:45
which I think is now the default position of the American government. That the real opportunity is
1:22:51
to follow what the Abraham Accord started, which is the integration of Israel into the region
1:22:59
and to try to solve the problem of Palestine from the outside in rather than inside out.
1:23:05
- All right. So I will answer the question that my colleagues wisely avoided, which is about student
1:23:15
advocacy. And I'm not our arbiter of what should be banned and what should be allowed, but I will
1:23:22
address both Arab and Jewish students and remind you two things. One is advocating for your rights,
1:23:33
for the rights of the people you care deeply about doesn't have to be incitement against the other
1:23:42
group. It really doesn't. There is no connection between the two. And the second thing is,
1:23:48
here at Dartmouth, one of the things that made me stay, I was here only for a year, is that I
1:23:54
found this is one of the only very few campuses in the United States where you can actually talk
1:24:01
about these issues and reach out across, you know, the divide. Ruining that because one wants to be
1:24:10
righteous and wants to be or feel angry is really unwise and unworthy. We're all students here,
1:24:18
we're not fighting each other. People are fighting back there, we're supporting them. There is
1:24:24
absolutely no point in bringing the fight here. So keep this in mind. Even if it's your legal right
1:24:30
to do something, it is not always the decent thing to do. And when you have an ongoing grievance,
1:24:37
especially like the Palestinians who live under occupation their entire lives and their parents
1:24:42
have been suffering, it's an ongoing grievance. But when can actually be sufficiently sensitive
1:24:50
when there is a catastrophe that is hitting the other group. Maybe it's not the right time
1:24:55
to remind the other group of that grievance and that's, you know, haven't you done that,
1:25:01
maybe you would be and so on. This is a disaster that happened and we have to be sensitive about
1:25:08
it. And sadly there is another disaster that is happening now and it's gonna unfold in the coming
1:25:15
days. And I expect also the other students to be sensitive about that. So I'm just reminding you
1:25:22
of those things. You can throw what I say, you know, somewhere, and I'm sure a lot of you might
1:25:28
do be tempted, but you might also want to consider that just for a minute or two and I'll stop here.
1:25:40
- Thank you very much.
1:25:46
- Thank you all for coming. - I wanna thank you all for coming. We will have future gatherings and I look forward to seeing you there.
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