‘Should Israel exist?’ Should not be the question

Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, I have attended dozens of audiences (some friendly, some hostile) as an educator focused on Israeli studies and understanding Jew-hatred. He has spoken with many people (including those in the classroom) and appeared on panel discussions at multiple schools, universities, and houses of worship.

In some ways, these panels were much like the ones I’ve been to over the years, often with finger pointing, shouting, dueling accusations, and coded words thrown at me.

However, these tactics were once used to ask provocative questions such as: “How far should Israel go?” In any dispute, the following questions are now used: “Why on earth is Israel here?”

In the Middle East, the October 7 attacks and the war that followed shattered Israelis’ sense of security, destabilized the Abraham Accords negotiations, and shattered the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Here in the United States, the effects are less obvious, but just as fundamental.

Rather than framing the Middle East debate around issues of peace, security, and Palestinian independence, many scholars and students instead center the very existence of Israel. As part of this change, facts have become secondary and language has been hijacked.

For many, the starting point for these conversations is that Israel is a colonialist nation born in sin and acting in sin. This framework is a quasi-religious belief. This doctrine is so sacred that anyone who challenges it is always considered immoral and racist.

how did we get here? To understand that, it helps to explore the intellectual history of the past 80 years.

This narrative of “original sin” is supported by three “posts”: postcolonialism, postnationalism, and postmodernism. Each has its roots in the rejection of European hegemony over Arabs, Africans, and Asians (postcolonialism) after World War II. Rejection of the militant European nation-state system (post-nationalism). and ultimately the Enlightenment concept of fixed truth (postmodernism) was rejected.

The state of Israel was also founded at this time. However, post-theorists generally ignored Jews’ deep ties to their ancestral lands and the 19th century of persecution, including against Mizrahi Jews in the Middle East. Instead, they saw Israel as a white European corporation planted in the middle of indigenous territory, seeking to delegitimize the state and dehumanize its people from birth.

In the decades since, critics have called any Israeli military response to terrorist attacks disproportionate or inhumane, and have repeatedly appealed to the United Nations to condemn Israel alone among the world’s nations. .

This mindset has been amplified and rapidly normalized over the past four months.

Those who define Israel by its “original sin” are intentionally denying the humanity of the Israelis who were massacred on October 7th and who are still being held hostage. They ignore the inhumanity of the terrorists who carried out these crimes and continue to use Palestinian civilians as shields, claiming that any resistance is justified.

As a co-panelist on an Ivy League campus recently told me, Israel is a “settler-colonist” regime “built on Palestinian land.”

Facts are increasingly being denied in these conversations. This includes evidence from years of work by UN Relief and Works Agency staff. Supported Hamas before and during the October 7 attack And that Irresistible evidence of rape and sexual violence during these attacks.

And language is distorted.

“Apartheid” was once defined as deeply ingrained and codified segregation based on skin pigmentation. It is true that Israeli society, which has too often discriminated against ethnic minorities, is now being told that Arab Israelis also serve in the government and have the same legal rights as Jewish Israelis. Flying around.

“Genocide” was once defined as the deliberate destruction of an ethnic group. It is now an accepted shorthand for the human rights tragedy in Gaza and the military operation that Israel postponed for several weeks so that one million Palestinians could leave their homes.

When these words are redefined to delegitimize Israel, their actual meaning and power disappears. Rather, they become a plausible topic for those seeking to deny the world’s only Jewish state’s right to exist. They have become a modern-day blood libel that seeks to place Israel in a position outside the norm, no longer an “acceptable” business that can exist even within the global world order.

As language changes and facts are replaced with “competing narratives” in postmodernist thought, it changes not only conversations about Israel and Palestinians, but also educators like myself and others keen to engage with the ideas. It also poses a real danger to humans.

This ignorant argument about the existence of Israel should what’s happening. However, that conversation is teeth Happening. And no matter how much we denounce, raise our voices, make dueling accusations, use coded words, we cannot withdraw from it.

Dr. Rachel Fish is Special Advisor to the President at Brandeis University. infinitesupport Israeli education and fight hatred against Jews.