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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/24528/full/24528/at-last-respectful-spontaneous-mideast-dialogue-at-sfsu/ <br /><br /> <b>At last, respectful, spontaneous Mideast dialogue at SFSU</b> <br /> Thursday, December 9, 2004 | by <p>fred astren & marc dollinger </p> <br /><br /><p>Jewish and Palestinian students stood in the center of Malcolm X Plaza at San Francisco State University and debated one another on the Middle East conflict. In the middle of a rally sponsored by the General Union of Palestine Students, a small group of students from Hillel and the Israel Coalition began to engage Palestinian students. As Palestinian speakers stood on stage reading a laundry list of alleged Israeli atrocities, Jewish and Palestinian students attending the rally turned away from the stage and toward one another.<br /><br /> Last month, for the first time in memory (and certainly since the creation of the SFSU Jewish studies program), Palestinian students debated with Jewish students in civil and respectful dialogue. Students from both sides stood face to face, listening to one another’s point of view, challenging perspectives, and forcing all of us who witnessed this event to rethink our assumptions about how these two groups can interact at SFSU. Neither side retreated from its position, but each listened to the other while demonstrating discipline and restraint.<br /><br /> Within minutes of the first impromptu debate, dozens of students gathered around to listen to classmates present their positions. Soon, the focus of the rally turned away from the official program on stage as more and more students, Jewish and Palestinian, entered into conversation on the plaza. At any other time in the relationship between these two campus groups, such a situation could have degenerated into an emotional and threatening confrontation. To our amazement, today was different. The rally fizzled out as the demonstration performance on stage was transformed into dialogue in the plaza.<br /><br /> These spontaneous debates, which did not seem connected to Yasser Arafat’s death just a few days before, continued for close to an hour with students from both sides calling for creation of an ongoing dialogue. When the rally ended at 2 p.m., Jewish and Palestinian students shook hands. As a group of Palestinian students left the plaza, they called out to the Jewish students, “Peace in the Middle East!”<br /><br /> Such expressions are a far cry from the rejectionist political positions that have typified GUPS, which has been at the center of some of our campus’ most vitriolic political rallies, including an international headline-generating confrontation with Jewish students 2 1/2 years ago. Over the years, the group has mirrored Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, consistently and angrily repudiating Arafat for negotiating with Israel and the United States. As readers of j. are no doubt aware, GUPS has called for the destruction of the state of Israel, equated Zionism with racism and affixed its name to an anti-Semitic blood libel poster distributed on campus.<br /><br /> As members of the faculty and Jewish studies professors, we believe it is our responsibility to take a public stand in support of civil, reasoned discourse. As educators and mentors, we strive to lead our students by example. We attend political events regularly to observe how Israel and Jews are being represented and to maintain a Jewish faculty presence, with the security of students in mind. <br /><br /> The university should be a safe place where all can offer their perspectives, test their own intellectual assumptions, and engage in even the most challenging forms of critical inquiry. A rabbinic saying teaches that we learn the most from our students. In their conduct today, our students became our teachers. <br /><br /> We praise the Jewish students who chose to attend the rally and made a critical decision to challenge the political status quo on campus. A few articulate and focused student leaders can make a difference. That day, they did. We also offer our public support for GUPS and hope that those developments will be more than an aberration from past patterns, but will serve as a standard by which future campus behavior and debate will be judged.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /> <b>Fred Astren</b> is director of the Jewish studies program at SFSU. <b>Marc Dollinger</b> is the Goldman professor in Jewish studies and social responsibility at SFSU.<br /><br /> <br /><br /><br /> <b>Local voices welcomed</b><br /><br /> J. welcomes your local voice on timely Jewish issues and events of the day. Submissions will not be returned and are subject to editing or rejections. Approximate length: 750 words. E-mail text, not attachments, to the attention of: Woody Weingarten at <a href="mailto:woody@jweekly.com"><a href="mailto:woody@jweekly.com">woody@jweekly.com</a></a>. Fax to (415) 263-7223. Mail to J. the Jewish news weekly, 225 Bush St., #1480, San Francisco, CA 94104</p> <p> </p>

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