The Campus Intifada Is a Golden Opportunity for Those Who Study Israel Seriously

The spotlight on Israel should be seen as a chance to explain the country to those who misunderstand it.

The protesters who burst into the first class I taught last semester at Columbia University are, no doubt, living proof of just how difficult it is to teach about Israel at prestigious American universities. Ironically, the protesters barged into the room shouting against “the Zionist lecturer who came to preach Zionism” and the students who only wanted to learn, just as I was explaining that in this course, “The History of Modern Israel,” we would be studying both the Palestinian narrative—which regards the 1948 war as “the Nakba,” the culmination of the Palestinian catastrophe—and the Israeli narrative, which regards 1948 as the climax of the process of national redemption and the War of Independence.

The protesters, some of whom were students, ignored my invitation to join the class and express their opinions during the lesson. They came to shout and protest, not to debate or learn. This incident weighed on my students and naturally made it harder for me to focus on the reason I had come to Columbia in the first place: to teach and conduct research.

Yet despite the difficulties, this incident—which drew special attention because it occurred in a classroom and was captured on a viral video—also had a positive impact. Immediately afterward, the waiting list for the course increased. During the semester, my students and I felt that we were not only learning history but also experiencing a historic period firsthand. These circumstances certainly made class more meaningful for both the students and for me.

In other words, the challenges surrounding Israel studies at the present moment also provide tremendous opportunity. For better or worse, Israel is one of the most debated countries in the world today—and what better time could there be to offer students the chance to study Israeli history, sociology, and culture with scholars who specialize in these fields?

It is common to complain—especially after the age of forty—that young people consume their news superficially through social media. But the truth is more complex. Many young people, particularly those who choose to pursue a university education, are thirsty for knowledge, for deep conversations, and for diverse perspectives. The younger generation tends to read less, but the popularity of historical television series and hours-long podcasts suggests that the problem is not a lack of interest, but rather an issue of medium. We must figure out how to impart knowledge, adapting our methods for a generation accustomed to consuming information through short videos.

With the proper approach and a healthy dose of intellectual courage, courses about Israel can succeed, and students can investigate and debate issues without getting mired in political controversy or ideological disputes. To achieve this, a few conditions must be met.

First, universities need to offer more courses on Israel and enlist the very best scholars to teach them. And there are many such scholars. Second, it is not enough to offer courses; one must also encourage students to enroll in them—for example, by granting extra course credits to those who seek to delve into a subject that so many talk about yet so few truly understand. In my view, anyone today—whether Jewish, Muslim, Christian, or anything else—who sets out to deepen his knowledge of Israel deserves appreciation.

Third, course content needs to be updated. For instance, Israel is associated in many people’s minds with the European-Ashkenazi origins of many of its founders, and by extension is regarded as a product of “white,” European colonialism. The reality is that since the 1960s, the majority of Israel’s population has hailed from the Middle East. Courses on the Jews from Islamic countries, the Mizrahim who immigrated to Israel as part of decolonization in the Arab world, can challenge students and raise issues of identity, colonialism and post-colonialism, integration, protest, and cultural change. These topics also allow for fruitful comparisons between Israel and other places around the world. Such an approach can generate more interest and attract additional students while also enriching the field itself.

Another requirement is openness and intellectual courage on the part of Israel-studies scholars. Whatever one’s personal political views, we must engage with all aspects of the field and not entrench ourselves in a single perspective. For example: I believe that equating Zionism with settler colonialism is a grave mistake, but it would also be a mistake to ignore that thesis completely. Not only can learning from it, in certain limited respects, illuminate some aspects of the Zionist experience, but, more importantly, the theory itself has become part of the story. Therefore, instead of ignoring it or automatically dismissing it, engaging with it helps to demonstrate just how problematic and limited it is. Indeed, showing how the settler-colonialism model imposes a fixed logic on history that presumes one can see the end of a process from its beginning can teach students something every historian should know: that history is built on complex interactions, contingencies, and specific responses to unexpected events. It is when this complexity is ignored, in the leap from “what happened” to “what had to happen,” that an ideological distortion occurs, rendering the theory problematic and detached from reality, as Adam Kirsch deftly explains in his excellent new book.

Israel studies should not only contend with existing theories, but also introduce new ones. For example, Johannes Becke and I co-authored an article analyzing the formation of Israeli society by comparing it to Creole societies, which also involve immigration, struggles over indigeneity, nationalism, colonialism and post-colonialism, nostalgia for the cultures of their countries of origin, and questions of identity. Without diving into the details of our thesis—which of course is itself open to criticism—the very attempt to understand Israel through less conventional comparisons, looking to places far removed from both the West and the Middle East, can invigorate and enrich the field.

Additionally, the new generation of Israeli scholars will have to learn Arabic as part of their training. This is both because it is a dominant language of the region in which Zionism has unfolded over the past century, and because it is a language that millions of Jews spoke throughout history. More broadly, while Israel is still usually explained by comparison to liberal Western countries, to understand it fully one must also compare it to its neighboring states and societies. From this perspective, one can see not only the familiar differences and disputes, but also points of similarity between Israel and its neighbors.

We should not be naïve. Israel studies will keep suffering from the political burdens placed upon it, just as people will continue to deny Zionism even in peaceful times if they don’t believe Jews deserve a state.

But if these conditions are fulfilled, Israel studies can transform the current crisis into an opportunity, becoming one of the most important and thriving fields in the humanities and social sciences.

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About the Author
Avi Shilon, a historian and political scientist, is the author of Menachem Begin: A Life (2012), Ben-Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness (2016), and, most recently, The Left Wing’s Sorrow: Yossi Beilin and the Decline of the Peace Camp (Hebrew, 2017). He teaches at Tel-Hai College and Columbia.
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