The Tartan

By Anand Beh

On Thursday, Feb. 15, the university presented a lecture on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite the claim to be fostering education and “deeper understanding,” the event served to justify and excuse the policies of the Israeli government. Attendees of the lecture were misled by means of an elementary human emotion: our joy.

A harmless joke is usually a relief from a somber subject, and a comedic attitude, where appropriate, can enliven any lecture. However, in certain contexts, a seemingly innocent remark can paint a certain characterization and advance a political narrative. Professor Emerita Laurie Eisenberg opened her lecture, “Mapping the History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” by describing the geographic ignorance of political demonstrators. She described protesters and counter-protesters at a pro-Palestinian demonstration. According to Eisenberg, “some of the most vociferous demonstrators” on either side did not know the name of the Jordan River or the Mediterranean Sea. The unwitting audience in McConomy auditorium laughed.

Yes, demonstrators ought to be informed. But stop to consider the effectiveness of discrediting political protest. Ardently pro-Israel voices dominate American foreign policy and government. Congress will even censure representatives who speak out, like with Rashida Tlaib. In light of these circumstances, protest becomes the last recourse for the genuine grievances of the American public with respect to this conflict. Political protest is the most basic form of popular expression in the face of a government that will not listen and will not stop bombing civilians in Palestine.

It is no surprise that pro-Palestinian demonstrators outnumber their counter-protesters. Supporters of Israel’s war have hardly any need to demonstrate — the government sides with them, the press self-censors criticism of Israel, and America’s beachhead in the Middle East can buy itself commercials at the Super Bowl. When Eisenberg repeats a pointed joke about demonstrators’ ignorance, she is reinforcing the dominant Israeli narrative. It does not matter that Eisenberg described “both sides” in this way. Silencing protest silences pro-Palestinian dissent. This is a highly effective strategy, as the laughter of the audience in McConomy can attest.

It is easy to poke fun at uninformed protesters. The same joke was re-emphasized throughout the lecture, and Eisenberg inserted it subtly and skillfully into a mostly serious discussion of history. Yet the emphasis on demonstrators’ geographic misinformation is a distraction from the pressing concerns of the demonstrators: the high number of civilian casualties, the indiscriminate bombing described by many international agencies and even Biden himself, and the systematic deprivation of Palestinian rights and living standards over multiple decades.

Instead of aiming her criticism at concerned citizens, Eisenberg could have ridiculed American foreign policy. It was America that, despite telling Israel not to expand West Bank settlements, leveraged no diplomatic power to actually stop such expansion and in fact turned around to defend Israel’s actions at the United Nations. The U.S. Department of State has a long history of gross mistakes resulting in death and misery for millions. Our government is run by foreign policy fools unwilling even to visit foreign countries. Is this not laughable? I doubt they know geography either. In the last days of the Obama administration, officials discovered a map and realized Palestine was disappearing. Duh.

Discrediting demonstrators who raise legitimate objections to our foreign policy is at best a shortsighted rhetorical maneuver. Eisenberg’s repeated employment of such an asymmetric joke raises serious concerns. Now that our eyes have been opened, the other flaws of the university-sponsored lecture come to light. To start with, in her first few sentences, Eisenberg described the “Muslim conquest and habitation” of the region — a framing which arguably is quite biased in context of the modern conflict.

Looking closer, a critical analysis seems to reveal deep problems with the content. The lecture created a false equivalence between Palestinian nationalism and Zionism, portraying them simply as competing national movements. It also repeatedly described Palestinian Arabs as rejecting land demarcation accords “on principle” compared to a notion of Jewish pragmatism. According to some scholars, this caricature reinforces a stereotype of Palestinians as irrational political actors. Today these tropes are widely employed in service of a one-sided pro-Israel narrative. The effect of such statements is to present Palestinian nationalism and Zionism as merely two sides in competition, and subsequently to delegitimize Palestinian political action as ideological absolutism. In the modern day, this implies unrelenting support for the Israeli government against the old stereotype of Islamic fanaticism.

What strikes me is the setting and authority with which this material was presented. Eisenberg is an expert on the subject and taught at Carnegie Mellon for decades on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular, among other subjects. The presentation was given to an audience in McConomy auditorium and promoted as part of the university’s “Deeper Conversation” series. These qualifications and a Ph.D. are no guarantee of a balanced presentation on a contentious topic. Eisenberg may have intended no harm, but as Americans we cannot hold ourselves to a standard of intentions when people are dying in consequence of our actions.

Act we can. I encourage readers to attend demonstrations and express legitimate objections to our darkly humorous political ruling class. Young or old, Ph.D. or middle school, Palestinian or Jewish, both or neither — there is no person unwelcome. Within our university, we can avoid events that smother history in propaganda. Much of the “Deeper Conversations” series can be quite valuable, but we must never take what the university sponsors for granted. The next installment in the event series is a book discussion on material by Neil Caplan – all students attending should question the book’s rhetorical framing and the selection of the book itself, not just the content. I also recommend another book, “The Human Right to Dominate” by Perugini and Gordon, which is available online through the university library and ILLiad interlibrary loans.

We can learn from Eisenberg’s lecture. A university series so-named to promote “deeper conversations” may not really, and it may include events that whitewash Israeli actions in Gaza while delegitimizing outspoken political protest. Assuming the information you receive from the university, the news, or distinguished scholars is “authoritative” will only serve the dominant narrative. Think critically, or someone else may do the thinking for you.