The Tartan

Anand Beh, Staffwriter

There is perhaps no greater lament in American politics than the notion of the two sides. The mantra of “both sides” permeates our discourse as it frames parties and people in opposition to one another. But while the reductive effects and preclusion of intellectual diversity are deleterious everywhere, the phrasing of opposing sides is most dangerous, and its consequences most grave, with respect to the issue called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

At the beginning of the month, the Frick museum announced it was forestalling the opening of an exhibition on Islamic art. Their decision was justified, in internal committee, on the basis of sensitivity concerns surrounding the events on Oct. 7. Many complained, and Frick walked back the move. However, the Frick museum fiasco demonstrates a broader problem — namely, a flawed collective cognition of the conflict and its interested persons.

The Frick committed a terrible error by equating Islam with terrorism, but they are not alone. All over the country, Americans are inflicting violence on people due to perceived support for one “side” or the other. Jews on campuses, in subways, and along neighborhood sidewalks are being harassed, punched, and shouted at. Violence and prejudice against Arabs and Muslims is also on the rise, with hateful incidents reminiscent of the early 2000s. The assailants share a common mindset: they conclude, whether on the basis of their target’s speech or ethnicity, that the person in front of them is an enemy. They equate their victims with perpetrators of violence in another region. Violence in our own communities is the result.

Surely, you say, the Frick is not responsible for these hateful events. They are not. However, hatred does not arise in a vacuum; it is a collective emotion. Look to what the halls of government and thrones of power say. Marjorie Taylor Greene declared, “Anyone who is pro-Palestine is pro-Hamas,” while Ron DeSantis said of Palestinian refugees, “They are all antisemites.” A social media account for the Israeli Defense Forces said, “Either you stand with Israel or you stand with terrorism,” and perhaps this is the only point on which Hamas agrees — former Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal called on the “Arab and Islamic world” to assist his organization, implying that Muslim-majority countries should support Hamas’ terror.

Ultimately, it matters less who issues such statements, and more that the rhetoric is effective in dividing peoples into oppositional racial groups. Khaled Meshaal, who resides comfortably in Qatar, would, in another world be best friends with Bezalel Smotrich, who says that Israelis are united to “destroy the bad and re-illuminate the good.” That is the same Smotrich who does not recognize Reform Jews, and said in February that the Palestinian town of Huwara “should be wiped out,” and affirmed in 2015 that “Hamas is an asset” to his politics. This last quip, that Hamas is an asset to far-right settler politics, underscores the shared interests of powerful racists in promoting violence.

One should therefore stop to consider what these voices gain by constructing dichotomies. Militants and military commanders — regardless of what you think about their war-related goals — use propaganda to vilify their enemies; if the target of destruction is evil embodied, all manner of warfare becomes justified. Racist leaders operate in like fashion: separate, demonize, and dehumanize. Importantly, for racial rhetoric to be effective, the target group must be a monolith.

Racists therefore seek to divide humanity into the good and the evil, the black and the white, and to a lesser extent, the pro- and the anti-. Somehow, it seems, this rhetoric trickles down to the rest of us and poisons the well of discourse. That poison is the essence of two-sided thinking: casting the discussion in terms of one side versus another, specifically in ethnic or nationalist terms. It baffles me to hear so many leaders, journalists, and professors, in an attempt at neutrality, speak in terms of “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestine.”

The very nature of the labels we apply to the issue contributes to the problem. Merely invoking the “Israeli-Palestinian” conflict is to define ethnic groups in opposition. We lack the terminology to appropriately distinguish hateful violence from reasoned dialogue. Yet this failure of our discourse has real consequences, not only by increasing the incidence of expressed hatred, but also through framing the discussion and shaping our reactions to events.

What side are you on? Asking this question is analogous to discussing racism in the United States and asking to pick a color. Answering it accepts tribalism as a given in our discourse. To say that there are “two sides” implies a one-dimensional spectrum of associativity. Under such a framing, all nuance is erased, and advocates on a “side” become homogenous with one another. Thus, Khaled Meshaal becomes my Arabic professor and Bezalel Smotrich teaches history. Tribalism, the consequence of two-sided thinking, asserts that level-headed discourse participants are equivalent to violent combatants.

Of course, it is a far cry to equate the seemingly innocuous usage of “both sides,” and similar phraseology, with overtly racist language from extremists themselves. Nonetheless, language influences how we think and feel. With regard to Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whose very name evokes ethno-nationalist opposition, two-sided thinking contributes to a racialized framing of events. Context is everything. By habitually reciting the two-sides narrative so familiar in the rest of American politics, we play into the racists’ hands.

The tribalism which results from two-sidedness damages our discourse. It equates speech with violence and claims opponents are extremists. More subtly, tribalism suggests that every event commemorating their side’s suffering is a threat to our own people, and that acknowledging “their” pain reduces the acknowledgment of “ours.” We saw this, in a very small way, when the “Kidnapped” posters showing Israelis were mimicked by the creation of “Murdered” posters, of like design, about Palestinians. Every life is valid and morally worthy in its own right, and it is hard to write anything in this sentence without offending someone. This topic deserves a whole new article and is perhaps better left to academics.

We have to remember that conflict is not inevitable, and that peace is possible. Resist the urge to put your enemy into your shared Abrahamic Hell. I have no tribe, so you may be tempted to take these words lightly. But others seem to agree. The executive director of the Frick museum later apologized, saying “My words gave the offensive and utterly wrong impression that I equated Islam with terrorism and that I saw Jews and Muslims — communities with millennia of peaceful interconnection — as fundamentally opposed.” This statement reminds us of the end goal: not the bloody “victory” desired by extremists, but a lasting peace founded on cooperation between peoples. Plenty of Israelis and Palestinians want that too.

For Americans, as long as we follow two-sided thinking and pit tribe against tribe, we will have a shallow, racialized dialogue. Our actions, likewise, will be vicious, punitive, and cruel. Viewing each other as enemies creates lasting animosity in our society, which contributes to outbreaks of hatred, racism, and prejudice. Peace requires that tribalism and two-sided thinking be abandoned. Besides, tribalism influences our foreign policy, which, for so powerful and war-minded a nation as the United States, has deathly consequences.