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By Gideon Baum

The university is, both by nature and design, a place where the great issues of our time are debated and struggled over. Some disputes, such as the Skinner-Chomsky language acquisition debate, remain unanswered and esoteric. However, other university debates, such as the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, permanently altered the political arena in a tangible and concrete way that can still be felt decades later. Today, it appears the Israeli-Palestinian debate is one of the most crucial debates on American college campuses, and it probably will remain as such into the foreseeable future.

However, the Israel-Palestine debate has gone into territory that few previous debates have ventured. In the struggle for the hearts and the minds of the student body, advocates in both the pro-Israel and pro-Palestine camps have chosen to use emotion over reason, sound bites and pithy facts over reasoned and sensible discussion.

In short, the debate becomes a struggle of black versus white, where the side with the better public relations handlers can triumphantly raise its fist in victory, but only until the next week, when both sides again must struggle against another campaign that has rolled out new devices – which put forward more new and creative twists. The struggle between two very human groups has warped into the struggle between the forces of good and evil.

This structure for the debate is simply wrong. While one can assign one group more blame than another, this is not the same as designating one group as evil and the other as good.

History has taught us this is a state of affairs that simply does not and has not existed. Good and evil are overly simple constructs that do not serve us well when looking at the complex realities facing both the citizens and policy makers. If we look at a similar conflict, such as the conflict between the British and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, few would feel free to draw a strict line between good and evil. Those that did would be foolhardy, indeed.

Although the IRA is guilty of heinous acts of terrorism that fall far beyond the pale, one can hardly hold up the British Army as an example of absolute moral purity. Moreover, as the Catholic population in Northern Ireland continues to grow and approaches the level of superceding the Protestant majority, one does not see constructive movement coming from the left-wing Labor Party. Neither has there been any attempt to use a constructive model from the competing right-wing Conservative Party, or even a hint of compromise from the IRA.

Yet both sides have very solid and very real reasons for their behavior rooted in previous experiences. In short, the simplistic paradigm of good and evil does not capture the true complexity of the conflict, and serves, paradoxically, as an abstraction that muddies, rather than clears, the water.

There is, however, a far worse result from creating a bogus good-or-evil paradigm for the Israeli-Palestinian debate, in that it allows the advocates of both the Palestinians and Israelis to excuse themselves from any kind of meaningful dialogue or discussion and instead adopt an ends-justify-the-means approach to slapping down the opposing side. This approach permits advocates to walk the low road and place cheap public relations victories over meaningful discussion.

Instead of having dialogue, we have protests at celebrations and destructive, undermining counter-programming. Instead of moderate debates and efforts to cultivate the ability to agree to disagree, we see flyers distributed with distortions and untruths designed to mislead rather than educate.

This was exemplified when the most active UCLA pro-Israel group decided to air an inflammatory film during Islamic Awareness Week. The film was aired in order to highlight some of the factual oversights of the week and factually was correct, but it was shown at the wrong place and at the wrong time; and it reflected poorly on the Jewish community.

The ease in which the advocates of the Israeli and Palestinian perspectives rush down the low road is disheartening and distressing. That path does not do justice to the complex realities of the situation. It does not serve to create a forum of intelligent debate to enrich the university community, and it does not uplift the participants. Rather, it dirties all who partake in the debate.

It is time for both sides to step up and begin the long and painful process toward meaningful dialogue and debate. It is time for both sides to recognize we have far more in common than we ever have admitted. It is time for the university to return to a place of moderate debate, rather than a battlefield for false and distorted public relations victories. It is time for both sides to take to heart the precepts of the holy books that lead them and to walk the high road, no matter how painful it is.

The forces of division and hatred have reigned free for too long, and it is time for both sides to realize that they only have damned themselves.

Baum is a third-year political science student and the president of the Jewish Student Union.