Over the last month, there have been no fewer than six op−ed articles and letters to the editor dealing in some way with the Israeli−Palestinian conflict, and as public editor, I felt it appropriate to voice my concern about the discourse.
First, some background. This flare−up of articles began with a film screening of "Occupation 101" (2006) by the Tufts chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), resulting in a back−and−forth between offended pro−Israel students and their counterparts in SJP.
One student who suggested I weigh in on the acerbic nature of the subsequent retaliatory response pieces called it like he saw it — "nothing more than using the Daily Op−Ed section for a pissing match over the facts and on the way, pissing all over each other." While I understood his concern and felt that some of the accusatory language used in those pieces was chilling or even harmful to campus dialogue, those writers had a right to passionately express themselves.
Yet after several weeks of butting heads, I must suggest that we channel this passion to something more than just discrediting the other side. Now is the time to call out those on both sides of the issue and, in part, the Daily itself for causing more division than unity.
Other heated on−campus issues we've seen this semester were followed by more level−headed responses and smoothed themselves out with time. In fact, those who wrote on these topics are to be commended for bringing important topics to the fore for discussion.
Think back to earlier conversation makers: CJ Saraceno's Ban Together column attacking the idea of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender housing, Tufts Freethought Society's brief spar with The Primary Source, calls for a more "inclusive" curriculum and the like. From what I observed, these pieces were a shock to the system, which got people thinking about campus questions. Campus media ought to get us thinking about the issues which affect our classmates, and about how our institutions — or lack thereof — reflect on and shape our community.
Within a week or two, these conflicts left the pages of the Daily, but not without leaving their impact on the readership. Ideally, students would have taken the op−eds' meaningful criticisms to heart and ignored the less savory, biting parts of the articles. In private e−mails to the heads of some Media Advocacy Board members, I encouraged them to explore tangential issues in their own publications. Perhaps then campus media and the readership itself would emerge healthier and more critical.
I was hopeful that the string of reactions from the screening of "Occupation 101" would have a similar outcome.
Yet the "pissing match" between Israeli and Palestinian supporters continues. The second wave of Daily op−eds before the Thanksgiving break seemed to call for new ways to get past old squabbles and debates, yet the authors couldn't help themselves and again fit in digs against the other side.
Respectably, writers Ilya Lozovsky of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy on Nov. 22 and Stephanos Karavas of the New Initiative for Middle East Peace on Nov. 23 encouraged Tufts to get over fact−spewing and to exercise emotional self−control, putting progress over indignation. Unfortunately, both pieces committed the very errors they criticized.
Lozovsky's op−ed calls out Tufts' "quite superficial" dialogue on the Middle East. A few paragraphs later, he frames Israeli journalist Gil Hoffman's concern with Palestinian suffering as disingenuous — can his assessment of Hoffman's "mournful tones" be perceived as anything but sarcastic? — only to suggest that a "five−second Google search" would disprove his West Bank land−use analysis. This glib — perhaps itself superficial — dismissal of Hoffman's credibility did not move Tufts' Israeli−Palestinian conversation forward, but reduced it to the very paradigm that she lamented.
The next day, Karavas' piece assessing the state of Tufts' discourse was generally optimistic. While addressing the need for improved campus discussion, he decried the "zero−sum game mentality" of the so−called "op−ed war" as "silly and childish." After that, he perpetuated the culture he so pointedly identified, perhaps unintentionally. In an attempt to name and shame those who engaged in the "us versus them" framing, his criticism was limited to one of the op−ed contributors, Itai Thaler, and other Israel supporters.
Karavas must have known of his fellow SJP member Lucas Koerner's Nov. 15 op−ed response to Ariella Charny's Nov. 3 comments on the screening of "Occupation 101." There, Koerner asserted that "constructive dialogue is obstructed by a determined mystification of the facts" and "hijacked by a proclivity for conflating criticism of the policies of the State of Israel with attacks on the character of the Israeli people or Jews more generally." Can words like "determined mystification," "hijacking" or "proclivity to conflate" really be perceived as anything other than a forceful finger to the chest?
Lest my view seem biased, it must be said that Charny and Thaler's comments had their share of pushiness. Accusations such as being "too quick to see red in the eyes of Israeli soldiers" don't exactly seem to be extending the olive branch either. We must give our peers the benefit of the doubt in these matters, lest things truly spiral out of control and enter into potentially hateful waters.
It's time to move the discussion forward. This means reducing our aggressive claims — which seem less convincing than isolating — to the moral high ground. It means lowering our respective walls — or security fences, as they might be — and being willing to hear beyond what we agree with. It means going to the club meeting of someone whom we have called out in our op−eds and commending him or her for the quality of his or her writing. Maybe even meal him or her into Dewick−Macphie Dining Hall and ask about how they got interested in this conflict. It means attempting to cultivate community — which is what media ought to do in the first place.
This effort won't happen without some changes within the Daily itself. I appreciate the forum the Daily Op−Ed section provides, yet I take issue with its current policies. Though the Op−Ed Department doesn't significantly change the submissions it receives beyond making grammatical corrections, it does reserve the right to place a picture — sometimes bigger than the article itself — alongside the text. If a picture were ever worth a thousand words, this would be the circumstance.
Over the past weeks, I have frequently found the Daily's picture choice questionable and its policy of leaving op−ed photos without a caption unacceptable. The caption−free policy purportedly exists as an attempt to prevent editorializing a submission. Yet if the Daily sees fit to add a picture, would a caption really tamper with the intentions of an op−ed that much?
By adding any picture, the Daily wields incredible power to frame the piece. Readers may be attracted or repelled from an op−ed; perhaps worse, a photo could influence how a reader perceives the overall tone of an article.
Embedding next to Koerner's Nov. 15 op−ed a photo of a bombed−out building with a man crouching in front adds little clarity to the author's words. Was this man's house targeted on purpose by Israelis? Was he a member of Hamas or an innocent bystander? Is it from the Operation Cast Lead the author refers to or a file−photo from earlier aggressions? Similarly, the photo accompanying the Nov. 17 op−ed "Real allies" showing jeeps, barbed wire and protestors seem only to enforce images we've come to expect from Israel. What, exactly, are these presumed Israelis protesting or supporting?
Without this critical information qualifying what photos add to op−eds, pictures in the Op−Ed section seem only to enforce stereotypes of the dire situation in the Middle East and keep campus dialogue from blooming beyond the global status quo. I encourage the Daily to revisit its op−ed photo policy.
Much of my semester as public editor has been spent trying to gather the opinions of the student body and work with our media organizations to synergize together to provide better, conversation−making coverage. My Monday night office hours have welcomed students who were left unsettled by something they read, like the back−and−forth about Israel and Palestine that I discuss here.
The reason the public editor exists in the first place is to provide critical reflection on campus media, and I hope this piece has done so. It is a call to stop repeating the same refrains that the respective sides harp on — after all, their solutions have yet to yield peace. I know Karavas is right about his assessment of Tufts' ability to prevent complete polarization. I look forward to seeing Tufts make even more progress. In the mean time, best of luck with finals.
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