In response to Dina Omar’s Oct. 12th op-ed, “Explore what’s yours or exploit what’s Palestinian?” I feel compelled to write that my experiences in Israel have proven that Israel is not only an ideal place for Columbia students to study abroad, but it is also a country that encourages people of all faiths and backgrounds to study.
During my sophomore year at Columbia, I decided to study abroad at Ben-Gurion University in Israel’s Negev Desert. Having spent the year before college volunteering in northern Israel in Haifa with Arab youth, I wanted to return in an academic environment, and this time, I headed south. There, I knew I’d be able to improve my Arabic language skills and continue learning about the Arab population in Israel while studying. I figured that my peers at Ben-Gurion would be similar to me—other Jewish-American students who had previously spent time in Israel’s center and wanted an experience in more of a peripheral region.
Surprisingly, I found that Christian and Muslim Europeans made up a large part of the overseas student body. They, too, were interested in gaining firsthand experience in the media hotspot. Aside from learning Arabic and Hebrew, they enrolled in courses about the Middle East conflict and volunteered with the Bedouin population nearby.
They lived alongside full-time students in the dorms—Israelis and Palestinians who were Jewish, Muslim, and Christian. When two of my Jewish classmates started a band, it was an Arab student at school who managed them and got them gigs in local Be’er Sheva pubs and cool joints in Tel Aviv. Another friend of mine, who came to Israel straight from Qatar, gave English lessons to a Muslim student in exchange for Arabic lessons. Indeed, as 20 percent of Israel’s population is Arab, it should not be surprising that Arabs made up such a significant part of my Israeli collegiate experience. While Omar’s argument implies that Israel is systematically trying to erase the Palestinian narrative by only encouraging Jews to study there, the reality is that Israel, as a Jewish and democratic state, provides opportunities for higher education for Jews and minorities alike.
Similarly, study abroad programs in Israel are open to people of many religious and national backgrounds. Masa Israel Journey provides grants to Jewish students so they can explore their people’s history. The grants are a nice but small incentive for Jewish students who choose to study in Israel. Supported by nonprofits like the UJA Federation, as well as private donors, Masa Israel can choose to allocate its money where it sees fit. At the same time, students of other backgrounds are able to apply for a long list of other grants that are available to them—and not necessarily to Jewish students. Furthermore, I would argue that private pro-Palestinian donors should do a similar thing. Assuming that the academic levels are on par with those of Columbia or Barnard and other elite universities, these nonprofits and donors should help North American schools work in conjunction with institutions of higher learning in the West Bank (and in’shallah one day Gaza) to create programs that give diaspora Palestinians the chance to explore their history, too. The recently established Center for Palestine Studies here on campus would be an excellent place to start. The center, the first of its kind in the U.S., can provide students with a unique opportunity to engage academically with Palestinian culture and history (instead of yet another forum for anti-Israel rhetoric in the form of a scholarly institution) and work to develop such exploratory programs abroad.
By the way, “Explore what’s yours” won’t even be Masa Israel’s tagline in a few months. They are changing it to, “Find it here,” suggesting that there are a ton of programs to be found in Israel. Perhaps I’ll do another one after college—a professional internship in Tel Aviv, a volunteer gig at a grassroots NGO in Jerusalem promoting Palestinian-Israeli cooperation through joint water projects, or a conflict resolution studies program Haifa—and I hope that Dina Omar and other Columbia students will join me there.
The author is a senior in the joint General Studies and Jewish Theological Seminary program majoring in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies and modern Jewish studies. He serves on Hillel’s executive board as the Israel coordinator.
