opinion
What I Learned Lecturing on
Israel and the Middle East at
Columbia and Yale
By Dr. Eric R. Mandel
A professional in the pro-Israel world read that
I had lectured at his and his son’s alma mater,
Columbia University. He wanted to know what
kind of reception I received, what I spoke about
and what questions I was asked.

Then other readers reached out who were con-
cerned with the atmosphere on American cam-
puses and asked me to write an article about my
experience. When I spoke, I began by saying that my goal
is to share information in context, with analysis
based on my first-hand experiences. I asked the
students to challenge their preconceived notions
and form their own judgments, knowing that 91%
of Middle East “scholars” favor boycotting Israel.

Unfortunately, today’s college educators are more
political activists than educators.

My talk was entitled, “Israel Challenges 2023:
Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas/P.A., Antisemitism, the
Israeli Election and U.S.-Israel Relations.”
The most prominent concern for the students
was the new Israeli government. Like many
Americans, they were concerned about two far-
right candidates and whether they would harm
Israel’s democracy and judiciary, straining its rela-
tionship with the U.S.

They knew that soon-to-be ministers Itamar
Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are lightning rods
for a nationalist agenda and had disparaged Arabs
and liberal Diaspora Jews. The students were con-
cerned about Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s power over
the police, their ability to legalize illegal settle-
ments and their demand to override the Supreme
Court with a simple majority vote of the Knesset.

I told them Israeli politics has always been a
fractious, tumultuous tug-of-war melee with no
one party ever receiving a majority vote. However,
there is a big difference between harshly criti-
cizing Israel for policies they disagree with and
using politicians like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich as a
weapon to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.

I pointed out that when we strongly disagree
with what’s being done in other countries, we
object to the language or the actions, but no one
denies that China, Russia or Iran has a right to
exist. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken said,
we will judge the new Israeli government by its
policies, not by its coalition members.

Walter Russell Mead, writing in The Wall Street
Journal, said, “To argue that the Jewish state must
continually earn the right to exist by satisfying its
moral critics and political opponents is absurd.

People criticize Chinese actions in Xinjiang and
Tibet without saying that those misdeeds deprive
the Chinese people of the right to a state of their
own. The Palestinian plight is real, and criticism of
Israel is not unwarranted … but Israel’s legitimacy
doesn’t need to be earned. The new anti-Zionism,
however, is becoming entrenched among many
American progressives … on-campus individual
American Jews are being challenged to earn their
way into progressive respectability by dissociating
themselves from the Jewish state and the Jewish
national movement.”
I told the students that Prime Minister-designate
Benjamin Netanyahu will be the most left-wing
member of his government. He is likely to be a
moderating voice compared to his problematic
partners, albeit a right-wing one. Netanyahu is
also thinking about his legacy.

There is little doubt that Netanyahu’s gov-
ernment will do and say many things that will
upset students on U.S. university campuses, many
American Jews, the Reform and Conservative
movements and members of the Democratic
Party, even those in the party’s mainstream.

However, those who care about Israel need
to realize that, if they relegate Israel to the
status of a pariah state, its enemies in Iran,
Russia, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and
Hamas will be dangerously encouraged. Daylight
between the U.S. and Israel will be perceived as
weakness. It must be clear that Israel’s swing to
the right isn’t the chance these enemies have
been waiting for to annihilate Israel while its erst-
while allies look the other way.

The students seemed surprised when I showed
them the following:
How deep and sophisticated Hezbollah’s tun-
nels constructed under Israel’s northern border
really were.

How enormous Iran’s underground missile and
nuclear tunnels are in Natanz.

My pictures of the displacement of the Yazidis
because of Iran’s control of Iraqi militias in Sinjar
province. Evidence of the potential for the resurrection of
the Islamic State.

Evidence that the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement
was never going to end Iran’s ability to have
nuclear weapons in the future, despite the prom-
ises of former President Barack Obama.

I spent a good amount of time talking about
today’s Iranian protesters and how we abandoned
them in the Green Revolution in 2009. I explained
why we need to be more supportive of their
efforts for peaceful regime change. As a Kennedy
School of Government researcher discovered, the
most successful regime changes are non-violent
and only 3.5% of the population needs to be
actively involved in order to reach critical mass
and effect change.

I also asked the students to put aside precon-
ceived notions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
when I discussed a non-politicized analysis of
international law. I explained why the West Bank
is more appropriately defined as the occupation of
a disputed territory, whether or not one considers
it unwise for Israel to hold on to it.

I presented graphic evidence of how the
Palestinians preach hatred and incite their
young people against Israel, and showed them
that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud
Abbas says point-blank that he cannot accept a
Jewish state.

When I showed former Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert’s map that offered the Palestinians 100%
of the West Bank with land swaps and eastern
Jerusalem as their capital — which Abbas rejected
— as well as numerous P.A. maps that erased
Israel completely, it seemed to make a strong
impression. At Columbia, I also showed evidence
that the BDS movement on their campuses is not
about two states for two peoples but rather about
destroying the Jewish state.

To help the students understand Iran’s grand
scheme, I shared a map showing how the Islamic
republic encircles Israel through proxies in Syria,
Lebanon and Gaza. I explained that keeping
control of the Jordan River valley is essential
for Israel’s security if Jordan is the next domino
to fall. I next showed photos of Hezbollah and
Hamas military structures embedded in civilian
areas, setting the scene for cries from the inter-
national community of alleged Israeli war crimes
in the inevitable next war.

At both Yale and Columbia, students stayed
well after the Q&A session, wanting to discuss the
topics and share their viewpoints. Given what has
recently happened to some non-woke speakers
on campus, I was relieved that there were no dis-
ruptions and that only a few students left during
my talk. I was also pleased to receive inquiries by
email in the days that followed.

What I learned at Columbia and Yale was that
as bad as cancel culture is on many campuses,
there are still opportunities to present facts and
analysis in context and to respectfully discuss
complex issues with a receptive audience of very
impressive young adults. JE
Dr. Eric R. Mandel is director of the Middle East
Political Information Network.

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