Dan Fishback: Doing battle with words

Divestment is a huge, complicated, torturous issue. My opinion -- which is, today, neither pro nor con -- hinges on too many details and balances too many conjectures to fit into this space. In fact, I wanted to put off even mentioning the word "divestment" in cold print until I could confidently discuss every facet of the situation.

But some others are not so cautious with their words, and so I inch into the debate ahead of schedule to address some of the ill-considered, knee-jerk rhetoric that has been thrown around in the past month. I speak-up because good people have been called "anti-Semitic," and this mischaracterization must be corrected, both to protect those people and to protect the epithet.

I know what it means to play with magic words. They are remarkably effective and mustn't be used without serious consideration. When you play with magic words -- when you fire them at an opponent -- you're attacking someone's moral and intellectual character. You're saying that their thoughts are guided not by reason but by a sort of madness. You're saying that they uncontrollably abstract a group of people into a series of demeaning and inaccurate descriptors.

When I call someone a "bigot" or a "homophobe" -- and I have cause to do so more often than I'd like -- I accuse them of seeing me incorrectly, seeing me abstractly as perversion and sin. There comes a point when it is appropriate and accurate to give them a taste of their own medicine -- to reduce them to abstract descriptors, to dehumanize them in the eyes of the audience. Magic words are the short-cuts you take when you're tired of explaining that which is now self-evident -- that you are worthy of life, love and respect. When you use magic words, your cause seems more valid and your fight becomes much easier.

But your fight should only be so easy when it is unambiguous. And while ambiguity is completely subjective, I believe, from my own subjectivity, that few aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are without paradox and contradiction. Little is clear, and little, at this moment, on this campus, calls for name-calling.

The divestment campaign is anti-Semitic, say many in the opposition, because it singles out Israel. And yet one cannot avoid the plain fact that Penn's divestment campaign includes all human rights violators and promotes divestment only from their arms suppliers -- a significant improvement upon other campaigns nationwide. And yet this improvement is seen by many as a throw-away measure -- a dishonest ploy to increase success "against Israel." But this perception is based on the a priori assumption that the campaigners really do just want to attack Israel. One cannot make this assumption given the actual nature of the campaign.

These organizers are concerned with suffering across the globe and so their campaign is global -- it only focuses on the Israeli military as a first step. This, too, is seen as anti-Semitic because Israel is certainly not the most egregious bully in a world of bullies. This is the most difficult position to refute, not because it's more valid, but because the response involves not facts, but something more abstract -- identity.

The organizers of this campaign -- Jews and Arabs -- identify with this particular conflict, just as do the opponents of the campaign. Some see their own people being brutalized and killed. Others see their own people becoming brutal killers. Is it really so surprising why they focus on Israel? Must one resort to magic words to explain this obvious and admirably human response to far-away suffering?

I'd like to think that those who most fervently oppose divestment would surely understand an intense need to protect one's people. After all, those on opposite sides of this issue arguably come from the same emotional place. Even those wafflers and confusniks in the middle, like me, probably share that starting ground -- we all want to end suffering. But we have different stories about exactly what kind of suffering is happening and who exactly is suffering and how much they're suffering, and whose "fault" it is -- the conflicting "facts" go on and on.

In the end, this is all an issue of tactics -- how best to go about saving lives. Only when we are sure that someone systematically regards some lives as more valuable than others should we even dream of unleashing magic words. Otherwise, we're just taking short-cuts to make our fights easier. This particular conflict offers no rational short-cuts.

If we insist upon ignoring nuance, simplifying the intentions of those who appear as "opponents," we'll get trapped in a battle that should, by all means, be a conversation.

Dan Fishback is a senior American Identities major from Olney, Md.

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