Conflict Studies

This response took a long time. This is unlike me – usually I find myself hammering away at the keyboard in very short order after whatever sets me off has done so, yet this time, it’s been allowed to ferment in my head. This is in large part due to circumstance. Between a giant history paper and everything else going on in my head, there hasn’t been much room for Berkeley claptrap. Still, this issue has hammered away at my thoughts, standing tall (relative to its hunchbacked associates) among the worst that this claptrap has had to offer over the last few weeks – which incidentally have been a veritable Renaissance of what Borat Sagdiyev would refer to as “anti-Jew warrior” activity.

An unfortunate article appeared last Friday in the Daily Cal entitled “Historical Meaning of The Palestinian Flag,” offered by Matthew Taylor, an ostensibly 35th-year student in Peace and Conflict Studies, and another in Berkeley’s proud tradition of people who publicize their Jewish heritage to lend credulity to their assaults on things that many other Jews hold dear. The article can be found here.

The problems begin with the very concept of Peace and Conflict Studies. In the realm of what my elitist sensibilities deem “bullshit majors,” this takes the crown of being the “most Berkeley” of them all; truly, one would be hard-pressed to come up with any subject Berkeley considers itself to be more qualified to teach than just why it is that violence exists in the world today. Typically, what I hear from P&CS majors betrays a complete ignorance (willful denial?) of how things really work in the world. As usual, this entails sympathy for terrorists and befuddling support for countries and governments that stand for the exact opposite of the liberal ideals these men and women smugly advertise as the basis for their entire identities. As usual I grant that I could be entirely wrong: it is possible that I have misjudged these people, or indeed, even that the world really can be the puppy-sunshine-gumdrop cocktail they envision. However, my deep-seated cynicism leads me to suspect that all of my observations and resulting prejudices against people who feel sufficiently satisfied with themselves that they major in Peace and Conflict Studies are on the money. I hope I’m wrong; I suspect not.

I don’t have the strength to go about a complete point-by-point rundown of what about the article I find repugnant, yet there are a few points that merit individual mention. Mr. Taylor’s condemnation of Tikvah’s use of the phrase “from the river to the sea, Israel will soon be free” – which is reported without mention of the Students for Justice in Palestine’s use of the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will soon be free,” which I read as equivalent – is terribly biased. The equation of life in the Middle East to South African apartheid and the heart-wrenching tale of how watermelons saved free speech are but two of the many things found inside I wish I never had to read again. Sickening though I find these (particularly the former, which given the wretchedness of what happened in South Africa I find unforgivable), though, what strikes me as most troubling is Mr. Taylor’s equation of life in the Middle East to life on the Berkeley campus.

UC Berkeley is perhaps most culpable to blame for perpetuating the laughable assumption that people going to university in America can actually understand what life is like elsewhere. Men and women like Mr. Taylor, who steady Peace and Conflict and take a few tours through the “occupied territories,” think they’re well-placed to judge what they’ve seen – and more troublingly, what they haven’t. The smugness with which Mr. Taylor reports that the petition to recall Senator John Moghtader from the ASUC Senate was begun by “[f]ive conscientious Boalt Hall law students” shows just how much he and his comrades-in-arms see themselves as Messianic purveyors of truth; they’re even resentful that the Revolution Will Not Be Televised, because it means less face time to promote the understanding that they themselves are out to save the world.

A statement of what I consider to be an undeniable truth: Husam Zakharia punching Gabe Weiner in the face – to say nothing of John Moghtader being nearby when it happened – does not hold a candle to the launch of Kassam (Qassam, if you prefer more modern Arabic transliteration) rockets into heavily populated areas. Even as “Tikvah's vision [becomes] more real every day,” no one has been hurt – much less killed – over the pro-Israel/pro-Palestine feud on campus. The “fight” (which again, I feel compelled to mention, happened near a month ago, not that that apparently matters) did not constitute a “microcosm of Israel's oppression of the Palestinians,” even if you want to lend credence to the latter half of that absurd statement.

Berkeley would be better off if its loudmouths stopped seeing the situation here as representative of what goes on where people are physically dying; it will be better off when Mr. Taylor finally graduates and takes his hateful, prejudicial diatribing with him.