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Oberlin College in Ohio has a noble progressive history, and this fall it has become a battleground for an important political question: Is Palestinian solidarity undermining the Democratic Party coalition?

Oberlin instructors who are concerned that the issue is dividing progressives organized a student trip to Israel this coming January, titled Bridging the Gap: Israel, that cast Israel as a robust democracy progressives can love, and cast Palestinian solidarity as a harbor for antisemitism.

Were really concerned that the left and the progressive movement dont know how to talk about and dont take antisemitism seriously, one of the instructors, Megan Black told Walter Thomas-Patterson of the Oberlin Review.

A second instructor, Simon Greer, who has a long resume in Jewish activism, has also worked to keep support for Israel a progressive cause.

A student leader of the trip, Havi Carillo-Klein, wrote an article in the Oberlin Review days after the last Israeli onslaught on Gaza last May, lamenting the supposed antisemitism in leftwing discussion of Palestinian rights:

My questions are: how does pro-Palestinian activism regularly blend with anti-Jewish activism? What is going on within our communitys pro-Palestinian protests and activism circles that allows this pattern to continue?

The winter trip was published in an Oberlin catalog in October, and its description raised eyebrows because it never mentioned Palestine, stated the cost at $4500 for eight days, plus airfare, and repeatedly described Israel as a democracy. It said the trip would address the complexity of issues facing Israeli democratic society that are too often deeply simplified in U.S. analysis, including the Occupation.

This project encourages participants to take on the challenge of engaging the deep divides that plague American democracy by thinking deeply about Israel, a nation that is both important and divisive in U.S. political and campus discourse.

Soon after the trip was announced, Oberlin Students for a Free Palestine (SFP) began a campaign against it. They said the trip made Oberlin complicit in oppression and apartheid, and it must be condemned.

A reported 600 people have signed the SFP petition (on a campus of 2600 students), but so far it appears that the course has the support of the administration. A former dean of students was one of the trips initial organizers.

The Students for a Free Palestine petition offered a brief history of Palestine because the course description had nothing to say about Palestine.

Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the Israeli government and Israel Defense Forces have forcefully removed Palestinian inhabitants from their historical homes and inflicted violence on Palestinian people. Militarization, brutality, murder, bombings, demolition, and family separation have traumatized Palestinians for over seventy years. Palestinians have been forced to resist occupation and apartheid that has left most of Palestines historical population seeking refuge; the land which once belonged to Palestinians has been plagued by illegal Occupation and continues to shrink, potentially into oblivion.

The organizers of the trip then revised the description of their trip. They renamed it, Bridging the Gap: Israel, Palestine, and the Politics of Division Here at Home, and said it would include extensive exposure to Palestinian experiences and perspectives.

The price dropped to $2500, and the new course description made it clear that the organizers want to prevent Israel from dividing the Democratic Party rank and file. They blame actors external to our movement for politicizing differences between Democrats over Israel and Palestine (Trumpers/antisemites, presumably).

Our project has its roots in the political turmoil of the last five years, when it became clear to many organizers in progressive and racial justice movement spaces (including us) that internal differences over Israel/Palestine and associated charges of racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia were being effectively weaponized by actors external to our movement to divide and destabilize progressive coalitions. These efforts weakened pro-democracy forces at a critical time for protecting voting rights, expanding political participation, and countering the surge of far-right anti-democratic organizing. The Bridging the Gap project and the Coalition of the Future course that we are currently teaching are both efforts to equip Oberlin students and future leaders to effectively navigate wedge attacks and the weaponization of racialized oppression through bridge-building, deep relationships, and complex strategic thinking.

That description is very much in line with J Street and other liberal Zionist lobby groups that want to keep pro-Israel a bipartisan issue. They want to end the battle between the pro-Israel establishment and the pro-BDS left because they fear that advocating for Palestine will lower the Jewish commitment to the Democratic Party. J Street combines criticism of settlement expansion with support for full military aid to Israel, because it believes those positions are broadly supported by American Jews.

Oberlin instructor Simon Greer has boasted that American Jews like himself have answered the challenge from Israel to protect, defend and support Israel.

Oberlins Students for a Free Palestine group are not content with lip service to Palestinian human rights. They are angry that fees from the trip are sure to help support the Israeli army, and that the students will enjoy freedom to travel around the country that millions of Palestinians dont have. A member of SFP told me thats a privilege thats offensive on a campus that famously was once a stop on the Underground Railroad.

That student suggested that the trip organizers dropped the price of the trip because theyre having a hard time recruiting students. The trip was supposed to be for 15 students. Who knows how many will show up for a pro-Israel propaganda tour that a petition drive aims to stop?

But by all appearances, the student said, the college administration is committed to the trip, and is determined that it will not be canceled. I emailed two of the instructors to ask about the trip. Neither responded.

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A funny thing happened when Oberlin announced Israel trip for progressives to see democracy (at $4500 a pop) - Mondoweiss