By Charlotte Anthony , Special to JTNews
On their first stop on a 10-day-tour of college campuses around the Pacific Northwest, two Israelis, one Jewish the other Druze, presented “Israeli Soldiers’ Stories” on Feb. 21 at the University of Washington.
Ran Bar-Yoshafat started his presentation with the photo of a Palestinian girl being stepped on by an “Israeli soldier” which had been circulating around Facebook.
“Every Israeli who has seen this picture is looking at it like this: This is not our gun, this is not our coat, this is not our gloves, our pants nor our shoes,” Bar-Yoshafat said. “But if you don’t live in Israel, then you have no way of knowing that.”
Bar-Yoshafat, a Jewish Israeli served in an elite hand-to-hand combat unit in the Israeli Defense Forces. He has since received his law degree from the Hebrew University and is currently working toward his MBA. During the talk, Bar-Yoshafat spoke about his experiences with the IDF, where his job was to capture terrorists and the difficulties of trying to protect Israel’s security while minimizing Palestinian casualties.
Fadel, who is Druze, a small Arab sect that lives mostly near the Syrian border, spoke about her experiences growing up in Israel and being part of Israeli society.
“The Druze are mainly loyal to the country they live in…that’s why I grew up feeling and behaving like I’m Israeli, a total Israeli,” she said.
Fadel is part of the President’s forum, where she meets with Israeli president Shimon Peres once a month to discuss issues affecting young people in Israel. The forum includes a diverse mix of Israeli society including Muslims, Christians, Haredim and Ethiopians.
She is also a founder of the YALA Young Leaders Conference, a Facebook page that includes both Palestinians and Israelis who believe discussion is key to solving the conflict.
“The conflict will never be solved if we don’t discuss it and it will never be solved if we just ask for other people and other nations to solve it for us,” Fadel said.
“I thought it was interesting to hear from Ranya because it was a perspective that I hadn’t heard a lot from before,” said UW student Tanya Friedland. “I feel like not a lot of people know about Druze and it’s definitely an aspect of Israel that doesn’t get that much press.”
Friedland is a member of Huskies for Israel, a UW Israel-advocacy group, which sponsored the event with fellow advocacy organization StandWithUs Northwest. Bar-Yoshafat is spending five months in Seattle as StandWithUs’s shaliach, or emissary, in which he speaks to various groups and schools about various Israel-related topics.
“Their role is to go out and speak and meet with as many people as possible about their personal experiences growing up, having family and serving in Israel,” said Rob Jacobs, of StandWithUs Northwest’s executive director.
Bar-Yoshafat said that he wants people to start looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with context.
“No one in Israel wants to stand at a checkpoint,” he said. “We don’t want to have to do that, but we have to, to protect people.”
During their 10-day tour, Bar-Yoshafat and Fadel visited campuses as far south as the University of California’s Santa Cruz and Berkeley campuses, several campuses and Jewish agencies in Oregon, and a speaking engagement at Kitzel’s delicatessen in Olympia. The deli event drew several supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement as well as the parents of Rachel Corrie, the former Evergreen State College student killed in Gaza in 2003. Jacobs called that event fascinating.
Maayon Kachlon, president of Huskies for Israel and the UW campus representative for StandWithUs, said one of the reasons the Israelis came to her campus was to put a human face to Israel and the army.
“When you put a face to a story it becomes real,” Kachlon said. “An individual story has a greater impact than just the numbers.”
Friedland agreed.
“I think by talking about their personal stories, it makes them more relatable to the average student that hasn’t had any military experience,” she said. “It definitely humanizes them.”
Though about 75 people attended the campus event, only about 15 were students and most were of the same mind regarding Israel.
“I wish there had been more students there, I feel like there were more community members who agreed with what [Bar-Yoshafat] was saying, and I wish people who were less informed or had a different perspective would have come,” Friedland said.
Melissa Stern, a junior in Cultural Anthropology and Jewish Studies said she tried inviting her friends who were not supporters of Israel, but they did not come because they said it was against their beliefs.
“My friends that are anti-Israeli go to sources that back up their preconceived notions,” Stern said. “I think it was a very good and informative presentation and I wish more anti-Israeli people would have come.”
Stern also added that people should be more open to discussion.
“I think there’s a great need for events like this, especially in a place like Seattle where people are liberal and claim to be open-minded but they are completely closed off to information that goes against their pre-conceived notions about the conflict and the state,” she said.
Bar-Yoshafat said that education is key to changing people’s perspectives.
“I’m a strong believer in education and I think it will solve most of the problems in the world, including conflicts,” he said. “One of the main reasons I’m here is because the best advocacy is to bring people to Israel, but I’m here to bring Israel to them.”